8th Evacuation Exhibit > Melvin C. Shaffer, Photographer

Melvin C. Shaffer, Photographer

Melvin C. Shaffer

Melvin C. Shaffer, an Army photographer, accompanied soldiers across Africa, southern Italy, and France, and survived three plane crashes. He was one of about one hundred photographers at Dachau and filmed Hitler’s bunker shortly after Hitler’s death. By the war’s end he had taken half a million photographs and 200,000 feet of motion picture film. His experience led to a distinguished career in visual education at the Medical College of Virginia.

The Melvin C. Shaffer Collection of Photographs depicting North Africa (1943), Germany (1945), and Italy and Southern France (1944-45) may be viewed at http://digitalcollections.smu.edu/all/cul/mcs/index.asp

An aerial photo of the 8th Evac installation just north of Naples in late 1943

In a letter accompanying this photo Mr. Shaffer writes:

This set-up was somewhat near the Cassino battle area with a line of German forces running from Cassino across to the Mediterranean sea. I commandeered a “Bird Dog” (artillery spotting plane) to make this photo and kept urging the pilot to get further out to the North. He kept yelling at me that there were Germans up that way but I just kept yelling “go on north dammit, I need more room.” He did but in the meantime I moved the camera outside the plane into the slipstream only to have it whipped from my hands by the force of the wind. I watched it plunge into a wheat field and yelled at the pilot to land so that I could retrieve it. He kept yelling at me that there were Krauts down there but in due time he landed just beside the camera, taxied over to it, I leaned out of the plane and retrieved it and off we went, followed by a hail of machine gun fire.

We “got the hell out of there” to paraphrase the pilot, dusted off the camera and took this photo. The photo appears a bit shaky but I think this was me rather than any damage from the about 1,000 ft fall.

I used this same camera for thousands of photos thereafter.

This little tale has two purposes:

To show the extent which a good photographer will go to get the photo.

Just how stupid a 19 year old photographer and a 19 year old pilot can be. Absolutely nobody told us to make this photo. It just seemed the thing to do.

This location has another distinction. In the movie “MASH” there is a scene where the soldiers attach ropes to the ladies shower and, on command pull the side down for all to see. Much to the anguish of Col. Drash, this is the location where the original of that scene was filmed, copied to the detail by the producers. Names of all the culprits have long since been suppressed but I admit to doing the photography. You can identify the shower if you follow a line from the big white cross, down across one tent and to the scene of the crime.

Melvin Shaffer