Through the Lens of an American Soldier in Bloomington, MN

Upon graduation from North Quincy High School in June of 1940, Laban H "Whit" Whittaker was the staff cartoonist at the Quincy Patriot Ledger daily newspaper in Quincy Massachusetts. When the current staff photographer left to go to war, Whit assumed the position and quickly learned the ins and outs of the job. A year and a half later, Whit went off to war himself with the army at the age of twenty and brought along his now trusty camera.
Being in the media business, Whit was assigned to the Signal Corps whose task it was to assist in communications and construct signal towers in Allied controlled areas, first in Central Africa, then back to England and finally through Europe and on to Berlin. Fortunately for us Whit recorded his travels on film. He had his film developed as he traveled, placing the pictures in an album where he labeled the photos, and kept the negatives as well. Both the negatives and the album were employed to reproduce the photographs and other images used in this book as well as to identify their subjects and location. His captions are used throughout to provide his commentary on the subjects.
Whit kept a diary of his travels as well, selections of which are also included in this book to provide some background to the photos. The photographs are presented in fairly the same order as he had placed them in his album and are printed in either portrait or landscape mode to provide the best reproduction of the subjects.
Although the experiences are presented through the lens of just one man and his fellow soldiers, it provides a universal view of the sights many GIs encountered away from home and are rarely displayed. Whit's professional experience, combined with his fun-loving approach to life show through in this illustration of the minutia of daily army life. I hope you find the sights and experiences of one member of the 112th Airborne Signal Battalion during World War II both interesting and insightful.