Wartime memoirs of warren king
WK Memoirs Chapter IV
On The Continent –My Second Big Break

  "We unloaded our trucks and jeeps and were ordered to just follow the vehicle in front of us. I was in a jeep with all my gear and my drivers' gear. My gear consisted of my personal stuff plus a pair of fatigues, a Thompson sub-machine gun, a 45mm sidearm, a Speed Graphic camera, a 35mm Leica camera and a Kodak 35 mm camera, plus a dozen film holders and lots of black and white film.

   We saw nothing but naked shrubbery, wrecked and burnt out German vehicles and the rear end of the vehicle in front of us. It was several hours of continuous driving, pulling over every once in a while to let the Red Ball Express trucks roar by us, and/or for some needed relief by the side of the road. The Red Ball Express were fast trucks usually loaded with ammunition or emergency supplies needed up front.  They were to have the right of way, no matter what.

  I had orders to not start shooting photos until I had specific orders to do it from officers of the 167 th , but it was so tempting when we began seeing German troops, with their hands high above their heads, being herded into U.S. Army trucks. We knew we were very near where there might be some action up ahead. French citizens were cheering us as we passed through their small villages .

  After a few hours we saw signs of civilization. We hadn't been told so, but we were on the outskirts of a large city. When we recognized a huge tower in the distance we knew we were entering Paris. We didn't have the luxury of daily or hourly news reports on a radio, but were aware that a battle was going on not too far ahead of us.

  Word finally gotten to us that Paris had fallen to advancing American troops just ahead of us. French people were still cheering as we passed through small villages in the Paris outskirts. We finally drove through some large iron gates, passed some beautifully sculptured gardens, and then stopped in front of a very ornate building. An M.P. came up to us and told us that this was to be our temporary destination, and that the last Germans had just been cleared out.  We finally realized that we were in Versailles.

  We were led inside to the famed Hall of Mirrors, an extremely beautiful room with gold gilded mirrors all around it. There were tables set up with food still on them, left by the previous tenants, a German command.  We were told to find an available cot, as this was to be our bedroom for the night.

  Captain Farrell came in and asked if we approved of our hotel for the night, then told us there would be a company meeting the following morning at 7:00 AM and for each of us to be prepared to move out on a moment's notice.

  I don't think I slept a wink that night, even though I was exhausted from the trip. We received word about anything when they were good and ready to tell us. 

  7AM came very soon thereafter and all of us were herded into a meeting room where Captain Farrell looked very serious, with his arms folded. He looked around the room at this group of inexperienced rookies, and then said, “I need two volunteers, a motion picture and a still man for what might be a dangerous assignment.” To this day I'll never understand it, but my hand was up very high amidst several others. Captain Farrell looked around the room, then said, “Sergeant Love and Corporal King, front and center”. Charlie Love, who in civilian life worked at Technicolor studios as a lab technician and as a cameraman , Captain Farrell then introduced the two of us to Don, who was to be our driver for this assignment, and then told us to drive to Beaugency , a small town just south of Paris, to meet a Colonel Bertram Kalisch, a writer, who would then give us further orders.

  When we arrived in Beaugency, our jeep was completely surrounded by kids and grownups, as they had never seen Americans before. I felt like a visiting celebrity. The threw us flowers and one man actually signaled to me and said in very poor English that I would be welcome to ‘use' his wife that that night. I said something like, “Thanks, but no thanks ” Charlie thought I was nuts, but I had other things on my mind, like “Where's this Colonel Kalisch. At about this time a fancy U.S. Army sedan pulled up, and out stepped a very large man with a pair of silver oak leaves on his shoulders and asked for our I.D. He introduced himself as Colonel Bertram Kalisch and told us that he as in charge of a formal surrender of 20,000 German troops and that we were to photograph the entire ceremony.

  He then ripped the stripes from my arm and Charlie's arm and told us that on this mission we were to be recognized as correspondents, not as American soldiers.

  We followed his car to what appeared to be an armed guard in a German uniform. The guard snapped his heels together, saluted, and then signaled for us to go ahead. We stopped at a large building where another German guard directed us inside. A German General, Erich Elster , then came to each of us, shook our hands and invited us to have a seat.

  He then explained in very good English that he had 20,000 German troops in the area and had agreed to a formal surrender to the Americans the following day.

  General Elster then approached each of us, removed our weapons, and then told us that he had decided not to surrender after all, but that he would have to detain us for the time being.  We were then taken to a local hotel, placed in individual rooms, with a guard at the door.

  I thought to myself, “Now, what the hell have I gotten into? My first day of duty, and here I am, a prisoner of war - I'd much rather be with that French guy's wife”.

  That night, after we had gone to bed, we heard planes, many of them, dropping bombs and strafing the village we were in. I actually felt that the Germans knew we were there and General Elster had double-crossed us.

  At 5 AM the following morning, the guards led us to General Elster's office, then in he came, looking white as a sheet, gave us each our weapons and explained that the American attack that night had convinced him to go ahead with the formal surrender.

  Colonel Kalisch took us into the town center, where the surrender was to take place, and explained that we had free rein on how we wanted to cover it.

  It was like winning an Oscar. Charlie and I were both elated, as this was to be the first and largest formal surrender in WWII.  I can't tell you how much film was used, but I did deliver many boxes of exposed film to the news office in Paris, that was then forwarded to London for processing, then forwarded to various publications all over the world.

  My seemingly worst day turned out to be my most exciting one. MY SECOND BIG BREAK, my first being accepted into the 167th as a full ledged photographer some months prior.

  The ceremony was in the town square. American and German officers were dressed to the hilt, and there were some news cameras there, so we knew we were involved with something very big.

  After the surrender ceremony was completed, Charlie and I got in our jeep, then asked Don to just drive us around so that we might take photos of various activities going on.

  We saw barbed wire enclosures being put up by the Americans, and hordes of German troops throwing their weapons into piles. We, of course, helped ourselves to Some German Lugers , arm bands with Swastikas , etc., then drove into the countryside to photograph columns of German troops marching in to surrender The three of us were so relieved to be allowed the freedom of seeing all this take place and that we were really a part of it.

  Colonel Kalisch called us into his new office, the one General Elster used to have at the German headquarters in Beaugency , thanked us for the job we did, then wrote us a note to take to an address in Paris were we were to deliver our film and scripts, and then await orders about where we were to go next.

  After delivering the film we were ordered to continue on eastward to the town of Verdun, France, the new headquarters of General Omar Bradley's 12th Army Group. It was there where we learned that Charlie and I had been assigned to the office of Major Jack Warner (Of the Warner Brothers fame).  Major Warner was in charge of PPW (Publicity and Psychological Warfare), which meant that we would be doing publicity work for General Bradley and would be involved with reporting on the printing and delivery of propaganda leaflets to be delivered to the German citizens prior to or just after an Allied attack on their towns or cities.

  The leaflets were loaded into bombs and delivered via P-38 fighter-planes. They even rigged one of the planes so that I could take photos through a Plexiglas nose-cone while lying on my belly in front center of the fuselage of the plane, but the photos weren't too successful because of the speed involved, so we resorted to my taking photos from a Piper Cub airplane through a hole cut in he bottom of the fuselage.

  I then received a promotion to sergeant, (T/4) for my work on the surrender story.  The majority of the assignments I had were of various soldiers receiving medals or promotions and of visiting dignitaries.

  I accompanied a contingent of visiting American Congressmen as they toured the front lines, I traveled with Marlene Dietrich when she visited the troops (and entertained the generals), I traveled with Bing Crosby, and with the fantastic U.S Army band.  I was then told that I would be accompanying the famous Glenn Miller band, but alas, that group was shot down on the way over.

  Since much of my work was in hospitals, I began taking portraits of many patients, and then took a personal message to send with my photos to their hometown newspapers.  This became a very popular thing, so I spent much time in hospitals and received many nice comments from the various news services.

  I remember the day Major Jack Warner told me to go to the Paris Airport to photograph General George Marshall, the man who commanded all the Allied armies.  It was especially exciting for me, as this was the man who was Eisenhower's, Montgomery's and Bradley's boss.   I thought to my self, “How will I ever direct a man of this stature?  “What will I say?”

  When his plane landed, I was sent right out to meet it, and was actually a little frightened, but as the plane came to a halt, the door opened and out hopped the general.  He came toward me, returned my salute, then said “Sergeant King, I'm General Marshall (As if I didn't know). He then said, “ What do you want me to do?”  I said, “Just stand over by the wing”, and he did. I then said, “Turn, this way,” and he did. He actually listened to my orders, and obeyed my every command as I directed him.  I then realized that, with a camera in your hand, you're the boss, the director – and I have always used this little story when I talk to students about directing a model.

  My company, the 167th, was also headquartered on the same campus, so I was very near the camera repair people and very near what was going on in the company. The rest of the men were broken up into 4-man combat units and were sent out on loan to various outfits all over Europe, so I rarely saw my buddies unless they were back for a new assignment or whatever.

  We were fortunate as far as any casualties, but we did lose one officer, and I had to photograph his wife, an army nurse, as she wept over his grave. The photo had very wide usage all over the world, with only Signal Corps credits, as were all of my photos.

  I was assigned to attend many high level meetings to make photographs of the many dignitaries involved, and had several combat assignments where I saw too much death on both sides. Toward the end I saw many very young and very old Germans being used in heavy combat.

  I constantly recalled how fortunate I was to have the job I had, even though I was faced with some very unpleasant situations.  I saw death, too much death, on either side.  I saw all this and wondered if, because of the job I was assigned to , that I was escaping some of the misery that many of our brave young men faced on a daily basis.  I also recall walking down the streets of a newly captured town, waiting for that sniper to draw a bead on me.  I also remember that I was doing just what the Generals and colonels above me needed , to get the information, no matter what.

  Each time I heard of an upcoming assignment, I hoped, but also feared that I would be the one selected, no matter what the story involved. Charlie and I put many miles on our very trusty Jeep, sometimes having to bum meals from an encampment or military base along the way. It was on one of these sojourns that we saw a German woman toiling in her garden. Her garden consisted of a bunch of white crosses, a garden with nothing but dead German soldiers planted in it. I photographed it but will never forget the pain I saw in her wrinkled face. She knew I cared, but neither of us dared to show any kind of emotion .

  Visiting the wounded in hospitals really got to me psychologically, as I pictured myself In the same situation, but, as a photographer, I did have to do my best to record a smile, if I could possibly garner one, to show his family or friends in his hometown newspaper.

  Once, while on assignment at Radio Luxembourg, doing a story on a well known captured German big wig, I received word, via General Bradley's office, that I was being allowed to have some time of to visit my brother, Bob, whose artillery outfit was in Bastogne just north of where I was. My driver, Don, was assigned to drive me there, so we headed north toward the Belgian border.  In about an hour we were stopped by an M.P. who very sternly ordered us to go back where we came from, as there was a huge German counter-attack going on with many American losses, and that we'd have to go back.

  When artillery shells started exploding around us, we were convinced and returned to our headquarters in Verdun. I later learned that the German attack was the beginning of the Bulge and that Bob's battalion had been wiped out, with Bob taken as a prisoner of war. I learned later that Bob had escaped, but recaptured three times before finally being released by victorious American forces.

  My final assignment was to join an engineering battalion that built pontoon bridges under fire.

  The American troops had fought their way to the Ruhr River in the town of Linnich , Germany. The next drive would take us right to the Rhine River, a most strategic location that should end it all for the weakening German forces. They wanted pictures of the crossing of the Ruhr, so Charlie and I joined the engineers who were huddled in stores and homes right at the location of the planned crossing and battle. The former bridge across the river had been demolished previously, and the Germans had set up a concrete pill box where the original German bridge once stood, with it's machine guns aimed right up the main street of Linnich . 

  Right across the street from the store we were huddled in was a beer tavern. I realized once and or all that Charlie was a serous alcoholic when he crawled across that heavily armed street, took off his steel helmet, filled it with beer, and then crawled back under live machine gun bullets. My hero! Meanwhile the engineers we were to work with were praying, crying, and some even crawled over to the tavern, under fire, to get more and more beer.

  At 3 AM the artillery started. The sound was frightening and the sky was lit up by seemingly thousands phosphorous shells that were trained on the retreating German troops on the other side of the river. I climbed to the second floor of the building I was in and used the light from the phosphorous shells as a light source while I photographed the engineers as they began to piece their pontoon bridge together under heavy fire.

  As I was shooting pictures from an upstairs window, a German shell hit our building, knocking me downstairs. I had enough sense then to close my shutter, knowing I was in the middle of a long exposure when the shell hit.  I was stunned, my Helmet fell off and I had a headache like I had never experienced. The medics saw no blood on me, as that's the number one priority in battle, but I still had that horrific headache and had to slow down a bit.  I wasn't able to advance with the troops, as I wanted to, as the medics ordered me to hold back until I felt able. I Walked outside, saw the new bridge that had been completed under that heavy fire. I saw a number of engineers fishing dead bodies from under the bridge and was somewhat elated when the sounds of the battle on the other side of the river grew somewhat more faint as our troops advanced.

  I was still in a state of shock, but knew I had a job to do, so I started walking across the bridge in the direction the armed troops had gone a few hours earlier, but were now miles ahead of my location. It was very quiet as I walked down the road just taking photos that I thought might tell a story, then I'd come across a group of Americans herding captured Germans back toward the river.

  When I finally decided I had done what I need to do, I headed back. I was armed with only my pistol and my camera, so I felt that going back to the river as the safest way to go, but as I walked along, all of a sudden a German soldier would shout, “ Comrade ” to me with his hands high over his head. I was honestly frightened at first, but when one, then another would join my little clan, I came back to the bridge with 30 very hungry, very tired, very scared prisoners in front of me with their hands still held over their heads.

  I had a constant severe headache, but when I was returned to our new headquarters in Weisbaden , Germany. Captain Farrell, knowing we'd be heading home in the very near future refused to send me to the hospital, for who knows how long I'd be stuck in Europe after the rest of the guys were on their way home.

  Our new headquarters in Wiesbaden consisted of a row of about five mansions in an elite neighborhood.  The home I was in had a grand piano and gorgeous furniture. It even had a classic wine cellar where we were aloud to help ourselves each Friday night, if interested. It was just the 167 th now, and the men from the various units were coming back from wherever they had been for the past few months.  It was great seeing them again.  We all shared stories of our experiences and marveled that we all somehow made it back.

  It was like living in an exclusive resort. There was a beautiful public pool just a couple blocks away, and some clay tennis courts that we put to good use.

  The next and final step was to head for a port in France, where we boarded a troop ship and headed for home. To keep ourselves busy for the next couple of weeks, a group of us decide to take portraits of other returning G.I.s .  As we crossed the mid-Atlantic, we noticed that the sea was getting a little rough, then even rougher as we headed westerly toward home, with the nose of our ship actually going under water, then would appear way above us at times.

  When we saw the navy crew getting seasick we knew we were In what might be a hurricane, as J, Bill and I, with memories of the miserable trip on he way to Europe with all the seasick troops, went into the galley, stole a ham, stole some bread and some drinks, then took It to a small room on the upper deck and lived on it all the way home.

  We finally spotted land. It was Virginia Beach, Virginia, where we debarked for the final time.   It felt so great being on American soil again.

  Captain Farrell called me into his office, apologized for not doing it before, and then gave me a beautiful citation that read. “For displaying courage and skill in performing his duty as a combat photographer during the assault operations against the enemy in Germany during the period, 23 February, 1945 to 5 March, 1945. I appreciated the recognition, but wouldn't care to go through it all again.  He then handed me my furlough papers.

  We all then had a two-week furlough to get home before our next assignment at Fort Benning , Georgia, where w were rumored to then be on our way to the Japanese Theater, but the news came that the Japanese had surrendered – it was over, but not for me.  I spent the following three months at Lawson General Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia recovering from my final episode in Linnich , Germany – the longest three months of my life, but they got me back to good health again before discharging me and sending me back home to see what civilian life as an adult might be like. I had left home right out of high school, but now I had to find my way in another world – a little more peaceful one.

  It was then that I finally found why I was hospitalized for such a long time – I was one of the many cases of Post-Traumatic Stress disorder, or what was called then, just plain old “Shell-Shock”."**

  "Upon discharge from the army, I worked as a commercial photographer, then managed a portrait studio before I started teaching Vocational photography in 1950.  I have taught at the high school and college levels ever since, and have had over 16,000 students go through my classes - some among the leading photographers in the country today.  I'm still in touch with hundreds of them."*

*From personal correspondence with Warren.
**A chapter from Warren's currently unpublished autobiography.  Published here with Warren's permission.
Links: Warren King Scholarship Foundation