Photos Colour and Colourised Photos of WW2 & earlier conflicts

Sergeant Forrest L. Guth (6 February 1921 – 9 August 2009) was one of the 140 original members of the Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment in the 101st Airborne Division, United States Army during the Second World War.
Photo taken with the camera of a German Captured.

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Photo colourised by Johnny Sirlande
Credit Image Detrez Michel dday experiences st come du mont
 
Men of the 45 Royal Marine Commandos, attached to 3rd Infantry Division for the assault on Sword Beach, pass through a street of Colleville-sur-Orne, 10 Km NE from Caen, on their way to relieve forces at Pegasus Bridge. Normandy, France. 6 June 1944.

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The 45 Commandos, as part of 1 Special Service Brigade, took part in the Sword Beach landing, which consisted of two narrow beaches at La Breche. (Codenamed Queen White and Queen Red) The beaches stretched some 8 km from Ouistreham to Saint Aubin-sur-Mer. The '45' took part in the assault on Queen Red, landing at the small port of Ouistreham. Their assault started around 9am.
(Source - IWM B 5067)
Capt. J L Evans - No 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit
Colourised by Doug
 
D-Day 6/6/44:
USS Nevada fires at targets on Utah
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An LCVP manned by the USCG transports soldiers ashore
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Royal Marine Commandos blow up landing obstacles on Gold or Sword
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Robert Capa's most famous photo of the first wave to land on Omaha Beach
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A USN Corpsman writes home using a Wrigley's chewing gum box as a table
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Canadian Troops about to land on Juno Beach
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An LCVP driver from the 16th Inf. Reg. , 1st Inf. Div. looks back onto Omaha from the base of the bluffs
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A LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) from the U.S. Coast Guard-manned USS Samuel Chase disembarks troops of Company E, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division (the Big Red One) wading onto the Fox Green section of Omaha Beach (Calvados, Basse-Normandie, France) on the morning of June 6, 1944. American soldiers encountered the newly formed German 352nd Division when landing. During the initial landing two-thirds of Company E became casualties. 0830hrs by Chief Photographer's Mate (CPHoM) Robert F. Sargent (he survived WW2)
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June 6, 1944- A Cromwell tank leads a British Army column from the 4th County of London Yeomanry, 7th Armoured Division, after landing on Gold Beach on D-Day in Ver-sur-Mer, France.
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Colorized by Joshua Barrett) "Painting The Past"
 
Lt. "Dick" Winters during training at Camp MacKall - 1943

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Richard Davis "Dick" Winters
(January 21, 1918 – January 2, 2011)
"Officer of the United States Army and a decorated war veteran. He is best known for having commanded Easy Company of the 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, part of the 101st Airborne Division, during World War II. He was eventually promoted to major and put in command of the 2nd Battalion."
 
U.S. Army Pfc. Fred Linden of Detroit, Michigan, 38th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, holds a young French boy called Gérard Poincheval following the liberation of the village of Trévières during the Battle of Normandy. Trévières, Lower Normandy, June 10, 1944.

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©Nara
®Coloured by Johnny Sirlande
 
Infantry of 50th (Northumbrian) Division moving forward on a road between Ver-sur-Mer and Crepon, 6 June 1944.

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Colour by Doug
© IWM B 5277
 
Montgomery and Jim Gourley from Larne.
Jim Gourley who lived in Factory Row, Larne is believed to be the Soldier to the left of the line in the centre of this photograph showing General Sir Bernard Montgomery passing German POWs shortly after arriving in Normandy on 8th June 1944.

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Look at the faces of the German P.O.W's on seeing Monty!
 
"Old Man" Tommy Lonergan looks at the camera with his buddy Johnny "Peepnuts" Hale behind him. Lonergan would grieve the rest of his life over Hale's death.

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According to C.J. Oleskiewicz's testimony, he and John Hale crawled through a field in Normandy after a third machine gun nest attack. CJ heard a single shot and as he turned around he saw John lying dead.
According to Jack Mc NIECE, John was a snappy and serious guy on duty.
The Filthy Thirteen was the name given to the 1st Demolition Section of the Regimental Headquarters Company of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, of the United States Army, which fought in the European campaign in World War II. This unit was the inspiration for the book and subsequent film The Dirty Dozen.
The 1st Demolition Section was assigned and trained as demolition saboteurs to destroy enemy targets behind the lines. The unit had a tremendous mission focus but their blatant disregard for those aspects of military discipline that did not contribute to the mission became the bane of their officers. The unit acquired the nickname the Filthy Thirteen while living in Nissen huts in England. A demolition section consisted of thirteen enlisted men and they refused to bathe during the week in order to use
Photos of the men wearing Indian-style "mohawks" and applying war paint to one another excited the public's interest in this unit. The inspiration for this came from McNiece, who was part Choctaw.
During the Normandy Invasion of Europe in June 1944, the group was airdropped with the 3rd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment by aircraft of the 440th Troop Carrier Group of the United States Army Air Forces. They were ordered to secure or destroy the bridges over the Douve River.
Half of the unit was either killed, wounded or captured on the jump, but the rest led by Jake McNiece accomplished their mission. Most of the 3rd Battalion leadership had been killed on the initial jump so without any contact with the 3rd Battalion, senior officers assumed the battalion had failed its mission and ordered the Air Force to bomb the bridges.
 
A Horsa glider near the Caen Canal bridge at Benouville, 8 June 1944.

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This is glider No. 91 (PF800), which carried Major John Howard and Lieutenant Den Brotheridge with No.1 Platoon, 'D' Company, 2nd Battalion Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. It was one of the six gliders that carried 6th Airborne Division's 'coup de main' force - commanded by Major Howard - which captured the bridges over the Orne and Caen Canal in the early hours of D-Day.
Colour by Doug
© IWM B 5232
 
Marcel Pliat, 1916

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Marcel Pliat was one of several French nationals who served in the Russian Imperial Army during World War I but he was the only black man to serve in the Russian Imperial Air Force.

Colour by Olga Shirnina (Klimbim)
 
Battle of Albert.
British soldiers with wounded German prisoners, at La Boisselle, 3rd July 1916.
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The badges on the British Brodie helmets look like those of the 7th Btn. Kings Own Lancaster Regiment, who were at La Boisselle at that time.
(Photo source - © IWM Q 764)
Colourised by Doug
 
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Among the many prisoners taken by the Allies in Normandy during June 6 were men of quite a few different origins, some quite exotic. Among those of eastern European or Asian extraction was a particularly interesting group of volunteers: the so-called Osttruppen (Eastern Troops).

Once the invasion of the Soviet Union took off, Soviet citizens started to voluntarily enlist in the German Armed Forces. The exact number will never be known but it is estimated that up to 1,5 million Soviets served the invaders in some capacity.

Initially formed on a basis of ‘private enterprises’ by German unit commanders, the bulk of these ‘Osttruppen’ were recruited from non-Russian nationalities of the USSR: Balts, Ukrainians, Caucasians, Cossacks, Tartars, Georgians, etc. Such a case happened in August of 1941 when an entire Cossack regiment of the Red Army, led by its officers, deserted to the German side ending up fighting with the ‘Heer’ as the 5th Don Cossack Regiment.

One of the reasons -there were several and this one might not even be the most important- behind these men's willingness to fight alongside the German invader was simple: they were helping the Germans defeat a common enemy. The immense USSR was made of many ethnic groups, most of them being relentlessly persecuted and oppressed by the Soviet Regime for decades. ‘Mother Russia’ and Stalin meant little, if anything, to these people since most of them had nothing in common with the Russians and saw them as the true invaders.

By the end of 1941, the first units, called ‘Legions’, were created. Each Legion was composed of men from the same region/ethnicity and was identified by an armshield and cockade in the national colors of that particular region/ethnicity.

In this photo, freshly captured by US troops in Normandy on D-Day, we see a dusty private from a battalion of the Georgian Legion with its distinctive armshield and ‘Osttruppen’ collar insignia. After the Russian revolution of 1917, Georgia had been briefly an independent state until it was invaded and annexed by the Soviet Union in 1921. It regained its independence in 1991.

The Georgian Legion sent more than a dozen battalions to the front, both East and West: one, in particular, the 823rd Ostbataillon, ending up in garrison on the British island of Guernsey.

For this man and his countrymen, there will be no peace or happy ending: with the war over, many members of the ‘Eastern Legions’ captured by the western allies were handed over to Stalin and his regime.
 

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