World War II Chronicle: December 10, 1942
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Page four features an article about a marching drum that has been used in every war since the Revolutionary War. One of nine ordered by Gen. George Washington for his Continental Army, it will be retired after this war and sent to the Smithsonian museum… Three Battle of Midway veterans are pictured on page seven: Lt. James S. Gray Jr. of Fighter Squadron 6 (VF-6) is pictured on page seven as he earns his second Distinguished Flying Cross. He is one of the Navy’s first aces and earns five DFCs by war’s end. In 1930 he became the nation’s youngest pilot by soloing at age 14 and is a 1936 Naval Academy graduate. Lt. Nels L.A. Berger of Scouting Squadron 5 (VS-5) and Lt. Irving H. McPherson of Torpedo Squadron 6 (VT-6) are both being presented the Navy Cross. All 14 of VT-6 pilots earned the medal, nine posthumously…
Two Doolittle Raiders participated in a North Africa bombing raid (see page 10). Maj. David M. Jones and Lt. Richard E. Miller now serve with the 319th Bombardment Group, but both officers’ flying days are numbered. Miller is shot during a mission and perishes after his B-26 lands. Jones was actually shot down on Dec. 4 and spends the next two-and-a-half years as a prisoner in Stalag Luft III. He is part of the team that digs their way out of the camp in what became known as the “Great Escape…” Sports section begins on page 48.
Roving Reporter by Ernie Pyle
WITH THE AMERICAN FORCES IN ALGERIA — This is the story of two Army photographers — soldiers who fight with cameras instead of guns.
They are in the Signal Corps, and their purpose is twofold — to get newsreels for showing in the theaters back home, and to make a permanent pictorial record of the war.
There are many of these men, both in the Army and the Navy, scattered in our forces throughout the world. Already they have done some historic work. Many of them will die behind their cameras before it is all over.
On the morning of Nov. 8 Sgt. Norman Harrington and Pvt. Ned Modica stood in the darkness on the hurricane deck of a troopship lying off the coast of Algeria.
They were entranced by the scenes their cameras were recording — the fantastic searching of tracer bullets along the shore, the fiery splash of colored flares in the sky, the laying of smokescreens by our armored speed boats.
Then, just at dawn, their ship moved in close to shore. As it dropped anchor, a French mortar shell came looping over. It missed the two cameramen by three feet. A moment later a second shell blew up the spot where they had been sleeping the night before.
Adventure starts almost too soon in some cases.
The two cameramen looked at each other in wonder, but their tension was broken by a voice on the ship’s loundspeaker calling their numbers. They grabbed their kits and jumped into their assault boats. The great and mysterious adventure for which they had trained and waited was at hand.
What were they thinking about? They were too busy to think very much about anything, but such thoughts as they had time for were of their families back home. It’s always that way.
Private Modica had his own studio in Madison avenue. He was making big money, had a lovely home on Long Island, a charming wife who teaches school and a brown Irish setter named Tom. Here in Africa he carries in his wallet color films of his house, his wife and his dog.
Private Modica’s nickname is Ned. He is 35. He is dark and has coal-black hair, slightly graying. Even in menial battle dress he looks and speaks like an officer.
It took him three months to talk his wife into letting him join the Army.
The two photographers tumbled out of the steel-sided assault barge and landed waist-deep in the Mediterranean. Holding their cameras high over their heads, they waded ashore. They dumped their bags and extra film, waded back and began grinding away at the hordes of soldiers landing behind them. By that act they became the first Army newsreel men to go into action on this side of the ocean.
The water was cold, but they didn’t feel it.
“Honestly, you’re hardly aware of anything around you,” Ned Modica says. “You;re so consumed with what you’re doing that you don’t know anything that’s happening outside the radius of your lens.”
They worked for 15 minutes, waist-deep in the water and then ran up and down the beach getting shots of the troops dashing ashore.
They filmed their first blood when they found some Navy medical men tending a wounded French soldier lying on the beach. The soldier still wore his red fez and it will stand out in the technicolor film when you see it. So will the bare African mountains, the curve of the beach, and the great waiting convoy in the background. So will the white bandages.
Norman Harrington is a prodigy who doesn’t look or act like one.
“You’re only 20?” I asked in amazement.
“I knew you’d say that,” he laughed. “Everything I’ve ever done, I was always the youngest person in it. I’m the youngest photographer in our company now.”
Norman Harrington began to pay his own way when he was 14, taking pictures for the Baltimore Sun. He graduated from high school at 16. In another year he was a leading businessman at Easton, Md. At 17 he became the youngest Rotarian in America. At 19 he opened a studio of his own and built a nice home for himself and his mother.
He joined the Army last May 11. Ned Modica joined May 14. The two met a few weeks later at a camp in Arkansas. By September they were in England together. In early November they were wading through the Mediterranean.
“We’re a good team. There are supposed to be eight of us, with a car and two drivers and an officer in charge, but in wartime things get lost and mixed up, so there’s just Norman and me left.
“We walk most of the time, carry our stuff on our backs, and give ourselves our own orders. We’re proud of what we’ve done.”
(Continued Tomorrow)
Evening star. (Washington, D.C.), 10 December 1942. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1942-12-10/ed-1/