WWII War correspondent narrates color film

[ELB]

Found this poking around YouTube. Fascinating.

Cameraman Joe Lieb captured film as a war correspondent in WWII in the ETO, and besides what he shot for "the news" he also shot some clips for his own interest, plus collected some others. After the war apparently he occasionally showed them and narrated them for his family, friends, other groups. His son recorded one of his last narrations in 1976, and it appears with the video below.

There's quite few clips of other war correspondents taken when they had some time to themselves, and Mr. Lieb identifies them by name. A number of the names I know I heard in the news business when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s. One that should be recognizable to any WWII/history buff is Ernie Pyle. He also captured Edward G Robinson, and on Paris's Liberation Day, Charles DeGaulle. Also post-war clip of Gen Eisenhower in uniform giving a speech.

The vid starts out in London, moves to staging areas for D-Day, crosses the Channel in a LSI, and has a number of landing beach videos. He used up all his film in about 8 days, was sent back to England with it, then came back later and filmed some more around Cherbourg, and a little R&R stop at Mont Saint-Michel.

He also has video of the French and Americans marching down the Champs Elysee on the first day of Liberation for Paris including -- and I did not know this happened -- footage of when about three guys opened fire on the parade from some buildings along the route. Most people hit the deck (Charles De Gaulle stood and watched) while soldiers fired back and Lieb filmed. Eventually the French caught the snipers, dragged them out, and beat them to death on the spot.

Some great shots of early model P-47s on an improvised strip - and awful clip of two them colliding mid-air just above the ground.

Clips go all the way through the Ardennes (altho not the Battle of the Bulge itself) and ends with some taken in Germany.

Well worth the 45 minutes it takes to watch and listen. That he is narrating video the he (mostly) took makes if fascinating to me.

[gamboolman]

Thank you for posting this

[Oldgringo]

"Apocalypse: The Second World War" is a six part Smithsonian series available from Amazon Prime TV that is very informational. The numbers of events, activities, objects and deaths involved/used in this war are mind-blowing! The American version is narrated by Martin Sheen.

[LDB415]

That's a good series even if it was pretty much ruined by having that scumbag Sheen narrate. This looks interesting. Thanks for posting it.

[puma guy]

Fascinating! Thanks for posting it.

[rdcrags]

Well worth seeing and hearing.