The myth of Robert Capa’s D-Day, as publicly initiated by Capa himself, constitutes a classic example of the form of fraud referred to disdainfully by those in the military as “stolen valor.” […]
The myth of Robert Capa’s D-Day, as publicly initiated by Capa himself, constitutes a classic example of the form of fraud referred to disdainfully by those in the military as “stolen valor.” […] [Editor’s Note: Combat veteran and amateur military historian Charles Herrick’s crucial earlier posts in this series corrected 70 years’ worth of miscaptioning of one of Robert Capa’s ten D-Day photographs from Omaha Beach, and pinpointed the exact location and approximate time at which he landed on the Easy Red sector with a later wave. In […] It appears that Capa was taking a picture in the general direction of LCI(L)-94 at about the same time someone on that LCI was taking a picture while pointing his lens toward Capa. Comparing the two images, we find the same obstacles are visible in both. […] Capa scholarship has ignored completely the other photographic records of the morning of the invasion, neither comparing Capa’s images of the scene with documentation by others nor making any attempt to integrate them into the larger visual narrative of that day on Omaha Beach. […] If, as we are regularly encouraged to do, we pay heed to the lives and works of Robert Capa and John Morris, then, in the spirit of the field of journalism in which they both worked and to which they declared their commitment, we should do so “warts and all.” The fabrication of their D-Day myth has a prominent place among those blemishes. […] |