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For week 3 we have another war related photograph. It was the early 1940’s after all. It’s not your usual front lines shot but one that was much closer to home for the Americans.

Camera 4 x 5 Speed Graphic

Film Kodak

Lens 127mm

Mid World War II the town of Villisca, Iowa housed eleven hundred people. It’s located fifty miles southeast of Omaha. A real small-town in the middle of America. In a town this small you’re bound to know the majority of the population and certainly know of any war heroes returning home.

On 15 July 1943 Lt. Col. Robert Moore’s train had arrived home. He and his fellow Iowans had faced off against a notoriously skillful field marshal known as Desert Fox, Field Marshal Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel. Here was a real hero, awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for heroic leadership coming home to his small town where everyone either knew him or of him.

Earle Bunker of the Omaha World-Herald was assigned to cover the story. It was his chance to make a picture somewhat different to the normal depictions of combat that usually graced the front pages. It was his chance to reveal the emotional side that played well with families throughout the country. He waited 24 hours for the train to arrive.

When the train finally screeched to a halt on the platform at Villisca station, a hero, a soldier away for sixteen months stepped off to be greeted by his town. He spotted his wife Dorothy and his seven-year-old daughter Nancy. He dropped his bags as Nancy ran into his arms while his wife wept freely in her cupped hands. Earle Bunker chose his moment carefully and gave us a scene so timeless and emotion filled that it won him the 1944 Pulitzer.

The image is so generic as to represent a whole nation. There is no face to identify the subjects. No flag to tug at your patriotism. No identifying mark other than family love. It could be – and it was – the return of many war heroes across the country and across the world.

For the second week we have an image that, on it’s own, doesn’t have the same impact as the inaugural winner did. In my opinion however, it is a much more powerful image backed up by a sad story of a brief moment.

Camera 4 x 5 Speed Graphic

Film Kodak

Lens 127mm

During January of 1942 Frank “Poppy” Noel was covering the British troops, who were only a few steps ahead of the Japanese, in Singapore for Associated Press. The Pacific War was going badly, the Japanese bombers were beginning to hit the city and Noel had contracted malaria. Word got to Noel from New York that he was to head home and despite the weathered and tough persona, he was glad to be going home.

He booked passage on a freighter that would take him to Burma. His luggage for the 15,000 mile trip was a Speed Graphic and the clothes on his back. Less than 300 miles out of port on the Indian Ocean a Japanese torpedo ruptured their vessel. Noel was trapped in his cabin but managed to escape and board a life boat with twenty seven survivors out of the seventy seven original crew. They drifted aimlessly for five days in scorching tropic heat.

In the endless ocean a lifeboat drifted towards them. The boat carried Indian sailors, survivors from the freighter. They had lost their water supply in the rush to escape the sinking boat. As they neared Noel’s boat one of the sailors reached out with his hand and begged for water. Sadly, they had none to offer them. Noel – sick with malaria, thirst and low on morale – was switched on despite the hardships and pulled out his Speed Graphic. He took a single frame of the moment the sailor realised there was no water to be shared. The expression is heart crushing, the eyes conveying desperate sadness. The boats drifted apart and were later separated by a tropical storm. The other life boat was never seen again.

Noel’s career was always fraught with danger. He went on to cover the war in Europe, then the Palestine war in 1948 and later in Korea where he was captured by the Chinese early on and held prisoner. He did escape once but all that earned him was beatings and solitary confinement in a small cell.

Colleagues from Tokyo managed to somehow sneak in a camera for Noel. He took amazing pictures of POW’s which were snuck out. The first set was of Americans in prison uniforms, each one identified by name and town. The pictures were relayed around the world. Noel, amazingly, went on to photograph hundreds more and many were featured on front pages of newspapers around the world. He was rescued in an operation on 9 August 1953, a full 32 months after his capture.

He went on to work in New York for a while and later for AP in Florida where he retired and passed away far from war, prisons and lack of water.

Each Friday I will post a Pulitzer winning photograph. I am no art critic by any stretch of the imagination so do not expect an amazing critique. I do however know a bit about the photos and will attempt to give you some of the back story and any other little interesting facts I have come across.

Camera 4×5 Speed Graphic

Film Kodak

Lens 127mm

For the first week we have the action packed Labor Strife in Detroit (Ford Strikers Riot) from 1942, the inaugural winner captured by Milton Brooks.

The Speed Graphic by Graflex was the camera used by professionals, ie the press, around the mid 20th Century. They were difficult to use by today’s standards and offered only one shot per six to seven seconds. With this in mind, to get that one shot you needed patience and an instinct unlike anything we are used to with today’s 6fps prosumer digital cameras that can fill your 32GB card in a matter of minutes with hundreds of RAW images. I make this point to emphasise how special these early images are and how true the saying, ‘the decisive moment‘, really is. I also make this point to emphasise the meaning behind Milton Brooks’s nickname, ‘One-shot Milton’. He was known as a master of patience and it is said that he would often make one shot, and then go home.

In Spring of 1941 Brooks, working for The Detroit News, was to be found at the River Rouge – one of Ford’s biggest plants in Detroit. He was covering a strike started after a man was fired on April 3rd. Henry Ford had always insisted that he would close down a plant before dealing with the unions and he held out unlike his competitors, General Motors and Chrysler. A swell of workers walked then line and urged everyone to strike, closing down the 120,000 man plant.

A man was seen arguing with the pickets. He was trying to get past the line. Other photographers moved on looking for more interesting scenes. Brooks, patient as always, waited it out observing the now heated argument. It didn’t take long for the clubs to come out swinging. Brooks took his picture and went on to win the first Pulitzer in the field of photography.