28th Infantry Division blanketing the Champs-Elysees

WAR LIKE NO OTHER

In the eye of George Murdock, who played the gruff Lt. Ben Scanlon on the TV sitcom "Barney Miller," World War II photographer Peter J. Carrol's picture of steadfast and somber U.S. troops of the 28th Infantry Division blanketing the Champs-Elysees reveals much about a culture that Murdock believes no longer exists.

"They are in Paris, and not one of them is pointing and going 'Oh, look there,' " said Murdock, one of hundreds of tourists and locals checking out a new exhibit Tuesday at the National D-Day Museum. "Everything was more disciplined then. It was a time of honor, respect and courtesy."

The helmeted soldiers with rifles slung over their shoulders paraded along the famous boulevard August 29, 1944. The very next day, they began to fight bloody battles in France. Their advance continued through the forest of Compiegne, La Fere, St. Quentin, Laon, Rethel, Sedan, Mezieres, Bouillon and across the Meuse River into Belgium.

The evocative photo of them is one of 126 from all theaters of the war and the home front in the exhibit titled "Memories of World War II: Photographs from the Archives of the Associated Press."

The collection, which features photos from a book of the same name, opened Friday and ends May 8.

"It makes me remember the newsreels every week about the developments in World War II," Murdock said as he gazed at the men in the oldest division of U.S. armed forces. "It's about sacrifice. People talk about the esprit de corps that followed 9/11. That's nothing in comparison.

"World War II was the last time this country came together," said Murdock, who was an aviation machinist mate in the Navy during the Korean War.

The D-Day museum was one of many stops in the city for the vacationing California actor who portrayed an internal affairs snoop on the defunct "Barney Miller."

The black-and-white images, culled from more than 100,000 World War II pictures in the Associated Press archives, are of the sort that breathe life into any world history lecture, offering texture, emotion and visual details of historic moments.

"It's devastating that these events actually happened," said Michael Hsu, 22, of Taiwan, visiting New Orleans on spring break from Rutgers University in New Jersey. "It's kind of surreal, awe-inspiring, seeing how Americans have contributed to all wars of the world."

Some of the photos credit AP staff photographers by name. Others come from anonymous Army or Navy photographers.

Snap.

-- It's 1943. Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill are sitting on a porch in Tehran.

-- It's Sept. 11, 1938. The Nazis are marching through Nuremberg, ready to conquer.

-- It's September 1939 in Poland. Adolf Hitler's talking to a group of Polish Germans in the aftermath of the invasion of Poland, an act ostensibly prompted by the treatment of German nationals living there.

Snap.

-- It's May 1941. A shadowy Churchill inspects damage to the House of Commons.

-- It's the spring of 1943. Warsaw Jews are being rounded up by Hitler's soldiers.

-- It's January 1938. Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini is leading a rehearsal for a military parade.

Snap.

-- It's April 1940. German soldiers are moving through a burning Norwegian village.

-- It's June 1944. A lanky Gen. Charles de Gaulle walks through the streets of liberated Bayeux.

-- It's August 1944. Citizens of France kick and jeer German prisoners as they are led through Jouy-en-Josas.

"This exhibit," said J. E. Isaacson, a 77-year-old volunteer at the D-Day Museum on Magazine Street, "makes you want to say thank God for (President Harry S.) Truman and the A-bomb. It sends shivers up and down my spine."

(Times Picayune - New Orleans,LA,USA)

Page last revised 02/12/2015
James D. West
www.IndianaMilitary.org