16-011 Garand Picture of the Day - 83 Inf Div

[Mark in Rochester]

A U.S. Army soldier of the 83rd Infantry Division lies dead in the outskirts of the town of Gey during the Battle of Hürtgen Forest. The battle was the longest battle on German ground during war and is the longest single battle the U.S. Army has ever fought. The battles took place from 19 September 1944 to 16 December 1944, over barely 50 square miles (130 km), east of the Belgian-German border. On 10 December 1944, the fight for the town of Gey began. Gey was a strategic town situated in a valley through which all roads leading from the Hürtgen forest intersect. It was a lynchpin in the German’s network of defenses and was fortified to protect the vital approaches to the town of Düren. It would take U.S. troops three days of intense house-to-house combat to seize the town. The Battle of Hürtgen Forest would cost the Americans 33,000 casualties and losses, and the Germans 28,000. Near Gey, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. December 1944.

Image taken by Tony Vaccaro - In 1943, with the Allied invasion of Europe imminent, a newly drafted 21-year old Tony Vaccaro applied to the US Army Signal Corps. He had developed a passion for photography and knew he wanted to photograph the war. “They said I was too young to do this,” Tony says, holding his finger as if taking a photo, “but not too young to do this,” turning his finger forward, pulling a gun trigger. Not one to be denied, Tony went out and purchased a $47.00 Argus C3 and carried the camera into the war with him. He would fight with the 83rd Infantry Division for the next 272 days, playing two roles – a combat infantryman on the front lines and a photographer who would take roughly 8,000 photographs of the war.


Tony is now 92 and lives in Long Island City, NY.

Tony Vaccaro | Underfire

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