Kilroy was there : a GI's war in photographs ; photos from the collection of Frank Kessler

When I saw Frank Kessler's collection of photographs I was struck by how different they were from the movie-camera views I see on television. No public relations pictures here, intended to glorify battle and rally support. These were up-close snapshots of the dirty, damp, and disheveled men in the rifle companies and tank units. It was the war as they endured it, as they struggled through it from the beaches of France to the streets of Berlin until they finally won it. —Tony Hillerman In 1941 Frank Kessler, a young accountant in Canton, Ohio, was drafted, assigned to an Army Signal Corps unit, and went away to photograph the war in Europe. In 1945, home again with his wife and children, he stored hundreds of those images of blood and battle in his attic. There they stayed until after his death. Then Lee Kessler, Franks estranged younger brother, sorted through boxes seeking to better know a brother hed never known very well. A flier who had been shot down and held in a German POW camp, Lee saw Franks photographs as images of a different side of war, one he never experienced. He was moved by what he saw and recognized their importance. He preserved them for all of us, carefully ordering them into albums and typing the information Frank had written on the backs of the photos. When I saw Frank Kesslers photographs I was struck by how different they were from the movie-camera views I see on television. No public relations pictures here, intended to glorify battle and rally support. These were up-close snapshots of the dirty, damp, and disheveled men in the rifle companies and tank units. It was the war as they endured it, as they struggled through it from the beaches of France to the streets of Berlin until they finally won it. With his camera Kessler was out there on the killing fields alongside the rest of us. . . . Kessler had a remarkable talent for making significant the ordinary images of war. With a snapshot of a U.S. Army medic lighting a cigarette for a bloody German soldier, he tells us how opposing troops came to see one another. . . . He shows us soldiers sitting on the muddy bank of a little stream trying to take a bath. He shows us Sherman tanks burning, young men dying, young men dead. Like no other photographs Ive seen, Kesslers capture the ugliness, wreckage, cold, and misery of war.from the Preface "Frank Kessler, a young accountant from Canton, Ohio, was drafted and assigned to an Army Signal Corps unit and then went away to war in Europe. In 1945, home again with his wife and children, he stored in his attic hundreds of photographs he had retrieved at the war's end. There they stayed until after his death." "Lee Kessler, Frank's younger brother, sorted through boxes seeking to better understand a brother he'd never known very well. A flier who had been shot down and held in a German POW camp, Lee recognized these photos as representing another side of war, one he had not experienced. He was moved by what he saw and realized their importance. He preserved the photos for all of us, carefully ordering them into albums and labeling them with information that Frank had written on the backs."--BOOK JACKET.

Frank Kessler, a young accountant from Canton, Ohio, was drafted and assigned to an Army Signal Corps unit and then went away to war in Europe. In 1945, home again with his wife and children, he stored in his attic hundreds of photographs he had retrieved at the war's end. There they stayed until after his death. Lee Kessler, Frank's younger brother, sorted through boxes seeking to better understand a brother he'd never known very well. A flier who had been shot down and held in a German POW camp, Lee recognized these photos as representing another side of war, one he had not experienced. He was moved by what he saw and realized their importance. He preserved the photos for all of us, carefully ordering them into albums and labeling them with information that Frank had written on the backs.

The first photographs of the D-day landing were taken by Signal Corps and delivered by carrier pigeons to command headquarters in England. One of the photographers was Frank Kessler, whose photographs presented here in this work follow the US Army's progress from the invasion of France on D-day to the surrender of Germany on May 8 1945. The photographs of Frank Kessler, a GI in the Army's Signal Corps during World War II, make ordinary images of war significant, capturing the up-close wreckage and misery of what the men in rifle companies and tank units struggled through, in a volume featuring commentary by World War II veteran and best-selling author Tony Hillerman