Back into Focus: The Real Story of Robert Capa's D-Day

Introduction

If you didn’t get the picture at the exact instant, you kept the meaning in mind, and you faked the picture, or reframed it. . .. I was enough of a journalist to realize that you invent a good picture. I was the pioneer of the made-up picture. The faked, invented picture.

david scherman—capa’s fellow life photographer during

the normandy invasion

There is something wrong with the values of a journalistic world that accepts as an important image a photograph that so clearly depends on the caption for its authentication.

phillip knightly—observation while questioning

the authenticity of capa’s iconic falling soldier photo

Any effort to trace the activities of Robert Capa is at least partially an exercise in futility. So much of his legend is, well, a legend, that pinning down verifiable facts is difficult. The persona of Robert Capa was itself fabricated, an invention of Endre Friedmann and his girlfriend who hoped the idea of a mysterious, rich American at the head of their photo agency would bring credibility and boost sales. Having invented this character, young Endre soon stepped forward and assumed the identity of his fictional boss: Robert Capa. Capa burst onto the international stage with sensational images taken as he covered the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War. Though he billed himself as a photojournalist, he was at least as much partisan propagandist, and there is ample evidence that some of his photos of that conflict, to include some of his most famous, were staged events that he passed off as genuine combat actions. Whether one merely considers this aggressive self-promotion and creative marketing, or one recoils at the ethical implications, it set the tone for his subsequent career. With Capa one is never quite sure where the facts ended and the façade began; where the truth withered away, and the legend flourished.

The Past as Prologue

The most famous photo of Capa’s early career purported to capture the moment a Spanish Republican soldier was shot as he advanced under fire—the Falling Soldier photo—and was published in the 23 September 1936 issue of the French Vu magazine. Capa was just 22 at the time and on his first assignment as a war photographer. Superficially, it was a powerful image, seemingly confronting the reader with death the moment it occurred. Or at least it might have been, except for the fact that when Vu published that photo, it also published another Capa photo showing a second soldier apparently being shot at precisely the same spot, with identical framing and almost identical pose as the original casualty. The two photos appeared to have been taken just moments apart. Despite this obvious evidence of staging, Vu’s caption faithfully presented them as actual combat scenes, using language that was flowery, almost romantic. Still, with the two pictures published side-by-side, alert readers could draw their own conclusions regarding authenticity.

The Falling Soldier next appeared the following summer in Life magazine. This time it was published without the second photo, so American readers were not privy to evidence that the photo was perhaps not what it seemed. The photo, and the purported context, were widely and uncritically accepted at face value, and became embedded in popular culture. To some familiar with combat, however, the image always rang false; photographers are almost never ahead of troops advancing under fire. In fact, such positioning of a photographer relative to his subject in combat is virtually always an indication of a staged shot. Nevertheless, the image quickly became celebrated both as powerful symbol of the cause of the Republican forces and as a great achievement in the photographic arts. The 3 December 1938 edition of Picture Post went so far as to proclaim him the Greatest War Photographer in the World.

Capa gave interviews discussing the circumstances of the Falling Soldier in 1937 (shortly after the Life spread) and in 1947. In both interviews he gave detailed—if not entirely consistent—descriptions of the combat action leading to the picture, going so far as to claim he remained pinned down under fire until dark, when he was finally able to crawl to safety. In neither interview did he mention the photo of the second soldier’s death. More significantly, in his second interview he claimed that he merely aimed his camera blindly, holding it above his head over the edge of the trench, and snapped the photo without seeing the action. It was pure luck that supposedly accounted for the famous picture. On its face this is ludicrous. It is even more so when we consider the second photo with identical framing showing the death of the second soldier. Identical framing showing two different men getting shot, in nearly identical poses, at the precisely same spot, just minutes apart? With a camera blindly aimed and shutter blindly activated? It simply is not credible.

As a result of these questions, an element of controversy has hovered over the Falling Soldier, with a number of authorities questioning its authenticity. Capa partisans, however, remained loyal. To maintain the authenticity of the Falling Soldier photo, a theory was advanced that acknowledged, yes, Capa was staging some shots, but while staging those shots, a real sniper just happened to really shoot one of the actors (in the exact same spot and in the same pose as the second unwounded actor’s feigned death), and it was this coincidental, actual shooting that Capa captured in the Falling Soldier photo. Various experts were put forward to bolster the authenticity of the Falling Soldier, going so far as to even point to the pose of the soldier’s hand as proof that he was truly shot.¹ Seldom has the photographic community been so eager to see a man killed.

This die-hard loyalty to an untenable position was made even more unreasonable by the revelation that on another occasion, Capa and his girlfriend worked with the Chapaiev Battalion’s communist political commissar to film a mock attack arranged by the latter.² It, too, was passed off as actual combat, but his apologists excused it as probably being a recreation of an actual attack. The simple fact is that Capa was a propagandist working to advance the cause of the Republican forces. Staging scenes was part and parcel of his craft, as was misrepresenting them as genuine events.

Other Capa loyalists, unable to maintain the fiction that the photo was not staged, resorted to rationalization. While acknowledging the possibility or even likelihood of fakery, they claimed that the photo nevertheless was very good as a symbol of a moment in our history and of our conscience or its symbol and message are authentic. In other words, these apologists hold that a lie that has emotional impact—especially one which supports their political bias—is not only morally acceptable but can be proclaimed a great artistic achievement. Richard Whelan, Capa’s adoring biographer and eventual guardian of the Capa archives, dismissed questions about the fakery as both morbid and trivializing, insisting instead that the significance of the picture was symbolic, not in its literal accuracy as a report on the death of a particular man.³ But if that is valid, what does it do to Capa’s claim to being the Greatest War Photographer in the World if he merely captured staged scenes in a safe area? And does that not reduce his work to mere crass propaganda? The ethical implications are stark.

The debate over authenticity of the Falling Soldier was decided in 2009 when José Manuel Susperregui, Professor, University of the Basque Country, proved that this set of photos was actually taken near Espejo, which is some 30 miles from the Cerro Muriano location Whelan concluded was the site of the action.⁴ This difference indisputably revealed Capa’s Falling Soldier and the other shots in that set as staged fakes. On the date Capa took his photos in late August 1936, Espejo was at least 15 miles behind the lines. Fighting was indeed taking place in the vicinity of Cerro Muriano at that time, which is why the photos were falsely attributed to that location, but there was no combat at Espejo on that date. Combat eventually did reach Espejo later (on 22 and 26 September 1936), but this was three weeks after Capa took his photos, and, coincidentally, was almost simultaneous with their publication in Vu.

This should give the historian pause. Capa’s first spectacular photo, taken on his very first combat assignment at the tender age of 22, has proven to be a fake. Not only was his photo a fake, but the derived persona of frontline cameraman bravely snapping shots while pinned down has been proven to be built on a false foundation as well. But it would take 73 years to reveal the fraud.

If Capa learned anything from his Spanish Civil War experience, it was that his fictional accounts would be accepted at face value by publications and public alike.

Concluding his analysis of Capa’s Falling Soldier photo, Susperregui stated:

Finally, the results of this study call for a revision of historical research on Robert Capa that is based on Falling Soldier. His archives, including 70,000 negatives mostly related to the five wars he covered, deserve to be treated with as much rigor as possible in order to deepen and improve knowledge of his work.

And that is precisely the intent of this book. To apply that same rigor to Capa’s D-Day photos and the descriptions of the events surrounding them which he himself provided.

D-Day: The Sixth of June

As a result of the foregoing, the wise analyst must rigorously examine Capa’s combat photos before accepting their authenticity or accuracy. The tactic of misrepresenting the context of his photos had proven a success at his very first outing, and there is no reason to believe he suddenly mended his ways thereafter. It should be remembered that it was just seven years and 10 months between Capa’s faked Falling Soldier and his D-Day photos.

This current exploration does not question whether Capa’s D-Day photos were staged in a safe area, as was the case with the Falling Soldier. Clearly his Omaha Beach photos were taken on that dreaded beach and were taken on 6 June 1944. Rather, the focus is to examine various aspects of their purported context to determine whether they have been presented to the public accurately. In addition to examining precise location, exact time and combat conditions at the moment his photos were snapped, this work will also examine his actions and movements from the time he was alerted in London on 29 May 1944 until he returned to Portland Harbor on 7 June.

But separating the Capa legend from the facts is always a difficult task, and that is never truer than when it comes to his D-Day photos. The difficulty stems in no small part from his own quasi-autobiography—Slightly out of Focus (1947)—which he initially penned with hopes of a screenplay. To put it mildly, many of the events he related smack of hype, exaggeration or outright fabrication.

As just one example of the latter we turn to that memoir’s account of his role in the invasion of Sicily (July 1943).⁵ Capa claimed he rode with the first night’s paratrooper drop (the night of 9/10 July) as a non-jumping photographer, then parachuted behind enemy lines in Sicily with the reinforcing echelon of paratroopers on the third night of the invasion (11/12 July). He then claimed he spent four days isolated behind enemy lines, blowing up little bridges before linking up with an American unit. The reality was far different. Even Richard Whelan, Capa’s staunch defender, had to admit that the Sicily passages were "the most heavily fictionalized section of Slightly out of Focus."⁶

The actual events were far less glamorous. When he arrived in Tunisia, Capa had wrangled accreditation with a US Army Air Forces troop carrier unit that was slated to drop the paratroopers;⁷ he was not accredited to the paratroopers. He did not fly at all on the initial invasion drop, despite his claim to have ridden along as a non-jumping photographer that night. It was only on the subsequent drop of reinforcements two days later that he conducted his picture-taking jaunt; and instead of jumping, returned to Tunisia on the aircraft. He did not jump at any time during the Sicilian campaign. As he described the excursion in a letter to a friend, I jumped at the chance—and fortunately not out of the plane.⁸

The truly amazing part of this tall tale is that by the time Slightly out of Focus was published, the world had known for three years how he arrived in Sicily, but critics chose to accept the fabricated version anyhow. Capa landed in Sicily accompanying the Air Force troop carrier unit’s ground echelon, which arrived by means of a Landing Ship, Tank (LST) at the port of Licata at least 10 days after the invasion began. In fact, this actual seaborne trip to Sicily was documented in the Sicily Campaign story, which was published by Illustrated magazine in its 13 May 1944 issue as a prelude to the Normandy invasion.

And this is far from the sole instance in which Capa’s fanciful narrative ignores even the evidence of his own photos. At the surrender of Palermo, he claimed to have served as the official interpreter between the American and Italian generals. Yet his photos (The Surrender of Palermo, in Life’s 23 August 1943 issue) show he was far too busy moving about and snapping pictures, while also showing an Italian who was interpreting for the generals.⁹

That kind of wild invention might be the norm for Hollywood screenplays that are inspired by true events, but it hardly makes a sound foundation for historical inquiry. Capa himself made no pretense that his quasi-autobiography was constrained by the truth. The dustjacket of the original edition of Slightly out of Focus included this caution to the reader:

Writing the truth being obviously so difficult, I have in the interests of it allowed myself to go sometimes slightly beyond and slightly this side of it. All events and persons in the book are accidental and have something to do with the truth.

That was a good hint that not everything in the book should be considered factual. Subsequent editions did not include a dustjacket, however, and many readers never saw that warning.¹⁰ As a result, far too many readers, critics and even some historians have chosen to accept Capa’s tales as gospel. Perhaps it is a testament to our cultural need to believe tall tales that accounts for his fabrications surviving and even flourishing despite his own pictorial evidence that proves them false.

Hyped or not, his accounts of events have often seemed to be the only evidence as to what may, or may not, have happened. As a further complication, many of the Capa anecdotes have come to us through third persons whom Capa regaled with his exploits in social settings. The variance in details suggests such accounts may have been exaggerated by alcohol when told by Capa, or confused in the retelling by his audience. In one derivative account, he accompanied Patton’s end-run amphibious landings on the north coast of Sicily (he did not). In another hand-me-down account,¹¹ on 6 June 1944 his ship sank, and he swam for 45 minutes before being fished out of the water (also false). In a sketch outline for a screenplay by Robert Wise, Capa not only landed with the first wave of troops on Omaha Beach, but charged ahead of them on the beach, placing himself in the crossfire between German defenders and attacking American invaders just to get good shots of the advancing troops.¹² In this manner, Capa was fancifully placed so far up the beach that he was literally the lead man of the invasion (also, clearly, false).¹³ War stories, like fish tales, do not improve with time, retelling or alcohol.

Capa’s D-Day fame can largely be attributed to the fact that he apparently was the only press photographer to actually land on Omaha Beach during the first few hours of the invasion (at least one military photographer landed on Omaha Beach almost an hour before Capa). As a result, five of his photos are among the few pictures of the early landings from the perspective of the GI on the beach. Regardless of the artistic and technical merits of his photography—or lack thereof—if a newspaper or author needed a picture of early conditions on the invasion beach, there were few choices, and Robert Capa’s images had been heavily promoted by Life magazine. His photos became iconic not so much through merit as by default. There simply was no other widely known source.

Figure 1. The International Center of Photography digitally recreated this contact sheet from the surviving images of Capa’s negatives at the request of A. D. Coleman. (Robert Capa © ICP/Magnum Photos)

And yet, his few pictures perfectly illustrate the frustration with the Capa legacy. We cannot even agree how many photos he took. In Capa’s own memoir he said he exposed two rolls of 35mm film on the beach (72–76 images), but two pages later said he took 106 pictures when discussing that film. In a D+3 interview with Life’s Charles Wertenbaker, the number was 79 of the fighting on the beach; yet in the same interview, Capa said he spent an hour and a half before he used up all his film, which would seem to imply more pictures than that. Richard Whelan (Capa’s authorized biographer) put it at 72 during the landing, which is close enough to Capa’s two rolls. Complicating this accounting, Capa took 60 pictures in 120 format with his Rolleiflex camera after he boarded a landing craft to leave the beach; these are sometimes conflated with the beach film to totally confuse matters.

The Darkroom Accident Fable

At the risk of jumping ahead of the story, it is necessary to provide some context now on a topic that will be covered in more detail in a later chapter. When Capa’s D-Day film was sent off to Life’s New York offices, on D+2, there were just 10 images from his time on the beach. That was a pitifully small number, all things considered, and explanations were sought. Life’s home office was initially under the impression that seawater had ruined most of the film, and implied that in the 19 June 1944 issue that carried Capa’s D-Day photo spread. Apparently, this conclusion was based on a cryptic comment Capa penciled in on a page of caption notes that said, "Film like everything got wett [sic] by landing."

The explanation had changed after Capa returned to London during the last half of July. There he supposedly learned that an accident in the darkroom at Life’s London office had ruined 90 percent of his film. Three years later he included this explanation in Slightly out of Focus, going on to add that an excited darkroom assistant had turned the heat too high in the drying cabinet, causing the emulsion to run on most of the film, thereby ruining all but eight of 106 images. The fact that his claim of 96 ruined images was directly contradicted two pages earlier by his claim that he exposed just two rolls (72–76 exposures) on the beach seems to have been lost on most readers. But with publication of that book, the Darkroom Accident fable became canon and the accepted explanation for the small number of photos.

After Capa’s death in 1954, the Darkroom Accident fable became the sole property of John Morris, who, as Life’s London photo editor on D-Day, was Capa’s boss and the man who the darkroom worked for. There is no record of any statement by any of the other darkroom employees, and Morris’s telling and retelling of the events were the only source for additional details. And he included many more details, weaving a dramatic story of a race against the clock to meet the next deadline. As the only surviving member of the events at Life’s London office, Morris gave a seemingly endless series of interviews in later years, to the point that his narrative has all but eclipsed Capa’s.

Just how many surviving images from the beach were there (i.e., excluding the 120 format film exposed after he left the beach)? As noted above, Capa claimed only eight were salvaged. Wertenbaker’s account claimed only seven survived. The International Center for Photography has in its files a digitally recreated contact sheet which purports to contain all Capa’s surviving negatives (Figure 1); it has nine exposures. In addition to these nine, there is the famous Face in the Surf picture which, although the original negative is missing (and not included in the digitally recreated contact sheet), was part of Capa’s photo spread published by Life on 19 June 1944 and has been reproduced countless times since. In addition to these, John Morris, the standard bearer of the Darkroom Accident story, claimed there was an eleventh negative that was not worth printing, but that negative seems to have been lost—if it ever existed in the first place. Whelan, apparently believing Morris, also claimed 11. Despite no evidence of an eleventh image, the photos have somehow become popularly known as the Magnificent Eleven.

And that’s our challenge in a nutshell. They are the most famous photos of D-Day, yet we cannot even agree how many were snapped or how many of them survived the darkroom. If these details are so hopelessly muddled, one can easily imagine how difficult it is to verify less-central aspects of Capa’s D-Day legend.

Then things took a dramatic turn. The combined efforts of A. D. Coleman, J. Ross Baughman, Rob McElroy and Tristan da Cunha definitively debunked this Darkroom Accident story; the scenario described by Capa and Morris simply could not have produced the kind of film damage that supposedly resulted in the loss of so many pictures.¹⁴ Seventy years of intricately woven narrative had been dismantled. Which then raised the obvious questions: if the bulk of his film was not in fact ruined by inept developing, then what really happened to those missing images? Or were those few surviving photos all that Capa managed to take on D-Day?

All of which poses a problem for an attempt to trace Capa’s actions that day. It is only prudent to approach Capa’s own accounts with at least a moderate measure of skepticism. Yet the paucity of corroborating accounts can make it difficult to verify or contradict parts of his tales. Fortunately, there is enough data on D-Day in general (if not Capa in particular) that with a little digging, we can shed some light on the matter. Further, for reasons we’ll explore later, Capa happened to land at a point on Omaha Beach that saw an unusual convergence of photographers. By carefully comparing their products with Capa’s anecdotes, we can draw some useful conclusions.

Capa vs Capa

The two basic versions of Capa’s D-Day experiences come from Capa himself. Unfortunately, they are so different in detail that they confuse more than they clarify. The first version comes from an interview he gave fellow Time and Life reporter Charles Wertenbaker on Omaha Beach on D+3 (9 June). It is a terse, barebones account.* The entire experience—from arriving off Omaha Beach on his attack transport to his return to England the next day—is covered in just three paragraphs spanning not quite two pages.¹⁵ The simple, direct narrative coupled with the proximity to the actual events makes for a deceptively convincing read. The dearth of details, however, makes it most unsatisfactory for a historian. Worse, many of the passages are plainly incorrect. This account has generally been lost to oblivion, overshadowed by his second, more widely circulated version.

As noted above, in 1947 he penned his memoirs—Slightly out of Focus—hoping to have them made into a movie. In this book, the details of his life were heavily embellished, and his story of D-Day was no exception. The two-page narrative had grown to seven pages.¹⁶ Picturesque but unverifiable anecdotes involving new characters were added. (One of those characters penned a detailed account of his own adventures that day but made no mention of encountering the world-famous Capa.) Capa’s description of the scene on the beach became far bloodier and more gruesome. The number of pictures he supposedly took grew from 79 (the tally cited in the Wertenbaker interview) to 106. Even his mutterings to himself while under fire had morphed into much more picturesque language.

In his original 1944 version, Capa made no mention of where he was slotted in the landing sequence, but he gave a boarding time for his landing craft (0600 hours) that would have placed him roughly in Wave 13 or 15. In the 1947 version he claimed to have landed with Co. E in the first wave. In this later version, he quietly omitted what time he departed his transport, merely claiming they assembled on deck in the dark at 0400 hours and left the reader to assume he departed shortly thereafter.

Complicating matters greatly are the two books by Capa biographer Richard Whelan (Robert Capa, 1985, and This Is War!: Robert Capa at Work, 2007). Whelan was well aware of Capa’s habit of sacrificing truth for the sake of a good story, and although he frequently pointed out Capa’s digressions when he recognized them, he remained a loyal advocate for the core of the Capa mythology. His later book, This Is War!, served as a follow-up to the first and amplification of Capa’s wartime work using extensive additional research. Unfortunately, that additional research often turned up more details which called Capa’s accounts into question. As a result, Whelan was forced to invent increasingly unbelievable scenarios to make sense of the contradictory data. This is especially true for D-Day, as Whelan had to invent a convoluted sequence of events involving Capa landing not once, but twice, on Omaha Beach that morning.

All of this poses a challenge for those hoping to piece together a truthful version of events. The scale of differences is so marked that choosing between versions is extremely difficult. One cannot even place blind faith in the original, terse version, as its description of when and where he took photos does not match the surviving photos themselves.

The best we can do is to use his versions only as uncertain guides, doubtful trail makers which we must then try to either confirm or disprove at every step. In some few instances, there are points of congruity between the versions, and we can grant those greater credibility. But not much.

Life and Editorial Spin

Not all the blame for the hype and exaggeration of Capa’s D-Day legend can be attributed to Capa himself. As with all the major press outlets, management at Life worked hard to push the brand and to convince its readers they had the best reporters, the best photographers and, as a result, best coverage. As always, circulation was the goal.

The Army had specific plans for Capa, as documented in the detailed landing tables which were part of the operation’s plan: he would be one of two press photographers riding in with an infantry unit, with one photographer arriving in Wave 13 and the other in Wave 15.¹⁷ But that order was a closely guarded secret. When Capa was whisked away from his London flat and dropped into a pre-invasion marshalling camp, he had no idea which unit he would accompany, much less where in the landing sequence he would be fitted. None of his bosses in London were supposed to know either and, apparently, they did not. According to Slightly out of Focus, it was only after he had embarked on his assault transport and that ship was actually en route to Normandy that Capa supposedly chose to land in the first wave.¹⁸ Even if this anecdote were true, it would have been a decision his superiors in London could not possibly have known, as he had been cut off from them for a week at that point. And the London office would be kept in the dark for days to come. When Capa sent his film back to London the day after the landings, he included no caption notes for his D-Day film rolls and only the scantiest message indicating which rolls of film contained the action. Nothing else.

As a result, when Life editors in London or New York composed captions for his beach photos, they had little idea when or where he was supposed to have landed, and absolutely no idea when or where he did land. So, they guessed.

Those editorial guesses loyally hyped the company image. They placed their photographer in the first wave of the invasion. Good marketing; questionable ethics.

So, the origin of at least part of the Capa D-Day myth would seem to lie at the feet of others. Of course, Life’s little white lie perfectly fit Capa’s own carefully cultivated persona of the Greatest War Photographer in the World. He subsequently not only embraced the marketing lie, but he also expanded on it in his later retellings of the event.

These are important points. Any effort to honestly determine the facts of Capa’s D-Day adventure is invariably met with charges of revisionist history. Such charges fail for the obvious reason that there is no history to revise. Instead, we have corporate spin and a memoir that Capa himself admitted wasn’t constrained by truth, rather was intended to lead to a Hollywood screenplay. There is no sin—but much virtue—in deconstructing illusions of this sort. In fact, these circumstances all but demand a dispassionate examination of the facts.

Legacy or Legend

Since his premature death in 1954, Capa has been elevated in popular esteem to almost saint-like status. Partially this is due to the understandable tendency to excessively emphasize the positive attributes of one who has died before his time. In a similar vein, there is a natural reluctance not to speak ill of the dead, so there has been remarkably little interest in closely scrutinizing the fanciful aspects of Slightly out of Focus. In this factual void, succeeding generations have had little option but to accept those fables as true, no matter how dubious they seem. As John Hersey concluded in his review of Slightly out of Focus, The text is just the inventor’s invention about himself.¹⁹ The man had indeed become the myth.

And it is an endearing myth. Capa was a charming man and a raconteur of the first order. Sociable, entertaining, even lovable. He was also an inveterate gambler, an excessive drinker, a womanizer, and, judging from his memoir, not a particularly truthful person. In short, he was a lovable rogue, the kind of person you know has serious flaws, but you choose to ignore them because you just can’t help yourself from being swept up by the legend.

And that is a problem. When a man’s legacy has become little more than a self-generated series of romanticized and fanciful anecdotes, how should history treat it? Is there an obligation to protect a legacy that includes so very much that is false? Or is there an obligation to winnow out the facts and judge that man by his actual accomplishments? And if we succeed in doing this, are we prepared to face the man that may be revealed?

Once the Capa legend is stripped away from the Capa legacy, we are mostly left with his photographic record. And here too we encounter a quandary. The hard truth which many wish to ignore is that Capa’s photos are not especially technically good. Nor did he pretend they were. As he told Leon Danielle, The main thing is to get the right mood and feeling. Technique is not important.²⁰

But even this raises problems. What is the right mood and feeling? Who decides what is right? Why not choose the accurate or factual mood and feeling? Are faked but apparently powerful photos more to be prized because they convey someone’s opinion of the right mood and feeling? Do photos that are presented in a false or misleading context—thereby setting a false mood and feeling—constitute great photography? Or is it merely the sly contextual packaging of the photos that elevates (but distorts) the value of the pictures? Capa has been lauded as the one honest photographer of his generation, but how can this be, knowing as we do of his history of faking pictures? How is honesty being defined? Capa primarily was a photographer for news magazines, and the readers of that medium expected to see pictures of actual events, to see a moment of truth frozen in time. But is that what they got?

And that’s the rub, where the interests of historian and photojournalist conflict. The historian is not interested in protecting a legacy. He is interested first in factual details, from which conclusions may then be drawn. The photojournalist, especially one using the art to further political ideas, is more concerned with creating an emotional response, whether grounded in truth or not.

Bare Bones

In very rough outline, the Capa legend had him arriving in the invasion area on the attack transport USS Samuel Chase. He landed with troops of the 16th Regimental Combat Team (RCT) on Omaha Beach, most likely on the Easy Red sector. After spending an undetermined period on the beach taking an undetermined number of photos (both are confused by conflicting claims), he fled to a Landing Craft, Infantry (LCI), which had beached nearby. From there he was taken back to the same USS Samuel Chase and arrived back in the UK early on 7 June. He sent his film by courier to Life’s London offices and took a ship back to Omaha Beach. And, as noted above, according to legend all but a few of his pictures were ruined during the developing process.

Now, let’s see if we can determine what really happened.

*Wertenbaker had just become the head of the Time/Life’s London office. He spent D-Day offshore aboard the US First Army’s command ship the USS Achernar (AKA-53).

Part I

To the Normandy Coast

Writing the truth being obviously so difficult, I have in the interests of it allowed myself to go sometimes slightly beyond and slightly this side of it. All events and persons in the book are accidental and have something to do with the truth.

robert capa, from the dustjacket of the original edition of

slightly out of focus

I like the truth sometimes, but I don’t care enough for it to hanker after it.

mark twain

Chapter one

A Change of Scenery

"When you’re in the fighting you don’t go where there’s fire, but you go where

there’s pictures."

robert capa’s advice to soldiers of the 165th signal

photo company before d-day

As 1944 began, Capa was stuck in Italy, and he was none too happy about it. He had both personal and professional reasons to leave Italy and return to London. On the personal side, he hadn’t seen his girlfriend, Elaine Parker, since the previous June. She worked in the Office of War Information in London, and while technically still married and still sharing quarters with her husband, she seemed to have a free-ranging social life that included Capa on a semi-serious basis and other men on a casual basis. Capa could not write to Pinky (the nickname was due to her hair color) at her home address due to the husband, so his letters were sent to the Time/Life office in London, where Elizabeth Crockett (Crocky), who was one of the staff and a friend of Capa’s, held the letters for Pinky to pick up. The last time he’d seen Pinky was during a brief stay in London, but that interlude lasted just a couple of weeks. Whether either Capa or Pinky were truly in love with the other is open to question, as both appeared to treat the relationship as something of a game. But Capa longed to see his Pinky again, if for no other reason to find out if she really was interested in being his.

On the professional side of things, Italy was proving to be something of a dead end, bordering on a stalemate. Allied lines had been stopped dead north of Naples. Terrain, mud, cold and tenacious German defenses hampered Allied attacks and resulted in tactical defeats and high casualties. To break this stalemate, the Allies decided to make an amphibious end run farther up the Italian peninsula at Anzio to turn the German defenses.

There are two versions describing how Capa became involved with this landing, his own version naturally sounding much more heroic.¹ In his autobiography, he gave a rather embellished summary of his just-completed five months at the front, which ended at his arrival back in Naples preparing to leave for the United Kingdom. While Capa packed for departure to the UK, Bill Lang (the head of the Naples Time/Life bureau) pointed out the mass of amphibious shipping in the harbor. Something was up. Despite his fatigue and war weariness, Capa couldn’t resist an opportunity to be part of an amphibious invasion. Can I still get in on the show? he claimed he asked Lang.

But even Whelan saw through this façade.² The fact is that upon arrival in Naples, he found that the Fifth Army Public Relations Office had already slotted him for the invasion. He was shanghaied, not a volunteer. Much to his dismay and against his wishes, Capa would be covering the same Ranger units he had briefly visited a few months earlier. He frankly dreaded the prospect. William Stoneman (Chicago Daily News) was also tagged with the job, and stated both he and Capa were scared to death at the news. He also stated that Capa’s first reaction was to procure a case of Spanish brandy to fortify his courage on the trip.

The amphibious assault took place on 22 January 1944. The first waves landed unopposed at 0200 hours; Capa claimed he boarded his landing craft at midnight, implying he landed in the early waves. The truth was once again a bit different. Capa didn’t step ashore until after daybreak. The excuse was that he couldn’t take pictures in the dark. While true, the corollary was that by the time he did land (a time much in doubt), the action had moved far inland, and he was in no position to capture it in the daylight. Although Life used his photos from the operation, they were the still picture equivalent of B-roll images. Generic shots of rear area activity. Things ashore would soon change. The Germans reacted swiftly, and cautious efforts to expand the beachhead over the next week met increasing resistance, with indications of a powerful German counterattack soon. A major attack to break out of the beachhead made some gains, but was defeated, and resulted in the loss of two Ranger battalions on top of other casualties. Capa’s narrative of his time in Anzio is so sketchy and sparse that he didn’t even take notice of the disaster suffered by his purported friends in the Rangers.

With stalemate at every turn in Italy in general, and Anzio in particular, combat in the soft underbelly of Europe held little interest for Capa.

On the other hand, Great Britain was quite another story. It was apparent to everyone that the long anticipated cross-Channel assault had to happen soon. Both Eisenhower and Montgomery left the Mediterranean Theater for London that very January, so it was obvious that the vast quantities of men and materiel which had been amassed in the United Kingdom were going to be put to lethal use soon. Allies and Axis alike knew invasion was coming and the suspense was such that people on both sides just wanted to get it over with. The only questions were when and where.

This prospect offered Capa much better opportunities to ply his trade and beckoned him strongly. The prospect of a cross-Channel attack posed the additional lure of a faster return to his beloved France, most especially Paris. And then there was the not inconsiderable fact that while biding his time in London, Capa would enjoy a far more luxurious lifestyle than Anzio could offer, especially with Pinky close at hand.

And so Capa looked to end his isolation on the increasingly besieged Anzio beachhead.

Homecoming

As if on cue, deliverance appeared. Capa claimed he received a message from a friend in the Army Air Corps IX Troop Carrier Command (transport airplanes) informing him that the unit was being transferred to London, and his friend had a plane waiting for Capa in Naples. With this invitation in hand, and with no apparent regard for the necessity of receiving either Fifth Army or Time/Life authorization, Capa claimed he managed to leave the beachhead at the end of February (1944) on a hospital ship headed for Naples.³

Almost everything in that was an exaggeration. In fact, Capa wasted little time extricating himself from Anzio. A 3 February 1944 cable from Capa shows he had already received travel orders to go to London and was preparing to leave as soon as possible. Four days later, John Morris (the Life photo editor in London) cabled New York that Capa advised he is expecting to arrive here by the 15th, but I hear he’s at the Anzio beachhead and I don’t see how he will make it.⁴ He did leave the beachhead, and did so long before the end of February, as evidenced by the fact that on 10 February 1944 he flew from Naples to Algiers, meaning he left Anzio at least several days previously.⁵ He hadn’t even been in the beachhead two weeks. From Naples he still had to get to London. A 13 February 1944 letter from Allied Force Headquarters Public Relations Branch to the British Consul in Algiers, which sought the Consul’s endorsement, stated Capa’s trip to London was urgent, so we can assume he left Algiers en route to London shortly after that date.⁶ And since the British Consul’s endorsement was required, it would seem Capa hitched a ride on a British diplomatic courier aircraft. This also indicates that Capa’s assertion that his friend had an aircraft waiting for him was merely a fabrication to exaggerate his importance.

About the only item Capa got right was that his friend’s unit did transfer to the UK in February, though even then, he got the unit designation wrong. It was the 52nd Troop Carrier Wing, which was being assigned from the I Troop Carrier Command in Sicily, to the IX Troop Carrier Command in the UK. And it didn’t go to London. Capa’s autobiography didn’t bother much with getting dates or details correct.

Despite this supposed urgency, we don’t know exactly when he arrived in the UK. Capa made virtually no reference to specific dates during this period and effectively left more than a two-month void in his narrative. Recall that he claimed to have left Anzio at the end of February. While leading into a description of his second night back in London, he set the scene by describing the city’s atmosphere in May 1944.⁷ Not March. May.

Whelan’s biography is almost equally vague on the topic. He stated Capa arrived in London just in time for the Baby Blitz. The Baby Blitz reference—alluding to the abortive German renewed bombing offensive against England in early 1944—is misleading. This renewed bombing offensive began the night of 21/22 January 1944, but Capa stepped ashore at Anzio, Italy on