While we were still in reserve, I wrote to my parents and asked that they send me my camera
and light meter. I could get Kodachrome slide film at the PX at times,
so it seemed to make sense.
I didn't actually get my camera until after we had moved into position on
the front, so there are no pictures taken during our time in reserve.
For you photographers, there were two cameras
used. The first was a cheap Kodak 35mm camera that I had bought while
in high school. It took pictures but did not have great optics. You can see that the
early pictures are darker at the edges and lighter in the middle.
The second camera was a Lieca. I bought it from a guy who
had won it in a card game and wanted to cash it out. I gave him $35.00
and my old camera. The quality of the pictures improves a lot after
switching to the Leica.
I never saw any of these slides until I got home. In
the 1950's, when you bought a roll of Kodak Kodachrome film, the price of
processing was included. The roll of film
came with a little sack with a mailing label to put your film in
to return to Kodak for processing.
It cost nothing to mail from a combat zone, so I would drop
the exposed film in the mail bag addressed to Kodak's Chicago processing
plant and put my parent's address on the return label (they lived close to
Chicago in Evanston Illinois at that time.) My parents were getting color slides hot from the front - which was
probably a good idea as I don't remember writing that many letters.
When I got off the boat in Seattle on my return, I got a
telegram from my parents as I came down the gangplank. Later my father
explained that they had read the troopship's name off its stern shown in one of
the slides I'd taken while boarding from a landing barge in
Inchon harbor (To see these slides, click here to go to the
Going Home scrapbook.) My
father then checked the schedule for boats docking in Seattle and sent the
telegram to the dock where the troopship was scheduled to come in. As
I came down the gangplank to step back onto U.S. soil, I was handed the
telegram.
It was a nice welcome home.