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| An Army port company GI loading supplies in a ship’s hold. |
Marvin Newman served in the same unit as my grandfather in WWII. They were in the 304th Port Company, which unloaded supplies in Normandy and Antwerp. Newman’s son found me through this blog and shared images of his dad’s wartime photo album. Marvin was obviously a talented artist. His son says that he worked as a book cover desigenr after the war.
The above illustration shows the kind of work these port company guys were doing. The GI is loading ammunition boxes onto a wooden pallet. The loaded pallet was then hoisted out of the ship’s hold and swung into a waiting barge, landing craft, or DUKW, which was then sailed to the Normandy beaches. In the port of Antwerp, the supplies were simply lowered onto the dock (while German v-bombs fell around them).
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| V-mail illustrated by Marvin. |
This second cartoon was drawn on v-mail. To save on supply ship cargo space, GIs wrote letters home on these v-mail forms. These were photographed, and collected onto film for transport. Once the film reached the US, the pictures of the letters were enlarged and printed for delivery. This letter by Marvin was probably drawn after Germany surrendered when there was more leisure time.
I have another post showing the illustrations that Marvin drew directly into his photo album pages.
See it here.
