Here we go, again.
First off John Morris is not a lab technician, but a picture editor. I work in a technical field and we constantly deal with people who have some tech knowledge and believe they understand the process and we smile politely when they try to explain something and usually get it wrong. But that doesn't mean they are lying.
I've met and spoken to Mr. Morris about this very subject at the Capa / Taro exhibit in London. If this man is a liar, then he is also a great actor. I also had the opportunity to talk to him at the VII Photo Seminar and at the Frontline Club and he struck me as a man of integrity.
I may have also met A.D Coleman and if that really was him I can't say that he made the same impression on me as Mr. Morris did.
"On a strictly human level, consider Morris’s plight. His dear friend, the man he calls “my Hungarian brother,” a superstar of wartime photojournalism, had choked in the clutch, muffing a crucial assignment in an embarrassingly amateurish way. First, Capa tucked his tail between his legs and ducked out of the Normandy invasion after thirty minutes or less on the battlefield. Second, he returned from the landing and initial bombardment and firefight with a mere 11 exposures, only one of them even barely memorable.
Then, on the professional level, we have the terrible publicity that would result were it known that LIFE‘s point man had fumbled the ball so badly. This would have made everybody look bad — not just Capa but Morris, the picture editor who chose him for that assignment — and it would have affected the reputation of the publication itself."
I find this statement to be offensive to the extreme. Capa may have been flamboyant character and prone to embellishing a story a little for the sake of making it more entertaining (most good stories are only 80% true and the other 20% harmless window dressing), but he was hardly a coward or a liar.
Thousands of men didn't even make it off their landing craft that morning, as they were mowed down in a hail of bullets, let alone survived 30 minutes on an exposed beach that was soaked in blood and under constant bombardment. This was not a scrimmage, but the biggest sea invasion in history, involving hundreds of thousands of troops, 5000 ships and 15,000 combat aircraft on the Allied side alone. I had relatives who may or may not have been there that day, but I never found out for sure, because decades later they still didn't want to talk about it and took their stories to their grave. Capa was the only photographer who volunteered to land on the beach that morning and this was widely considered a suicide mission, because there was a very good chance that the invasion would fail. In my opinion that makes him either crazy or a very brave man.
Capa himself admitted in his book 'Slightly out of Focus' that his time on the beach may have been the most terrifying combat experience of his career. The intensity of the fire was beyond anything he had ever experienced before or thereafter and considering the scale of the operation this is not surprising. Keep in mind that this is coming from a man who had been to war since the early 1930's, starting with the Spanish Civil War, the brutal Japanese Invasion of China followed by WW2 in North Africa and Southern Europe. By 1944 he had seen more blood and carnage, than most people can imagine. Capa admits that the fire on the beach was so intense that after getting through a roll of film, he was overwhelmed with absolute terror, shook like a tree and made a dash for the nearest craft to escape. Cowards don't admit that they were scared out of their minds.
Capa was there to take picture and get them back to England in time, so they could be shipped to the US for the invasion edition of LIFE. The negatives had to depart on an airplane from London by a certain time on June 6th in order to arrive in New York to make the print issue. For that to happen they had to travel from the beach in France, across the English Chanel and from the coast (Dover?) to London. Prior to departure the negatives had to be developed, printed and cleared by a military sensor. So, aside from the fact that Capa was lucky to survive as long as he did, he did not have time to spend hours on the beach snapping pictures. The plan had always been for him to land, take shots and if he survived, depart the battle quickly to get the negatives to London for the flight to New York.
It should also be noted that after getting his negatives to England Capa returned to the battle the very same day. Think about this for a moment. Anyone who has seen the opening of 'Saving Private Ryan' has a vague understanding of what happened that morning. The reality was a lot worse than the movie depicted. Would you voluntarily go back, after just escaping that a few hours earlier?
And even if Capa only took 11 exposures that morning? So, what? That's 11 more than everyone else who did not have the guts to hit the beach that morning. These were also the film days with 36-40 shots per roll. You didn't spray and pray like some do with digital.
A.D. Coleman should be ashamed of himself, but he probably isn't.
