Saturday, January 24, 2015

Rescued WWII Photographs

People of my age grew up re-fighting WWII. Our fathers, uncles, even some older brothers all went off to fight in The Big One, and came back to spin all the yarns we heard growing up. We watched all the movies (and there were hundreds of them), bought "Army stuff" cheap at one of a dozen or more war surplus stores -- some of them no more than tents set up at roadside -- and managed to work out some credible small-unit tactics fighting the other kids in our neighborhoods. (The first thing to work out was who was going to be the Allies -- nobody wanted to be the Axis.)

So with that background, it was with more than a little excitement that I discovered a website devoted to "rescued" photographs, including a lot from WWII. It's called The Rescued Film Archive, and consists of photographs developed from old and in some cases damaged negatives, taken by GIs mostly, of the places they were and the things they were doing.

WWII has a section all its own that any WWII buff will spend some time scrolling through. There are other sections as well. The only complaint I have is that it wants context -- you don't know what or where you are really looking at in most of the pictures. I swear that one of the photos of a row of barracks was taken at Ft Lewis WA, where I spent basic training -- in some of those same buildings!

Recommended for all history buffs and everyone interested in WWII.

2 Comments:

double nickel said...

Your link to the Archive is 404'd.

Farnsworth68 said...

Whoops. It's fixed now. Thanks, dn.