The Eyes of the World: From D-Day to VE Day

-Hi, everyone.

I'm Katie Couric.

I'm here at historic Symphony Hall in Boston, home of the Boston Pops, America's orchestra.

It is my honor to introduce you to "The Eyes of the World," created and narrated by my friend and historian John Monsky.

A production that has it all -- history, drama, suspense, romance, serendipity, and spectacular music.

"The Eyes of the World" will transport you to a different time and leave you with a greater reverence for the heroes who came before us.

Heroes like my dad, John Couric, who served in the Pacific in the Navy during World War II.

And of course all those who stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

At its core, this production is about writers and photographers searching for the truth, risking their lives to ensure that the story is told.

Some 50 years ago, when John's mom took him to a flea market and bought him a kerchief from Teddy Roosevelt's presidential campaign, he was hooked.

He loved this tangible representation of American history.

This would be the beginning of a lifelong passion for collecting flags and the stories those flags represented.

John's meticulous research would lead him to heart-throbbing mysteries and fascinating discoveries.

I hope this production brings you closer to America's history, and that we draw strength, courage, and inspiration from those who made the ultimate sacrifice and the way our nation came together to keep the world free.

- The sun on the meadow is summery warm The stag in the forest runs free But gather together to greet the storm Tomorrow belongs to me The branch of the linden is leafy and green The Rhine gives its gold to the sea But somewhere our glory awaits unseen Tomorrow belongs to me - The babe in his cradle is closing his eyes The blossom embraces the bee But soon, says a whisper "Arise, arise Tomorrow belongs to me" - Oh Fatherland, Fatherland Show us the sign Your children have waited to see The morning will come when the world is mine Tomorrow belongs to me - Oh Fatherland, Fatherland Show us the sign Your children have waited to see The morning will come when the world is mine Tomorrow belongs Tomorrow belongs Tomorrow belongs to me Tomorrow belongs Tomorrow belongs - Tomorrow belongs To me -June 6, 1944.

D-Day.

An American landing craft makes its way to the beaches of Normandy, France.

The commanding officer peers over the bow.

He's trying to get his bearings.

He's wet and he's cold.

And on the shore, the German army waits for him, locked and loaded with artillery and machine-gun nests and a beach full of mines.

The bow of this landing craft is made of metal, but the sides, plywood.

Each of these landing craft carries an American flag.

And that is of great interest to me, because tonight I want to tell you a story about one flag on one day on one boat.

I'm John Monsky.

I'm a lawyer and historian.

I lecture at the New York Historical Society and Carnegie Hall.

And ever since I was a little boy, I have collected American flags.

I added this flag to my collection years ago, but I didn't know much about it.

It turns out that this flag flies on the back of landing craft number PA13-7 as it lands on Utah Beach on D-Day.

Under fire in a row of eight landing craft, one of which takes a direct hit, but landing craft number 7 makes it to the beach carrying this flag.

Now, one summer, my family and I are headed off for vacation in France, and we're going to visit the beaches in Normandy.

So I decide to take the flag with me, and when we arrive at our hotel, I'm reluctant to leave the flag in the little safe in the room.

So I ask the hotel manager if he'll put it in the hotel safe.

Now, the next morning, I come down for a cup of coffee around 8:30.

Before I can even get my cup of coffee, the hotel manager asks me if he can take the flag out of the safe.

To my surprise, the staff wants to see it.

Everyone wants a picture with the flag.

It's far more important to my French host than I ever imagined.

One member of the staff even asked me if he can kiss it.

His father was in the French Resistance.

That afternoon, I'm thinking about our upcoming drive to Normandy.

And with our guidebook open, I start looking at pictures of the American cemetery there.

I realize they have two very nice-looking flagpoles.

I have a flag.

So I call the American Cemetery, and eventually I speak with the director.

And after a bit of the, let's call it discussion, about the unreliable weather in Normandy, he says, "Look, if you get here before the cemetery opens and if it's not too windy and if it's not raining, okay, I'll fly your flag."

A few days later, we show up at the American Cemetery as instructed.

As it's not open yet, it is empty.

The dew is still on the green grass.

The sky is a china blue.

The ocean rolls in the background.

More than 9,000 crosses and stars of David.

46 pairs of brothers.

Four women, three of them black Americans, and two sons of a president.

We walk down to the beaches, the beaches where the flag of landing craft number 7 came in 80 years ago.

I take off my shoes, roll up my pants, and hold the flag in the very water she came in on one more time.

Those beaches where I'm standing are the key to the D-Day plan.

And when you think about it, it's a brazen plan to land 160,000 troops on those beaches in one day.

Each beach is given a codename.

The Americans draw Omaha and Utah, the British, Gold and Sword, and the Canadians, Juno.

To help implement this plan, the Americans send -- and this is an amazing number -- 1.6 million men and women across the German U-Boat-infested waters of the Atlantic to England.

America has no choice but to face this war.

On December 7, 1941, Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, wipes out the US Pacific Fleet, and shortly thereafter, Germany declares war on the United States.

People are terrified.

Cities all across this country, from Boston to San Francisco, prepare for air raid.

The windows of this hall, Symphony Hall, are shuttered.

Someone has to build the Liberty ships, as well as the battleships and the planes and the tanks that go with them.

And that work falls on the shoulders of ordinary Americans in small towns and big ones.

This is a fight for our lives.

And these women working in the Boston Navy Yard know it.

- Down went the gunner, a bullet was his fate - Down went the gunner, and then the gunner's mate - Up jumped the sky pilot, gave the boys a look - And manned the gun himself as he laid aside The Book Shouting "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition" - Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition - Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition - And we'll all stay free Praise the Lord and swing into position - Can't afford to sit around a-wishing - Praise the Lord, we're all between perdition And the deep blue sea - Yes, the sky pilot said it You gotta give him credit - For a son of a gun of a gunner was he - Shouting praise the Lord, we're on a mighty mission All aboard, we're not going fishing Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition And we'll all stay free Praise the Lord, we're on a mighty mission All aboard - We're not going fishing - Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition And we'll all stay Free [ Applause ] -Now, in 1942, Black and white American soldiers start arriving in England.

The army is segregated, and it will remain that way until 1948.

-I found myself at a railway station just south of New York City at a military induction center.

Suddenly, a command came over the loudspeaker.

Whites on one side, Blacks on the other.

I stood stock still.

A fellow Black recruit nudged me.

"Come on, man," he said.

"You Black, you know."

Ashley Bryan, age 19, 502nd Port Battalion.

Hand me my gun, let the bugle blow loud I'm on my way with my head a-proud One objective I've got in view Is to keep a hold of freedom for me and you That's why I'm marching Yes, I'm marching Marching down freedom's road Ain't nobody gonna stop me Nobody gonna keep me From marching down freedom's road -Black Americans understand that there are two struggles going on.

One for equality at home and one against fascism abroad.

The Pittsburgh Courier initiates a double victory campaign seeking both.

Speaking to this moment, American blues singer Josh White releases his song "Freedom's Road."

Langston Hughes writes the lyrics.

- Ought to be plain as the nose on your face There's room in the sand for every race - Some folks think that freedom just ain't right - Those are the very people I wanna fight That's why I'm marching Yes, I'm marching Marching down freedom road Ain't nobody gonna stop me Nobody gonna keep me From marching down freedom's road -The Black troops like what they see in English towns.

A world that welcomes them into stores and bars and restaurants.

In one town, American commanders demand that Black soldiers be barred from the local pubs, so as not to mix with the white ones.

The pubs respond with a different solution, putting up signs reading "Black troops only."

- United we stand - Divided we fall - Let's make this land safe for one and all - I've got a message and you know it's right Black and white together, unite and fight - That's why I'm marching Yes, I'm marching Marching down freedom's road - Ain't no fascist gonna stop me No Nazi's gonna keep me - From marching down Freedom's Road [ Applause ] -London, May 1944.

The war correspondents are getting ready and Ernest Hemingway, reporting for Collier's magazine, arrives on the scene.

He's one of the most famous authors in the world, and he hates fascism.

-For many years, you heard American people speak who admired Mussolini because he made the trains run on time in Italy.

It never seemed to occur to them that we made the trains run on time in America without fascism.

-Hemingway knows war.

He was seriously injured serving in the Red Cross in World War One, bringing chocolates and cheese to the front lines.

-We need to see to it that this time, it never comes to us again.

We who took part in the last war to end wars will not be fooled again.

-He is living in Cuba when the war breaks out and for the time being, he's happy to stay there.

He loads his fishing boat, the Pilar, up with rum, grenades, and TNT packed in a fire extinguisher.

Fully fortified, he chases German submarines.

Lucky for him, he never catches one.

[ Laughter ] His wife, Martha Gellhorn, is an experienced war reporter.

She goads him into covering the war from the front lines alongside her, but her efforts backfire.

Hemingway convinces Collier's to replace her with him as their lead war correspondent.

As a result, he gets to fly to London, and she has to cross the Atlantic in a ship full of explosives.

Needless to say, the marriage is explosive.

[ Laughter ] Hemingway's friend, the dashing young Life magazine photographer Robert Capa, is in London too.

True to form, on May 24th, Capa throws a party.

He invites his war correspondent friends and his numerous girlfriends.

He soaks peaches in brandy and champagne.

Capa is famous for risking his life to get his war photographs.

-If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough.

-Robert Capa's friend Lee Miller is in London, too.

Her life begins with trauma.

She's raped at age seven, sent abroad for high school, and when she returns, she's discovered on a New York City street corner by Cond Nast himself.

She becomes a Vogue cover girl, a supermodel, and then, at age 19, at the height of her modeling career, she decides to become a photographer.

-I would rather make a picture than be one.

-Lee, now a successful photographer, spends the summer of 1937 in the south of France with a group of surrealist artists -- Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Roland Penrose, Dora Maar, Eileen Agar.

We don't know who was sleeping with whom.

But we do know that Picasso paints six intimate portraits of Lee.

That summer, Hitler and Mussolini continue their rise to power.

In the U.S., Hitler and Mussolini have their fans.

In 1939, a rally is held at Madison Square Garden.

20,000 people attend.

George Washington's image and American flags are displayed alongside swastikas.

And in 1940, there is the rise of the isolationist America First Committee... one of their leading spokespersons is an aviator: Charles Lindbergh.

Lee Miller, now living in London, does not run away from the German bombings in 1940.

She combines her fashion photography with images of war -- bombed-out buildings, air-raid shelters, anti-aircraft searchlights, and subway safe havens.

The United States has still not entered the war, and these images taken for American magazines ask "Where are you, America?"

And when the United States finally does enter the war, Lee Miller does not want to sit on the sidelines.

She becomes a US Army accredited war correspondent for, of all things, Vogue magazine.

The 4th Division of the US Army is billeted in small towns like Tiverton and Exeter and Abbott, and with the 4th Division is a 25-year-old counterintelligence officer named Jerry.

The Army likes this guy because he speaks German and French, and because he can type.

When he lands on Utah Beach on D-Day, he will have a portable typewriter in the bottom of his Jeep.

At the end of May, troops from all over England are being brought down into her southern ports.

The Allied troops are locked into a series of restricted areas called cages.

No one in, no one out for security purposes.

Now is the last chance to say goodbye.

The boys are given a form to fill out their wills.

And to entertain the troops, the Army shows movies like "Mr. Lucky" starring Cary Grant.

And for music, they now bring in their ace in the hole.

The head of the Army Air Force band.

Before the Beatles, this guy is the Beatles.

- Way down South In Birmingham - I mean South In Alabam' - There's a place Where people go to dance the night away It's a junction Where the town folks meet At each function - In their tux they greet you Come on down Forget your care Come on down You'll find me there So long, town I'm heading for Tuxedo Junction now - I'll be seeing you In all the old familiar places That this heart of mine embraces all day through In that small cafe The park across the way The children's carousel - The chestnut trees, the wishing well I'll be seeing you In every lovely summer's day In everything that's light and gay I'll always think of you that way - I'll find you in the morning sun - And when the night is new - I'll be looking at the moon - I'll be looking at the moon - I'll be looking at the moon - But I'll be seeing you - Seeing you - Pardon me, boy Is that the Chattanooga choo choo?

Track 29 Well, you can give me a shine - Yes, I can give you a shine - You leave the Pennsylvania station 'Bout a quarter to four Read a magazine and then you're in Baltimore Dinner in the diner - Nothing could be finer - Than to have your ham and eggs in Carolina When you hear the whistle blowing eight to the bar Then you know that Tennessee is not very far - Shovel all the coal in - Gotta keep it rolling - Whoo, whoo, Chattanooga, there you are - She's gonna cry - Until I tell her that I'll never roam So Chattanooga choo choo Chattanooga choo choo Chattanooga choo choo - Won't you choo-choo me home?

- Chattanooga, Chattanooga - All aboard - Chattanooga, Chattanooga - Get aboard - Chattanooga, Chattanooga - Chattanooga choo choo Won't you choo-choo me home?

[ Applause ] -When it comes to selecting the actual time and day for D-Day, nature determines everything.

The Army, the Navy, the Air Force -- they want a night crossing, a late-rising moon, and an early morning low tide.

And when you triangulate all of this, it leaves General Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of the Allied forces, with just a few days in early June, the 5th, the 6th, and the 7th.

But the weather doesn't cooperate.

On the night of June 4th, it's storming outside and the go/no-go decision has to be made.

General Eisenhower and the Allied officers, they gather at their command center, Southwick House.

They grill the weathermen.

If they go forward, they risk losing this entire operation in the middle of a storm.

But if they postpone, they give the Germans time to build more defenses, more death traps.

And about 9: 00 p.m., Eisenhower finally calls the question at the command table.

It's a split decision, some of his commanders saying go, some saying postpone.

There are 160,000 boys waiting at the docks.

Eisenhower gets up.

He paces back and forth, and finally he turns to face the table.

-I'm quite positive the order must be given.

I don't like it, but there it is.

-And the order goes out.

On the afternoon of June 5th, Eisenhower writes a note just in case things don't go as planned.

-Our landings have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold.

The Army, Navy, and the Air Force did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do.

If any blame or fault attends to the attempt, it is mine alone.

-He folds it up, puts it in his wallet, and carries it around for the next few days.

That evening, General Eisenhower pays a visit to the 101st Airborne.

This is not easy for him.

Losses among the paratroopers are expected to be as high as 80%, and he talks with the men until one of the paratroopers steps forward and says, "You quit worrying, General.

We will take care of this."

And he stands on the tarmac until the last plane pulls away.

The United States has already paid a terrible price for its advantage in the air war against Germany.

More than 26,000 airmen have been lost, plane after plane after plane.

-The hatch opened and what was left of a guy was handed down to the medics.

He was still moaning.

The next two were not moaning anymore.

They were dead.

The last man to leave the plane was the pilot.

He seemed to be all right except for a slight gash on his forehead.

I moved to get a close-up.

He stopped midway and cried, "Are these the pictures you are waiting for, photographer?"

I shut my camera and left for London.

I hated myself and my profession.

This sort of photography was only for undertakers.

Robert Capa, London, England.

-Now, on the eve of D-Day, US and British airmen will fly the paratroopers through a barrage of anti-aircraft fire.

This is the flag of the 48th Fighter Bomber Group.

And this is the flag that flew on the Stapleford, England, airbase on D-Day.

That night, the British 6th Airborne lands behind Sword Beach in the pitch-black dark.

They send the Duke of Normandy back to England with word of their landing.

He is a pigeon, one of the many flapping heroes of the war -- William of Orange, Mary of Exeter, Paddy, GI Joe, Beachcomber, and not to be left out, Gustav.

The American 101st and 82nd Airborne land behind Utah Beach.

Those who survived the anti-aircraft fire moved to secure the bridges and roads off the beaches and wait in the night for the Allied landings.

As the paratroopers land, a flotilla carries the infantry across the channel in the dark, 255 minesweepers leaving lighted buoys for the rest of the fleet to follow.

6 battleships, 23 cruisers, 104 destroyers, 4,126 landing craft.

And while they're crossing, the officers read a message from Eisenhower to the troops.

-The eyes of the world are upon you.

-But not everyone is listening.

Jerry's being tossed around in 10-foot waves.

And Capa and Hemingway, they're not faring much better.

They rendezvous in an area they call Piccadilly Circus.

And then this circus begins.

At dawn, the American rangers are sent to take Pointe du Hoc.

It's a strategic position between Omaha and Utah, and it must be taken under fire from German troops above and dodging German grenades.

They scale these hundred-foot cliffs using grappling hooks and ropes and ladders from the London Fire Department.

At the core of this highly risky raid is intelligence from a 1930s tourist postcard.

This is a picture taken on June 7th or 8th with the Rangers at the top of Pointe du Hoc, a flag marking their command center.

Now, there's a second flag in the picture, one neatly folded between the rocks.

After a great deal of research, we believe we found it.

And to honor the Rangers, we have that flag with us tonight here at Symphony Hall.

[ Applause ] That morning, the Allies gain a foothold on every beach except Omaha.

A disaster is unfolding.

No one wanted to go to Omaha Beach in the first place.

It's a natural killing field.

Omaha is a five-mile, crescent-shaped beach with big cliffs on either end and large bluffs in between.

On each cliff, the famous German commander Erwin Rommel places big guns, pointing them down the beach, creating a crossfire.

On the bluffs, he places machine-gun nests and mines.

On the beach itself, he places mines on top of telephone poles.

These mines will take out any landing craft that come in at high tide.

This forces the Americans to land at low tide.

At low tide, there'll be 500 yards of beach to cross.

500 yards is a lot of beach.

These boys will be ducks in a shooting gallery.

At 4: 00 in the morning, 12 miles off Omaha Beach, in the dark, in the cold, in the rough seas, the boys are loaded into the Higgins boats.

Along with them are Hemingway and Capa in his Burberry raincoat, of course.

-I am a gambler.

I decide to go in with Company E in the first wave.

Robert Capa, June 6, 1944.

-Back home, it's midnight and there are service banners like this one hanging in community centers and halls and schools.

Each blue star represents one boy in service.

For each boy reported missing, a star will turn red.

For each boy reported dead, a star will turn gold, creating a Gold Star Mother.

As the sun rises, everything is going wrong.

At Omaha, the Air Force drops its bombs too far inland, the naval bombardment is too far offshore to do any real damage, and most of the floating tanks that are supposed to lead the infantry into the beach sink in the heavy surf, taking their crews with them.

And now, at 6:25 a.m., the first wave is about to hit the beach.

24 landing craft on the eastern half.

24 landing craft on the western half.

A total of 1,550 American boys.

Shells from the Navy that have been flying overhead go quiet.

Companies A, F, and G are among the first to hit the beach.

The Germans, as they're trained to do, hold their fire.

The American boys, as they're trained to do, get out of their landing craft and form a charge line across the beach.

And then the Germans open up fire, cutting them down like shafts of wheat.

That morning, over 900 blue stars turn to gold.

Watching from the seventh wave in a Higgins boat is Ernest Hemingway.

-As we came roaring in on the beach, I sat high on the stern to see what we were up against.

I had the glasses dry now and I took a good look at the shore.

The shore was coming toward us awfully fast, and through the glasses it was coming even faster.

On the beach, the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth waves lay where they had fallen, looking like so many heavily laden bundles on the flat, pebbly stretch between the sea and the first cover.

Ernest Hemingway, June 6, 1944.

-As Robert Capa comes into the beach, he jumps out of his landing craft into about three feet of water.

Taking pictures, he follows the infantry onto the beach, and there on his belly he takes more pictures.

He should have died there, but somehow he manages to get himself on a returning landing craft, LCI 94.

It has just dropped off the 104th Medical Battalion.

And this is the flag of LCI 94.

[ Applause ] Capa tells us what happens next under this flag.

-I reached the boat.

The last medics were just getting out.

I climbed aboard.

As I reached the deck, I felt a shock and suddenly I was all covered with feathers.

I thought, "What is this?

Is somebody killing chickens?"

Then I saw that the superstructure had been shot away and that the feathers were from the stuffing of the Kapok jackets of the men that had been blown up.

The skipper was crying.

His assistant had been blown up all over him, and he was a mess.

-With the permission of the gallery he founded, we now show you Robert Capa's surviving pictures from that day.

- The perfect end to our day - That Monday evening in May - Where side by side, we sang our song - And smiling, raised a glass on high - The tavern's glow warm and gold The carved initials of old - Our final song And fine young men who never got to say goodbye We turned our eyes to far horizons We spoke of hopes and plans that summer How could we know how fast the time goes?

How quickly autumn comes?

But when the leaves start to fall In mornings chill I recall That night and day Those fine young men And suddenly I'm young again - Just like those men Those fine young men Too young to say Goodbye - Farewell, amen - Too young To say Goodbye -The survivors are now pinned down by heavy fire.

They're on their own.

Most of the officers are dead.

The radios are blown.

There's no communication with the ships.

And unlike the German army that is trained to wait for orders, they decide what to do, and they do it.

The 1st and the 29th Divisions push up into the bluffs through the mines, taking the pillboxes one by one.

They succeed in part because of the US Navy ignoring orders to stay further offshore.

Six American destroyers come into the beach, and they put down the supporting fire, unloading all of the ammunition that they have.

And at the end of the day, a very long day, thanks to the efforts of the United States Army and Air Force and Navy and Coast Guard, the Americans hold Omaha Beach.

And this flag, the flag of the 29th Division, is with them.

[ Applause ] People often ask me, what are the balloons doing in this picture?

They're anti-aircraft balloons, and they're attached to the ground by steel cables.

If a German plane comes in to strafe the beaches, they'll be caught in the steel cables.

Each balloon in this picture is flown from the ground by a team of Black American troops.

Films like "The Longest Day" don't show Black Americans in combat, but Black Americans were on the front lines, too.

Just to name a few, the 320th Balloon Battalion that lands on D-Day, the Tuskegee Airmen, who fly more than 1,500 combat missions.

[ Cheers and applause ] The Red Ball Trucking Express, which runs dangerous supply lines.

The 333rd Artillery Battalion that suffers 223 casualties at the Battle of the Bulge, and the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, all Black, all female, who get the mail to the troops.

[ Applause ] Of the four women buried at the American Cemetery at Normandy, three of them are from the 6888.

And finally the 761st Tank Battalion, the Black Panthers, as they call themselves.

Now, after the landings, Robert Capa goes right back into the action with the troops.

Along the way, he finds his friend Ernest Hemingway.

In this picture with their driver, Hemingway is smiling, but he's not happy about one thing.

His wife, Martha Gellhorn, has upstaged him.

She makes her way onto Omaha Beach when he does not.

Hemingway is turned around on D-Day due to heavy fire.

Women reporters, they're forbidden from covering the landings, but Martha gets across the Channel as a stowaway on a hospital ship.

She locks herself in a bathroom.

She comes on to Omaha Beach as a stretcher bearer dressed as a man.

She is punished for her violation and stripped of her press credentials.

She's forced to cover the rest of the war without them.

On assignment for Vogue, Lee Miller takes this picture of Martha about a year before D-Day.

Lee captures Martha as the independent woman that she is.

Cigarette in hand, looking away from the pictures of her famous husband, the typewriter on her desk, the manuscript in her lap.

It's her work, not his.

Martha Gellhorn and Lee Miller are not alone.

There are 127 US women war correspondent in World War II.

[ Applause ] Sometimes we forget that D-Day is just the first day.

The question is, what happens to these boys once they get off the beaches?

What happens to Hemingway, Capa, Miller, and Jerry in the months that follow?

The Allies now have a very small beachhead.

The Germans have tanks.

With the wounded and dying still on the beach, the Allies unload supplies and troops as fast as they can.

It's 800 miles to Berlin.

Many will die getting there.

[ Applause ] Jerry is just another 25 year old kid when he lands on Utah Beach on D-Day.

Jerry's father is Jewish, his mother Catholic.

Jerry doesn't do well in school.

His father rewards him by sending him to a military academy.

He comes back to New York City for college and he promptly drops out.

His father has a meat and cheese company, and in 1937, sends him to Vienna to learn the import side of the business.

He lives with a Jewish family in Vienna, and he adores them.

His high-school French and German improve, and he spends his afternoons at a skating rink, and he apparently falls for a girl.

Later, he'll write a story about a girl from Vienna.

-Her beauty seemed too great for the size of the room.

The only way to make room for it was to speak of it.

-After almost a year, he heads home, and three days later, the Nazis take over Austria.

This is the Jerry that lands on Utah Beach.

- Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition And we'll all stay free -From France, Jerry sends home more of his short stories.

They start with his landing.

-We came in 20 minutes after H-hour on D-Day.

There wasn't nothing on the beach but the dead boys of A and B Company, some dead sailor boys, and a chaplain that was crawling around looking for his glasses in the sand.

He was the only thing that was moving, and 88 shells were breaking all around him.

And there he was, crawling around on his hands and knees, looking for his glasses.

He got knocked off.

That's what the beach was like when I come in.

- Down went the gunner, a bullet was his fate - Down went the gunner and then the gunner's mate - Up jumped the sky pilot, gave the boys a look -Just a few days after he gets off the beach, his regiment gets caught in a crossfire outside of Azeville.

-There was an orchard to the right of a crossroad, just about a thousand yards west of Azeville.

It was there that Company C received a terrific enemy barrage.

The crossroad, ironically marked by a stone cross, was the resting place of so many gallant men.

Colonel Johnson, 12th Regiment, June 8, 1944.

-The Allies badly need a nearby port called Cherbourg.

The Germans know it.

The fighting is house to house.

Jerry's regiment loses 2,000 men.

Two-thirds of the regiment is gone.

They've only been on the ground for one month.

-It's no good being with civilians anymore.

They don't know what we know.

- Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition And we'll all stay free And we'll all stay -In early July, the 4th Division plunges into the hedgerows of Normandy.

The hedgerows date back to ancient times, dividing the Normandy farm fields.

These living fences are composed of mud, vine, thick hedges, and trees.

The Germans hide machine-gun nests and mortars and even tanks in them.

Entire platoons are lost trying to cross these fields.

Ernest Hemingway shows up for the battle of the hedgerows.

He's embedded with Jerry's division, the 4th Division.

This is a picture of Hemingway with Colonel Buck Lanham.

Hemingway uses various modes of transportation to get around -- a beat-up Mercedes, a Jeep, and a captured German motorcycle with a sidecar.

He confers with Buck on what he sees in the field.

Now, sometimes he brings back maps and sometimes he brings back bottles of champagne.

Hemingway's editors think he's covering the war.

Hemingway thinks he's fighting it.

He sends his editors a $13,000 expense report.

[ Laughter ] It's an accounting of war-damaged equipment, supplies, and a giant number for drinks he buys the soldiers.

The editors complain about the drinks.

-I had to entertain an entire division.

-In July, Lee Miller finds her way to Normandy.

The GIs see her as a good buddy.

She does not flinch in a firefight, and she swears as well as they do.

Lee photographs a mangled sergeant off of Utah Beach, and then she steps into the 44th Evac Hospital.

-Six groups of people were around six operating tables.

Three of the patients were conscious.

The far one was nearly completed.

That is, his left leg had been dealt with.

He watched me take his photograph and made an effort with his hand to smooth his hair.

I had turned away for fear my face would betray to him what I had seen.

-After she leaves the hospital, she heads off to Saint-Malo.

Lee enters the city.

Bullets flying.

-I sheltered in a Kraut dugout, squatting under the ramparts.

My heel ground into a dead, detached hand.

And I cursed the Germans for this sordid, ugly destruction they had wrought upon this once-beautiful town.

I wondered where my friends were, how many had been shot or starved or what?

I picked up the hand and hurled it back across the street and ran back the way that I came, bruising my feet and crashing into unsteady piles of stones, slipping in blood.

Christ, it was awful.

-In late July, the 4th Division finally breaks out of the hedgerows, and they step into the fields of wheat and rye.

-The wheat was ripe, but there was no one there to cut it now.

No one remembered the separate days anymore, and history being made each day.

History now was old K-ration boxes and empty foxholes and our own wounded and our dead.

Ernest Hemingway, July 1944.

-There are 14 counterintelligence officers with the 4th Division in the field with Jerry.

Jerry's especially close to three of them.

They call themselves the Four Musketeers.

In the local towns, the Musketeers search out information about the enemy.

They look for spies and saboteurs.

They interrogate captured German officers, trying to tell truth from lies.

A lot is resting on the shoulders of a bunch of 25-year-old kids.

Jerry's buddies rest whenever they can, but Jerry uses the time to write.

He scribbles away on paper or clacks away on that portable typewriter he carries in the bottom of his Jeep.

On August 7, 1944, Jerry writes home, -Dear Terry, I've been in France since D-Day.

It's swell over here.

I, uh, I've met and have had a couple of long talks with Ernest Hemingway.

He's extremely nice and completely unpatronizing.

He's here for Collier's.

I'm sitting in my Jeep as I write this.

Chickens and pigs are walking around in an unbelievably uninteresting manner.

I dig my foxholes down to a cowardly depth.

I'm scared stiff constantly and can't ever remember having been a civilian.

It's been miserable all along.

No holds barred.

-On the morning of August 25th, Jerry makes it to Paris, alive.

American and French troops enter the city.

The Parisians are overjoyed.

Robert Capa captures the moment with this picture.

In the middle of all this euphoria, Jerry decides to find his new friend, Ernest Hemingway.

Hemingway enters Paris with a contingent of French soldiers somehow at his command, nobody knows how.

[ Laughter ] Fighting German snipers that remain behind, he immediately moves to liberate a highly strategic position.

The bar at the Ritz Hotel.

[ Laughter ] According to several accounts, upon entering the bar, Hemingway orders 78 martinis for his French soldiers.

Jerry and Hemingway sit in Hemingway's newly liberated room just above the bar.

Hemingway pours the drinks and Jerry gets up the nerve to give this world-famous author some of Jerry's short stories.

At the Hotel Scribe, Lee Miller takes an adjoining room with photographer and pal David Sherman.

The door stays open.

Lee transforms swanky room 412 into a pig pen, a cross between a garage sale and a used car lot.

-Guns, bayonets, camera equipment, crates of flashbulbs.

David Sherman, Life magazine.

-American reporters gather at the Hotel Scribe bar.

The Life illustrator Floyd MacMillan Davis captures all of them, including Hemingway and Capa and Miller and Sherman and Davis himself and the French commander, Charles de Gaulle, taking a beat in the middle of this war.

They're drinking whiskey and rye like they're here at Symphony Hall.

Lee Miller takes the time to look for the artists she knew and loved before the war.

Robert Capa's with her, of course.

They turn a corner, come to a building where Lee finds one of those artists.

-Picasso and I fell into each other's arms, and amidst laughter and tears and having my bottom pinched and my hair mussed, we exchanged news of friends and their work.

The house and courtyard walls are chipped and blackened by gunfire, which stimulated him into an orgy of painting, singing at the top of his lungs throughout the entire performance.

Before leaving, I ate one of the tomatoes off the flower pot vine, which was his favorite model.

It was a bit moldy, but I liked the idea of eating a work of art.

Lee Miller, August 1944.

-On August 29th, the Americans and the French have a parade in Paris.

The Americans didn't want this.

They wanted to bypass Paris altogether.

It was not strategic.

But Charles de Gaulle will hear none of it.

This is a picture from that parade.

The boys you see looking at you, right at you, are from the 28th Division.

Most of them will not survive the war.

-[ Singing in French ] The last time I saw Paris Her heart was warm and gay I heard the laughter of her heart In every street cafe The last time I saw Paris Her trees were dressed for spring And lovers walked beneath those trees And birds found songs to sing I dodged the same old taxi cabs That I had done for years The chorus of their squeaky horns Was music to my ears The last time I saw Paris Her heart was warm and gay No matter how they change her I'll remember her That way La la la la la La la la la la La la la la [ Applause ] -The 4th Division and Jerry now leave Paris behind.

And they march toward Germany.

Hemingway is in the field again, embedded with the 4th Division.

In this picture, he wears the belt buckle of a captured German officer, and he looks thoroughly in charge.

In September, he sends a note written on a torn piece of brown package paper to Jerry.

-Your stories are very fine.

I enjoyed reading them very much.

All these are excellent.

You are a damn good writer and I will look forward to reading everything you write.

You have a marvelous ear, and you write tenderly and lovingly without getting...wet.

I hope you will not think I am a William Lyon Phelps or an easy praiser when I tell you how happy it made me to read your stories and what a good, damn fine writer I think you are.

-On November 6th, the 4th Division enters the Huertgen Forest.

This is one of the great errors of the war.

The Americans should have moved around it, but they decide to move through it and take it.

They will suffer 33,000 casualties in the forest.

Even for Hemingway, who never flinches in battle, the Huertgen is gruesome.

He will have nightmares about what is to come for the rest of his life.

The Germans have loaded the Huertgen with machine-gun nests and mines and artillery.

The forest is dark and foreboding.

The 100-foot-tall trees block the sunlight.

A slippery mud covers the ground.

A creeping fog swallows up entire platoons.

The American commander in the Huertgen is an old-school World War I type.

General Hodges orders bloody attack after bloody attack.

Day after day, truckloads of fresh troops are brought up to the front lines, and day after day, dead bodies are brought back to the command center and stacked like cords of wood.

-It would save everybody a lot of trouble if they would just shoot them as soon as they got out of the trucks.

Ernest Hemingway, November 1944.

-In late November, just before his 21st birthday, one platoon leader steps on a mine.

His leg is blown to bits.

We don't have a picture of the exact moment, but this one is close enough.

-The explosion severed his leg.

He was carried down the hill on a stretcher with a bloody blanket.

Lieutenant Paul Bosch, November 24, 1944.

-Thanks to the work of American medics, the platoon leader survives and as a result, his grandson is here with us tonight at the piano.

Our music director and arranger, Ian Weinberger.

[ Cheers and applause ] This is a picture of a mail delivery to 4th Division troops in the Huertgen in November.

The snow is falling.

With each of these mail deliveries in the Huertgen, Jerry receives wool socks, socks knit by his mother.

Socks that will save him from trench foot.

With each letter, he gets one sock.

It was all that would fit in an envelope.

In the fall of 1944, composer Aaron Copland creates a piece that captures this moment when a soldier finally gets a letter from home.

That moment in the war where one stops to breathe.

For many of the soldiers in this picture, it's probably their last mail call.

8 out of 10 boys from Jerry's regiment will be casualties in the Huertgen.

Somehow, from time to time, mail is still getting to the American troops in the Huertgen, thanks in part to the all Black, all female 6888th Battalion.

This is a picture of Private Garcia of the 6888th.

I met with her a few years ago.

She was 101 and just as brave as she was in 1944.

"How do you feel looking back on the war," a reporter once asked her.

"Proud," she said.

Her granddaughter is here with us tonight.

And to honor Private Garcia, I ask her to stand.

[ Cheers and applause ] -My father is 14 years old in 1944, and he's writing his own letters from home during the war.

His first cousin, Leroy Monsky, is on the ground in the thick of it with US forces in Italy.

Leroy, captain of the Alabama 1938 Rose Bowl football team, is now a captain in the US Army.

My dad just counts the days hoping that his hero will come home safe.

My father's family is Jewish, and if captured, there's a high chance that Leroy will be tortured and mutilated and executed.

His dog tags give away his serial number, his blood type, and his religion.

There are 8,700 casualties, 1,500 killed, 1,000 missing and captured in Leroy's division, the 85th Division.

But to my father's great joy, Leroy does make it home alive with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart on his chest.

My father died two years ago, but he would be oh so proud to know that I carry Leroy's Bronze Star here with me tonight.

[ Applause ] For Jerry, one of the rare redeeming moments in the Huertgen is late one night when he runs into Hemingway in a house not far from the front lines.

They sit together.

Hemingway pours drinks into tin cups.

It's a pause in the middle of a raging battle.

While Hemingway is in this house, he's ghostwriting these exaggerated love letters for a GI there.

He enjoys this immensely, but he saves his best lines for his true love, Marlene Dietrich.

[ Laughter ] -Dearest Marlene, you are beautiful.

I am ugly.

Please know I love you always.

I forget you sometimes as I forget my own heart beats, but it beats always.

-Lee Miller takes this picture of her in Paris in September 1944.

There's no power, so Lee works with the natural light.

Marlene is modeling a new Schiaparelli dressing gown to help Paris designers recover from the Nazi occupation.

- Oh, see what the boys in the back room will have And tell them I'm having the same Go see what the boys in the back room will have And give them the poison they name And when I die Don't spend my money On flowers and my picture in a frame Just see what the boys in the back room will have And tell them I sighed And tell them I cried And tell them I died of the same Just see what the boys in the back room will have And tell them I sighed And tell them I cried And tell them I died of the same [ Cheers and applause ] -In early December, the 4th Division heads for a quiet sector in Luxembourg.

And as Lee Miller walks through this area, she captures pictures of the all-too-quiet hills like this one.

Unknown to her, those hills are quiet for a reason.

Nine days later, in mid-December, the Germans launch a massive surprise attack.

Artillery crushes Jerry's command center.

Four companies are surrounded and cut off.

Hemingway, in Paris, writes his brother.

-There's been a complete breakthrough, kid.

This thing could cost us the works.

Their armor is pouring in and they are taking no prisoners.

-And then Hemingway storms out of the Ritz Hotel and heads to the front lines.

-Clad in his two to white fleece jackets, he strode through the lobby of the Ritz like an overfed polar bear.

A little crowd cheered the great author on his way to the war again.

Outside, in the gray fog, his driver gunned the engine of his Jeep, its exhaust streaming in the icy air.

A steel-helmeted policeman with his old-fashioned rifle slung over his shoulder saluted, and Hemingway was off to his last battle.

Charles Whiting, 52nd Armoured Reconnaissance, British Army, December 16, 1944.

-Tonight, to honor Ernest Hemingway, who covered this war for his country, we have with us his great-grandson, Patrick Hemingway Adams.

Patrick, would you please stand for Captain Hemingway?

[ Cheers and applause ] The Battle of the Bulge is won by American troops on the ground, troops that are brave enough to stand and fight.

This includes the Black Panthers of the 761st Tank Battalion.

General Patton refuses to use them until he really needs them.

He comes to see the 761st.

His Jeep flies this flag.

-I stress my peripheral vision without moving my head far to my left to see that Jeep coming down the road with three stars on the front, knowing this is the greatest general of all time.

He climbed up onto the car and looked at us from left to right, back and forth, and he said, "I sent for you because I heard you were good.

I have nothing but the best in my army, and I don't care what color you are, so long as you go out there and kill those Kraut sons of bitches.

Everyone has their eyes on you and everyone is counting on you.

Most importantly, your race is looking forward to your success.

Don't let them down and damn you, don't let me down."

E. G. McConnell, 761st Tank Battalion.

-The 761st does not let Patton down.

By the end of January, the Battle of the Bulge is over.

Robert Capa has more photographs to send home like this one.

The missing, the dead are frozen in the snow, bodies that will not be found until the spring thaw.

Winter turns to spring, and Lee Miller enters the inner sanctum of many German cities -- Cologne, Frankfurt, and Leipzig among them.

Her boiling anger erupts.

-They were well nourished on the stored and stolen fats of Normandy and Belgium.

The number of Germans suddenly confessing to Jewish relatives and having sponsored and saved anti-Nazis is ludicrous.

And all of these people claim ignorance to the treatment of slave laborers and deported Jews.

I'm getting a bad character from grinding my teeth at night.

How dare they?

-In Leipzig, she finds the mayor, his wife, and their daughter have killed themselves.

It's ugly and it's strange.

-The love of death, which is the under pattern of German living, caught up with the high officials of the regime.

And they threw a great party, toasted death and Hitler, and poisoned themselves.

Lying back on the sofa is a girl with extraordinarily pretty teeth.

Her nurse's uniform is sprinkled with plaster from the battle for City Hall, which raged outside after their deaths.

-As Lee Miller proceeds further, the damage and wreckage she sees in Nuremberg stuns her.

She wants to feel sympathy, but cannot.

The 4th Division and Jerry advance into southern Germany.

Now they pass through a series of beautiful small towns, and then they come to the subcamp of the Dachau concentration system.

Jerry's division will liberate at least seven of these camps.

Many of them hold Jews from Hungary.

Maybe that's one reason Robert Capa, a Hungarian Jew, cannot bring himself to photograph the camps.

Jerry, like so many others who liberate these camps, will not talk about it other than to make one remark.

-You could live a lifetime and never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose.

-The 12th Regiment will find subcamp after subcamp, a vast spiderweb of 120 subcamps covering southern Germany.

Lee Miller now enters the main camp of Dachau, and Lee and Jerry are caught in the same web at the same time.

-I arrived at Dachau on the night of April 30th as blackout and shells were falling.

In this case, the camp is so close to the town that there is no question of the inhabitants knowing what went on.

The railway siding in the camp runs past quite a few swell villas.

Inside the camp, one block is an angora rabbit farm.

The rabbits are much less crowded and better cared for than the humans.

The crematorium is out of fuel long enough to pile up two rooms of bodies.

The gas chambers look like their titles written over the doors.

Shower baths.

-For the sake of history, Lee Miller photographs the camp.

The pain of those who died is unbearable, but the pain of those who survive is unbearable too.

Lee Miller's picture captures that pain.

What does it mean to survive when everyone you knew before the war -- your mother, your father, your sister, your brother, your children -- are dead?

With no one left who loves you, with no one left to love, have you survived?

Dirty and covered with the mud of Dachau, Lee goes directly to Munich.

This city of art and culture is only 12 short miles away.

Munich has fallen, and she's assigned lodging in one of the few apartment buildings that still has hot water.

The apartment she enters is empty because its usual resident, Adolf Hitler, is away in Berlin.

She enters and drops her gear and quietly tours the halls.

This is the apartment where Hitler rose to power.

It's the apartment where he entertained Chamberlain and Mussolini and the German high command.

She will say it feels creepy touching the same things he touched.

Sitting in the same chairs he sat in.

And then Lee Miller decides to take a bath in his bathtub.

The mud on her boots is the mud from Dachau.

It despoils Hitler's bathroom, and Hitler is forced to watch it all from the picture on the ledge.

Opposite Hitler, she places an image of beauty, and above her is a shower head.

After the concentration camps, can a shower head ever just be a shower head?

Now, it is a remarkable fact of history that on the same afternoon she's taking this bath, Hitler and Eva Braun kill themselves in a Berlin bunker.

A week later, on May 7th, the 761st Tank Battalion, the Black Panthers, liberate the Gunskirchen concentration camp, freeing 15,000 Jews.

And when all is said and done, the members of the 761st will earn 11 Silver Stars, 69 Bronze Stars, 300 Purple Hearts.

Decades later, there will be a Presidential Unit Citation and a Medal of Honor.

This is the flag carried by the 761st Tank Battalion in France and Germany.

[ Applause ] When they get home, it won't live up to all of its promises.

Discrimination, segregation, Jim Crow will greet them.

As one member of the 761st would later put it... -We showed pride in our country and why would they not show pride in us?

-And suddenly it's all over.

In a process that starts on May 7th and ends on May 8th, Germany surrenders.

Eisenhower sends a one-line Teletype message back to Allied command.

-The mission of this Allied force has been fulfilled.

-And on the night of May 8th, the good citizens of Boston assemble here at Symphony Hall.

Arthur Fiedler takes this stage and prepares to conduct "Salute to Our Fighting Forces."

There are families in this hall who have lost a son or daughter, some more than one.

And there are families in this hall who have not seen their fathers or mothers for years.

Only letters from faraway places.

The hearts in this hall beat hard.

Tonight, our conductor, Keith Lockhart, turns back the clock one more time to Tuesday, May 8, 1945.

-If you or a family member has served or is serving, we invite you to stand on behalf of yourself or your loved one when you hear the song of your branch of the United States Armed Forces.

The United States Marines.

The United States Coast Guard.

The United States Air Force.

The United States Navy.

The United States Army.

[ Cheers and applause ] -Jerry is deep in Germany when the Germans surrender.

He's exhausted.

His unit has been in combat for 300 days.

Out of the original 3,000 that landed with him on Utah Beach, only about 300 are left.

Jerry has five battle stars and a Presidential Unit Citation for valor.

Jerry's nose is broken, and he's almost deaf in one ear from a hand grenade that landed way too close.

Eventually, he checks himself into a hospital.

It's the one place he says that he can get some rest.

He writes a letter to Ernest Hemingway.

-Dear Papa, I'm writing from a general hospital in Nuremberg.

There is a notable absence of Catherine Barclays is all I've got to say.

There was nothing wrong with me, except that I've been in an almost constant state of despondency, and I thought it would be good to talk to somebody sane.

There are very few arrests left to be made in our section.

We're now picking up children under 10 if their attitudes are snotty.

I've asked the Counterintelligence Corps to send me to Vienna.

I was there for a year in 1937, and I want to put some ice skates on some Viennese girl.

I'd give my right arm to get out of the army, but not on some psychiatric "This man is not fit for Army life" ticket.

I have a very sensitive novel in mind, and I won't have the author called a jerk in 1950.

I am a jerk, but the wrong people mustn't know it.

I wish you'd drop me a line if you ever can manage it.

Removed from the scene, is it much easier to think clearly?

I mean, with your work.

The talks I had with you here were the only hopeful minutes of the whole business.

-When he finally gets home, Jerry keeps typing.

He submits some of his stories to The New Yorker.

Some are rejected, some are accepted.

But in 1951, his novel is finally published.

He had the first six chapters of it in his backpack when he landed on Utah Beach.

It is called "The Catcher in the Rye."

[ Applause ] It's almost immediately recognized as a great work of American literature, and it's translated into languages all around the world.

It sells 100 million copies and counting.

The main character, Holden Caulfield, is suffering from the loss of his brother Allie.

The last line of the book reads, "Don't ever tell anybody anything.

If you do, you start missing everybody."

The artists, the writers, the photographers, the eyes of the world, they carry on after the war.

- I'll be seeing you in all the old familiar places That this heart of mine embraces All day through -Robert Capa ends the war, by strapping on a parachute and dropping behind German lines with American troops.

General Eisenhower awards him the Medal of Freedom.

He has a love affair with Ingrid Bergman.

Unable to stop rolling the dice, Capa dies on a landmine in Indochina in 1954 at age 41.

He's the first American reporter to die in what would become the Vietnam War.

- In that small cafe The park across the way The children's carousel The chestnut trees, the wishing well -Ernest Hemingway wins the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

But Hemingway, who finds it hard to write after the Huertgen Forest, kills himself seven years later.

He's 61 years old.

- I'll be seeing you In every lovely summer's day In everything that's light and gay I'll always think of you that way -Lee Miller struggles with depression and alcoholism.

She reinvents herself as a celebrity chef.

Always a surrealist at heart, she creates gold meat loaf, green chicken, blue pasta.

She never talks about the war again.

- I'll find you in the morning sun And when the night is new -J. D. Salinger continues his writing, a passion that will carry him through the rest of his life, just as it did through the war.

- I'll be looking at the moon But I'll be seeing you -33 years after D-Day, almost to the day, he picks up his son, who is in school in France, and he quietly revisits the beaches in Normandy.

He writes his Army buddies, telling them of his visit.

-We drove into Normandy around 8:00 at night, the sun still shining, much like wartime.

There was some sort of commemorative museum down on Utah Beach, but it was getting late and I didn't particularly care to take it in anyway.

So Matthew and I just drove on to Cherbourg and the ship home.

But it was affecting.

You would understand.

Not only to be alive and well in Normandy in a rented BMW, wearing a white shirt and gray suit and to be with one's son.

It seemed to be a quiet, sizable little victory of some sort.

Felt very grateful.

J. D. Salinger, June 5, 1977.

-And what about that flag that my family and I brought to the American Cemetery in Normandy?

Well, it's not too windy and it's not raining.

And on that day, thanks to the American Battle Monuments Commission of the United States government that maintains the cemetery and its history, my family and I proudly raised this flag, the flag of landing craft number 7.

[ Cheers and applause ] -I'm Katie Couric.

Thanks so much for joining us.

For more information, visit americanhistoryunbound.com.

- I'll be seeing you In all the old familiar places That this heart of mine embraces all day through In that small cafe The park across the way The children's carousel - The chestnut trees, the wishing well I'll be seeing you In every lovely summer's day In everything that's light and gay I'll always think of you that way - I'll find you in the morning sun - And when the night is new - I'll be looking at the moon - I'll be looking at the moon - I'll be looking at the moon - But I'll be seeing you - Seeing you - Pardon me, boy Is that the Chattanooga choo choo?

Track 29 Well, you can give me a shine - Yes, I can give you a shine - You leave the Pennsylvania station 'Bout a quarter to four Read a magazine and then you're in Baltimore Dinner in the diner - Nothing could be finer - Than to have your ham and eggs in Carolina