ComCam - Non-Traditional Media?

Written on JANUARY 11, 2012 AT 7:48 AM by JTOZER

Retired Combat Photographer Reflects on Career That Spanned Three Wars

By Randy Roughton
www.airman.dodlive.mil

Nearly a decade before he captured motion pictures of bombing missions over Nazi-controlled Europe, a 12-year-old aspiring photographer was in a tree house with his Kodak Brownie.

When retired Chief Master Sgt. Douglas W. Morrell was a boy growing up in Nebraska, he photographed family vacations. One day, a small-town attorney offered to pay him for a picture to help him fight a lawsuit. The lawyer believed the plaintiff wasn’t as hurt from an accident as he’d pretended, so he asked the boy to climb into a neighbor’s tree house until just the right moment.

“I heard the front door slam, and this guy comes out and takes off all of his harnesses, pads and braces,” Morrell said. “Then he gets his shovel and starts digging potatoes in his garden, and I’m catching all of this. That was the start of it all.” Morrell’s love of photography was rivaled only by an obsession to fly, so he joined the Army Air Corps just before World War II. He began a combat photography career that included 32 combat missions and four months as a prisoner-of-war in Romania.

Morrell, who received two Purple Hearts and the Bronze Star, bailed out of three airplanes during World War II and in Vietnam after they were hit by enemy fire. The first time he bailed out, he had to evade capture for 25 days.

“That particular mission was practically a milk run for me, compared to the others,” said Morrell, now 92 and living in Highland, Calif.

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