the very top two comics shown in this thread.. , Frontline Combat #13 and Two Fisted Tales #40 show seldom seen first world war action covers 

This photo, purportedly from the battle of Dien Bien Phu, shows a a French charge over extremely broken terrain...

rare photo that shows the both attacker and defender in the same picture...

as a minor league military historian i am aware of only three combat photographs that show both attacking and defending soldiers in the same photo

above is one , the other two are both from WW1 and one is well known and published often and the third is quite obscure and fascinating......

On 5 February 2018 at 6:32 AM, 1950's war comics said:

as a minor league military historian i am aware of only three combat photographs that show both attacking and defending soldiers in the same photo

above is one , the other two are both from WW1 and one is well known and published often and the third is quite obscure and fascinating......

Tell me more!  

And congrats to creaturefan on those ECs. My runs of Frontline and TFT are among my favourite books.

@1950's war comics Would love to hear more!

This one is reportedly from the 1914 Christmas truce ... not sure if it counts:

1 hour ago, 707comics said:

@1950's war comics Would love to hear more!

This one is reportedly from the 1914 Christmas truce ... not sure if it counts:

 

thanks ,there are gadzillions of POW photo's showing both sides , and quite a few from the Christmas truce

only three photo's i know of that are combat action photo's though......

i will have to do some digging to find those other two combat photo's showing both attacker and defender , one i have never seen except for being published in a book i have that i would have to dig out  from my library,,, the other photo is quite common , will find it soon but until then..

i have not read otherwise but i believe this haunting photo is either staged or from a movie , that or an extremely brave German soldier risked death and waited until an advancing French squad was almost on top of him to take the picture,.. probably from inside a concrete bunker if the photo is real , It is hard to tell if the leading French soldier has just been shot or if he is throwing a grenade,...can't tell but it is likely that the photographer would be shooting a gun rather than shooting a photo under these circumstances .. so even though the photo looks real i have a hard time believing it although i have not read one way or another about the photo's legitimacy .......

@creaturefan95, i hope you don't mind i have hijacked your thread  keep posting them sweet EC's and any other war comic 

actually in the Water Cooler i sort of hijacked the "Dunkirk" movie thread to post some more of my military history posts  

@AJD and @707comics thank you for reading my war related posts , i'm not 1950's war comics for nothing  

as i mentioned above , i have sort of hijacked the "dunkirk" movie thread in the water cooler and have begun slowly posting war related items i think people would find interesting 

A French assault on German positions. Champagne, France., 1917

often published photo,.. the German soldier on the right has placed an iron/steel shield in his front for protection his bullet has found its mark, the color of the french uniforms were horizon blue...

sad photograph as the French have no chance advancing in the open against an opponent under cover.

a legitimate photograph by all accounts but one wonders if the photographer must have had his camera raised up on a pole due to the height of the photo in comparison to

the ground

3 hours ago, 1950's war comics said:

i will have to do some digging to find those other two combat photo's showing both attacker and defender , one i have never seen except for being published in a book i have that i would have to dig out  from my library,,, the other photo is quite common , will find it soon but until then..

i have not read otherwise but i believe this haunting photo is either staged or from a movie , that or an extremely brave German soldier risked death and waited until an advancing French squad was almost on top of him to take the picture,.. probably from inside a concrete bunker if the photo is real , It is hard to tell if the leading French soldier has just been shot or if he is throwing a grenade,...can't tell but it is likely that the photographer would be shooting a gun rather than shooting a photo under these circumstances .. so even though the photo looks real i have a hard time believing it although i have not read one way or another about the photo's legitimacy .......

It's apparently a still from Verdun, visions d'histoire (1928):

http://blogs.webster.edu/webstertoday/2015/02/02/verdun-visions-history-francophone/

The film is on YouTube if you want to see for yourself:

3 hours ago, 1950's war comics said:

i will have to do some digging to find those other two combat photo's showing both attacker and defender , one i have never seen except for being published in a book i have that i would have to dig out  from my library,,, the other photo is quite common , will find it soon but until then..

i have not read otherwise but i believe this haunting photo is either staged or from a movie , that or an extremely brave German soldier risked death and waited until an advancing French squad was almost on top of him to take the picture,.. probably from inside a concrete bunker if the photo is real , It is hard to tell if the leading French soldier has just been shot or if he is throwing a grenade,...can't tell but it is likely that the photographer would be shooting a gun rather than shooting a photo under these circumstances .. so even though the photo looks real i have a hard time believing it although i have not read one way or another about the photo's legitimacy .......

The photograph is from a movie as i suspected and may have known at one time but forgot... although i cannot find the exact scene when scanning through the movie

MIDWEST PREMIERE

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Armistice, Léon Poirier recreates the Battle of Verdun with soldiers who took part in it. An epic film, with a true emotional strength with no “real” characters but symbolic figures instead: the French soldier, the German soldier, the mother, the young girl, the intellectual… This pacifist feature was restored in 2006 by the Toulouse Cinematheque at L’immagine Ritrovata’s lab (Bologna, Italy) with the support of the Groupama Gan Foundation for Cinema. (2K DCP presentation)

Thanks @creaturefan95 that was some good military photography investigating 

makes me suspect the authenticity of the 1917 Champagne photograph due the similarities of the high camera angle  although i have never read anything to lead me believe it is not real..hmmmmm

19 hours ago, 1950's war comics said:

The photograph is from a movie as i suspected and may have known at one time but forgot... although i cannot find the exact scene when scanning through the movie

 

MIDWEST PREMIERE

To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Armistice, Léon Poirier recreates the Battle of Verdun with soldiers who took part in it. An epic film, with a true emotional strength with no “real” characters but symbolic figures instead: the French soldier, the German soldier, the mother, the young girl, the intellectual… This pacifist feature was restored in 2006 by the Toulouse Cinematheque at L’immagine Ritrovata’s lab (Bologna, Italy) with the support of the Groupama Gan Foundation for Cinema. (2K DCP presentation)

I found a source that indicates the above image was in this issue of a French film magazine (not mine):

photo still from the movie does look totally authentic except that no cameraman would likely be there in real life.....

what do you think of the 1917 Champagne photo ?

41 minutes ago, 1950's war comics said:

photo still from the movie does look totally authentic except that no cameraman would likely be there in real life.....

what do you think of the 1917 Champagne photo ?

I think it could be another image from the same film 

Thanks

i am starting to believe that so myself , i have looked at this photo for more than 40 years and have always been fascinated by it and have believed it to be real but now i'm wondering,.... the camera angle is just too high to make sense,?? why would a small squad be moving forward in a pure suicidal charge and how did they get that far in the first

place , lots of  questions , i will search the internet to see if i can find any answers on the 1917 Champagne photo

@creaturefan95 i think you are on to something and its like a light bulb has gone off in my head ....

i know that much has been written about the mis-labeling of civil war photos and such , but have not read much about faked WW1 photo's 

i am inclined to believe this widely published photo of US soldiers is not real anymore due to the extremely high camera angle that looks to be a good 15 feet above the soldiers and not very far away... plus the same lingering smoke  that is in the Verdun photo and the 1917 Champagne photo .....

On 2/6/2018 at 8:33 PM, 1950's war comics said:

A French assault on German positions. Champagne, France., 1917

 

I found the movie in HD and watched it at two times the normal speed but did not see the above scene.

How realistic is the scenario on the cover of Star Spangled War Stories #25 and is the corresponding first story any better?

Not a very realistic cover and the story was not much better,,, it seems DC

 war liked to do these "raft" covers quite regular and in the OOAW series one of their raft covers is the most cartoonish and worst cover of the entire GA/SA run

OOAW #30 - worst cover of all imo

I'm afraid these sorts of war comics are why I thought I didn't like the genre until I discovered the ECs. Unrealistic and a bit silly, rather than gritty and human. The "taking out a zero with the drop tank" bit has to be right up there with the worst.

That said, I bought hundreds of British digest-sized war comics as a kid and really like them. I picked up a couple recently out of nostalgia and was appalled by the dialogue - all "Take that Jerry!" and "bang on target old chap, that'll give the huns something to think about".  

Any thoughts on the cover of All-American Men of War #10 and how the accompanying feature compares to it? 

@AJD What do you think of Atlas' combat covers and stories?