Glass into Battle

Of all the little green army men I played with as a kid, I don't ever remember seeing a soldier-photog. Yet as the above photo shows, men with lenses have been trudging to the front since the birth of the captured image. In the 40's, members of the Army Signal Corps packed stills, film and heat through every theater of World War II. Whereas that should be more than enough to earn their way into molded plastic, the combat cameraman remains Missing In Action from your neighborhood toy store. It's my mission to change that, but before I can hurl something incendiary, I gotta get trained. Is there a definitive account of the combat cameraman? I'm sure I've just missed it on the History Channel and my VHS copy of Shooting War looks much too crusty to put in that old machine. I've yet to slog through all that I've found on-line but these sites look promising. Any others? C'mon, help a dogface out...

(ABOVE: Signal Corps combat cameramen Sgt. Carl Weinke, left, and PFC Ernest Marjoram wade through a stream while following infantry troops at Red Beach 2, Tanahmerah, New Guinea, during an Allied invasion, April 22, 1944.)