Combat Cameraman

By Sgt. Jerry J. Joswick

OVER THE TARGET…

The movie camera in my hands was ready as we entered our run over the oil fields of Ploesti. Cracking towers, smokestacks, huge oil storage tanks and outbuildings almost scraped the Witch’s belly as we let go the incendiaries.

Through the camera’s lens I saw a B-24 fly into a barrage balloon cable. The plane spun, corkscrewed to the ground and exploded. Beyond, I saw another smash into a smokestack and instantly dissolve into a fireball.

The heat from the storage tank fires turned the Witch into an oven, searing my hair and eyebrows. I swung the camera to see planes crisscrossing, exploding in air, being swallowed up in the raging fires and curling black smoke.

Ahead, four hundred deadly German fighters hovered high overhead—waiting for revenge.…



This is the thrilling story of Sergeant Jerry Joswick, COMBAT CAMERAMAN

Dodging bullets and bombs, he “shot” his way through some of the most savage fighting in World War II, taking memorable pictures of the terrible face of war—

—in Africa, on a commando raid behind Rommel’s lines

—on the disastrous Ploesti air raid, which he was the only cameraman of sixteen to survive

—in the first wave of D-Day on Omaha Beach

—in the Battle of the Bulge, where he traded camera for rifle to stay alive

—parachuting into Germany with the Airborne

Thrills, action, the shock of battle—and the determinate to get the picture, no matter what the danger—make COMBAT CAMERAMAN one of the most thrilling books to come out of the Second World War.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcole Publishing
• Release date: Jul 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781787206830

Book preview

This edition is published by Arcole Publishing – www.pp-publishing.com

To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books – [e-mail]

Or on Facebook

Text originally published in 1961 under the same title.

© Arcole Publishing 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

COMBAT CAMERA MAN

by

Jerry J. Joswick

and

Lawrence A. Keating

With a Foreword by

John D. Craig, Lt.-Col., USAF (Ret.)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 5

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 6

FOREWORD 7

1. Boredom in Cairo 9

2. First Mission 15

3. Self-Made Photographer 23

4. Last Plane Over Palermo 29

5. The Unlucky Days 37

6. Ears, A Prime Minister, and a Houseboat 44

7. Toughest Man in the 9th 50

8. P-40’s Piggy-Back 55

9. The Unsung Carriers 69

10. Rome, and After 75

11. Take-off 82

12. Ploesti 87

13. Getting-Off Place 93

14. That Was Omaha 99

15. Rich Man at Cherbourg 106

16. The Great Blunder 112

17. Camera Plane 117

18. Court Martial 122

19. Capture 130

20. Dogs of War 136

21. One-Jump Paratrooper 142

22. Going Home 147

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 151

DEDICATION

For John David Joswick

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This book is in no way an attempt at a definitive history of World War II, but only the account of one man’s experiences while making a photographic record of battle in Middle Eastern and European skies and on land. Events related here are as accurate as memory and research permit. So as to avoid possible injustice or embarrassment to anyone—which would be wholly inadvertent—a pseudonym has been given to each associate and companion who is below the rank of major on first mention.

JERRY J. JOSWICK

LAWRENCE A. KEATING

FOREWORD

BY Lt.-Col. JOHN D. CRAIG

Commander of the 9th AAF Combat Camera Unit Distinguished adventurer, lecturer and author

I FIRST MET Sergeant Jerry Joswick in Cairo. It was January, 1943, and he had just returned from filming one of our first bombing raids on Naples—the roughest target our B-24’s had struck up to that time. Joswick’s description of the flak, the crew, and the raid convinced me he was dedicated, come what may, to getting the best films of the air war.

He was the first man of the newly activated 9th Combat Camera Unit to fly a combat mission, which he made sound like an adventure...certainly risky but exciting and not without humor. This quality of submerging the sweat, the tears and the shattering dangers involved and stressing the adventure and humor, endeared him to crews and command. His was a morale-building personality.

Joswick’s excellent photography contributed greatly to winning for our 9th CCU the coveted Presidential Unit Citation. He was ready to fly in any kind of aircraft and liked to ride that Purple Heart location, the high, outside left wing ship from which he could best film fighter attacks. He never refused an assignment. The fact that Colonel Killer Kane, C.O. of the famed 98th Heavy Bombardment Group, requested Joswick to fly with him on that fabulous low-level Ploesti raid attests to the esteem with which he was held. All the aerial shots of that historic raid you have ever seen were made by Jerry Joswick, the only cameraman to survive it. That mission won him the Distinguished Flying Cross.

To me, Joswick was Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky in person. He always brought luck to my unit...although he must often have looked with apprehension on the assignments I threw him. During those early days in North Africa the High Command were trying to prove up strategic bombing, and the 98th and 376th Heavy Bombardment Groups were very active. I can recall hours of fear, flak and often failure when Joswick and I were trying to develop featurettes around the Snow White squadron. A lot of those B-24’s were shot down before we could complete their historic film record. On many raids Joswick had to drop his camera and take over a wounded gunner’s post and before long he had several enemy fighter hits to his credit.

When the 9th Air Force moved to England, General Brereton had Joswick transferred with it. I became a major and Joswick groaned, I’ll bet this means a major assignment. He was right; we set out to film the air war during the push on Hitler’s West Wall. Joswick covered airborne operations...glider landings and paratroop drops behind enemy lines. Frequently he had to fly in converted fighter planes and at least once, getting back only on a wing-and-a-prayer, discovered his ejection seat was faulty and he couldn’t have bailed out.

War’s end found Jerry Joswick the most decorated combat cameraman. He returned to Chicago but soon joined me to film the atom bomb tests at Bikini. Later we photographed an expedition to Baja, California, where, one day, making underwater pictures, he got trapped on the ocean floor. Keeping cool, he got out of that trouble, too.

Today as a TV producer and staid family man, I read with pleasure Joswick’s COMBAT CAMERAMAN. His vivid words stir memories of the grim side, the exciting side and the lighter side of our World War II experiences. I wouldn’t want to go through them again but I wouldn’t for anything have missed meeting Sergeant Jerry Joswick and sharing those experiences.

Lots of people claim they live. Joswick certainly does—with the greatest gusto.

1. Boredom in Cairo

WE SAT in Cairo and waited. That was the hard part, not knowing when we would get into action. Nor, for that matter, even knowing for certain if.

Four of us, all cameramen, lived in that swank fourth-floor apartment in the newest part of the city. For a month we had been expecting assignment, as restless as firemen who know that there is a tremendous blaze nearby but are not permitted to help fight it.

The time was late November, 1942, and crisis was in the air. The British and their masses of Commonwealth troops in Egypt had worked frantically all summer to rebuild the divisions smashed the previous spring by Nazi General Erwin Rommel’s battle-toughened Afrika Korps. Far to the west, American troops were hurrying ashore at Casablanca, Oran and Algiers to reinforce our thin line of invaders. Time was previous, for Rommel’s armies looked ominously like victors in the epic struggle for control of all North Africa.

We sat in Cairo and waited.

The days dragged past. The weeks. No order came to begin the work that our Special Photographic Unit had been trained and brought here to do. That was to make the first high-altitude motion pictures of the United States Army Air Force in combat.

The value of such pictures would be threefold: to show pilots and crews the results of their bombing, strafing and aerial fighting so they could increase their effectiveness; for use in the States in training new crews; and to show the American people how their men were fighting the war in the air.

Cliff Kies, a six-foot 200-pounder with limp sandy hair that refused to stay combed, paced up and down our orientally luxurious living room. We represent a new idea, and the brass think it’s a frill. How, they say, can taking movies of actual operations help win the war? So they reject us.

Connie Iverson agreed. Did anyone shoot movies of the battle of Gettysburg? Or of Dewey capturing Manila? If it hasn’t been done, it can’t be any good. That’s how the military mind reasons.

Not every military mind, I said hopefully. General Arnold set up our Unit himself, and he sent a directive that we’re to be used. So maybe some day we will be.

Yes, at least Hap Arnold is for us. But he’s in Washington, and the local C.O. makes the final decisions. He’s responsible for the lives of his men and millions of dollars worth of planes. It’s up to him whether we ever get in the wild blue yonder or keep sitting here twiddling our thumbs.

Walter McGarrie, a sleek-haired New Yorker, said with disgust, At the base today I overheard a shavetail refer to us as ‘those Hollywood guys.’ Bet he thinks we’re here to make comedies with people throwing pies at each other."

None of us smiled. No quip about our inaction held much humor any more; everything had been said over and over. Twice or three times a day we kicked the subject around as to when the brass would put us to use, until all our guesses and hopes were worn thin—and we continued to wait.

Cliff Kies looked at me. Asked the Sphinx lately, Jerry?

It was our running gag, now threadbare like the others, that the Sphinx could tell us when we would see action. I walked across the living room to a south window and stood gazing out. The Egyptian sun was brilliant, and the air so clear that I could see, several miles distant, the Great Sphinx of Gizeh. One of the wonders of the ancient world, an enormous crouching doglike monster with paws thrust out, he guarded the entrance to the rich valley of the Nile. One hundred ninety feet long and carved from solid rock, he had squatted there more than thirty centuries.

The face of the Sphinx is badly worn from blowing sand, and little of his nose remains, yet he managed a knowing expression. Every day I asked him, When? and that was the question I put to him now.

I turned back to the men. He still isn’t talking.

Grumbling, they drifted apart, each to his favorite way of killing time.

Attached to 9th Army Air Force headquarters—its operational fields were scattered outside the city—we found that our per diem maintenance allowance plus non-commissioned officers’ pay yielded us plush living. This in spite of certain outrageous Cairo prices and King Farouk’s high tax on American cigarettes brought in our own ships to be smoked by our own personnel. But local foodstuffs and all services were cheap.

In charge of our ménage was Hussan, a powerful seven footer, a Sudanese who appeared early every morning in red fez, freshly laundered nightgown and slippers, to stay until we dismissed him at night. Hussan took care of everything. He was so dependable that once when I told him to let no one in our apartment while we were gone, he resisted even our landlord—picked up the gentleman and flung him down the stairs.

We were the envy of every GI who knew our way of life and at first could hardly believe our good luck. Hope this lasts forever! we said, and, You mean to tell me this is war? But after a few weeks of sampling Cairo’s best offerings, viewing its sights over and over and romancing with such of its belles as we could manage to meet, all of it—history, night clubs, belles and smells—had palled. Now we were thoroughly bored. And beginning to feel frustrated.

Captain Royal Mattison, leader of our Special Unit, had quarters in Shepheard’s Hotel. In civilian life he had been a crack cameraman for Pathé newsreel. Every day when we visited headquarters we asked Mattison, Any development? He, in turn, kept asking Captain Hank Carbart, aide to General Andrews who was commanding general of the 9th. The answer, if ever we got one, must come from General Andrews. Meanwhile, he was harassed with the million details of building up American bombing strength in this Middle East theater to counter the tidal wave of Nazi conquest.

So we waited.

We invented pastime chores, such as making footage at the nearest air fields, to be shown Stateside to encourage Air Force enlistments. As a Christmas remembrance to the folks back home we filmed half a dozen newly arrived Red Cross girls and a dozen GI’s riding camels and in jeeps to visit the imperturbable Sphinx. We busied ourselves setting up a laboratory at Cairo headquarters to develop and splice our film. Need a zinc tank 24 by 30 inches? Captain Carbart, a scrounger from ‘way back, produced it as easily as a magician finds a cigar in your ear. Meanwhile, we knew Hank Carbart was at work on our problem, slipping a reminder to the General whenever he got a chance. But of course everything in the Army is hurry-up-and-wait.

The shooting war was close. Your atlas map of North Africa shows Egypt’s second city, Alexandria, not far from Cairo. Seventy miles west of Alexandria is El Alamein on the Mediterranean, which Rommel, the Desert Fox, had captured for the second time five months before. He had also taken Tobruk and 25,000 English prisoners.

Lately, after a feverish build-up of divisions and replacing of matériel, Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery and his British 8th Army had begun to roll to try to win back some of that coast. A month ago, far to the west, Americans had landed. Their nearest outpost was all the way across Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and half of Algeria. So long as the Germans, with Italian help, held all strategic points in that long stretch separating the Allies, they had a good chance of driving us out of North Africa. I don’t know about the Libyans and others, but many Egyptians hoped this would happen. If it did, the backbone of Allied resistance would be broken.

We of the Special Photographic Unit waited to be used. Boredom and being 19 years old made some crazy things happen, and I’m not proud that I caused one of the zaniest.

One afternoon I lounged on our balcony watching the colorful scene in the square below. Peddlers moved about hawking cigarettes, oranges and toys. Men and women stood gossiping or shuffled along on errands. Children played in the sun. Across the square from me a white-helmeted policeman directed horse-and camel-drawn vehicle traffic, and an occasional double-jointed trolley car banged past.

Feeling pressure in my trousers pocket, I worked out my fat roll of paper money and began idly to count it. A one-piastre note slipped from my fingers and between bars of the iron railing and floated toward the street.

The bit of paper in mid-air caught an orange-peddler’s eye. As currents wafted it this way and that, curious, he followed it until he could grab it. When he realized that it was money he let out a yell, glanced up, spotted me on the fourth floor balcony as the undoubted source and gestured for me to toss down some more.

Why not? I reflected. To me a piastre was only a nickel, but to an Arab it might be a half-day’s income. So I dropped another note. Half a dozen hands grabbed for it, and there was a brief tussle. This attracted more people. Word passed and still others came running. Now a small forest of hands beckoned: drop more!

Chuckling, I did. Watchers vanished from windows in nearby flats. They rushed out their doorways and ran to share the pennies from heaven. Passers-by on the street noticed the crowd and went to join it. Hearing the noise, Cliff Kies came out on the balcony.

What’s up, Jerry?

I showed him by dropping another piastre. He laughed and went indoors for a fistful of money. As we took turns dropping notes, the swelling crowd pushed and battled to seize them. The traffic cop left his post to investigate and, passing too close to an ill-tempered camel, received a kick that sent him sprawling.

Now two or three hundred people down there were clamoring for money, and we felt obligated to drop it. Suddenly over on the street two trucks roared up and halted. Police carrying riot guns jumped out. Deploying into line, they rushed the yelling, milling mob. But their efforts to stop the disturbance only partly succeeded because several of the cops decided to abandon duty and try for some of that cash.

Cliff and I were convulsed. We hardly had strength to toss more piastres, and still more, off the balcony. Until Hussan burst out the door, his face gray. Masters! Secret Police, masters. They here!

Three tough plain-clothes men brushed past him. One, in crude English, demanded to know what we thought we were doing? He snapped that we were under arrest.

Cliff Kies and I exchanged looks. Slowly we stuffed what money remained back in our pockets. Maybe, Cliff said, this isn’t so funny as we thought.

I nodded, feeling a sudden rush of guilt. I explained to the Secret Police how the riot had started and said I was sorry. They glared at us, hate plain in their faces. They jabbered together, then two stayed to guard us while the third hurried out of the apartment. He came back presently with a couple of burly Military Police, who took us over from the grim-faced Egyptians.

At M.P. headquarters they gave us a rough time. Some of the questions—like You guys trying to disgrace the uniform?—were not easy to answer. At last, after a sharp lecture about mending our ways, they turned us loose.

Another incident happened one evening when, hurrying to keep a dinner date, I climbed into a gerry and told the whiskered driver, Metropole Hotel. A gerry is a four-wheeled carriage. Whiskers touched his long whip to his starved-looking nag, and we jogged on our way.

After two or three miles I wondered if he had misunderstood where I wanted to go, for we were entering an old part of Cairo. Buildings looked cracked and neglected, many of them empty. There were more beggars per block, and all the shops were poor. It was just dark, and few street lamps seemed to function.

I leaned forward. Jehu, it is the wrong direction. Turn around, please. Take me back.

He pretended not to hear. I said it louder. When he ignored that, I grabbed his shoulder and made very clear what I wanted. He gave me a black look and wrenching loose, stood up and larruped his old nag to a gallop.

Take me back! But he only urged his horse faster.

It was plain that he hoped to