Recent research has uncovered a treasure: the protocols for annotating and processing incoming films from the photographers assigned by LIFE magazine to cover the D-Day invasion. It is dated May 8, 1944, less than a month before the event. […]
Recent research has uncovered a treasure: the protocols for annotating and processing incoming films from the photographers assigned by LIFE magazine to cover the D-Day invasion. It is dated May 8, 1944, less than a month before the event. […] The challenge consists not so much in proving that Landry did not come ashore on June 6 but in finding evidence that he did land on D-Day. So far, the evidence for a D-Day landing is scant, error-prone, and far from convincing. […] Given the vague, highly generic and often clearly incorrect details of his narratives, it appears that much of LeSueur’s reporting was merely a mishmash of secondhand accounts which he gathered from those who landed before he did, and which he imperfectly incorporated into his own story. […] All this sets the tone for the remainder of CBS broadcast correspondent Larry LeSueur’s narrative. The facts don’t quite seem to match the anecdotes as he reported them, which leads to doubts that he was even present. […] It’s been my unhappy experience to discover that the majority of first-person D-Day stories are to some degree inaccurate. Often this is because the individual experienced such a narrow view of the massive operation that he misinterpreted what he saw. In other cases, it is a result of fading memory or unintentional exaggeration. And then there are the cases in which people alter the facts to enhance their reports or their reputations. […] |