Narvik Photos...

[Chris Boonzaier]

I have had 3 Narvik albums and seen a number more... has anyone ever noticed... that all the photos seem the same ?
Same size, same quality... and often EXACTLY the same photos !! (and more often than not, to be seem in a book otr 2 as well.
I have the theory, that they could be ordered back then.
i.e. Someone took them, and Narvik vets could order them from him.
Has anyone had the same thought or had the same experiance while looking at Narvik albums ?

[Akira Takiguchi]

Quite normal situation... I don't know how you rich US guys did in your childhood, but 30 years ago in Japanese elementary schools, on every events, like excursion and festivals, there were appointed photographers who took a lot of photos... After the event, on the school's corridor all the photos were displayed with order numbers... Everyone sought any photos he was on, how small himself was... Then we ordered the photos by number...

Exactly the same happened when the battle period came to an end... War is not excursion, most of soldiers preferred his rifle than cameras during battle... At least his superiors would have liked him to have guns... Thus photos taken by Kriegsberichter's could be ordered like <a href="http://www.ne.jp/asahi/wwii/panzer/images/photolist.jpg">this order form</a>. As you can see nice captions were already provided!

Really "private" photos are not so common.

[ 03 January 2002: Message edited by: Akira Takiguchi ]

[ 03 January 2002: Message edited by: Akira Takiguchi ]

[Michael Root]

Chris

Forgive me if this is deemed off topic.

When I was with the 1st AD during the gulf war this was quite popular. The same people that printed our division newspaper also sold photo "sets". For $50 you got everything from sheiks and camels to burning T-72's, surrendering iraqi's and dead iraqi's and the globally popular cigarette hanging out of charred iraqi's mouth.

The demand was quite popular since 90% of the troops never got a chance to see this themselves.

A couple of years later when I was assigned to the 101st (for personal reasons I didn't wear my combat patch so everyone thought I wasn't there) It was always interesting to see the "unique" photos and "stories" these combat vets had.

[Chris Boonzaier]

A dead givaaway are numbers pencilledon the back. These are often there when a Photo is ordered fromthe black board.
You know the Narvik shots I am talking about... Burned building, sunken ships, blown up tank etc. etc.

[Akira Takiguchi]

>A dead givaaway are numbers pencilledon the back.

... and sometimes with the name of soldier who ordered the photos.

Michael's story made me laugh a lot before my computer, thanks for a nice story!

[JaimeH]

This is an interesting thread. Have you ever noticed the true personnel photos are usually when the soldier is on leave. For an example look at photos of men in Paris, they are the exact photos just different uniforms (and dates)in front of the Eiffel tower. Also most pictures sent home to families are of the soldiers friends that are mentioned in their letters.