Death Stops the Shutter

Photographer Robert Capa, who spoke five languages, was once asked which language he "thought" in. After mulling over the question, Capa answered: "I think in pictures." Most of the pictures Capa thought in were of war. As a LIFE staffer in World War II, Capa earned a reputation as the best combat photographer in the world. Although he hated war ("It is like an aging actress: more and more dangerous, and less and less photogenic"), Capa was seldom far from the front lines. Armed with three cameras and a flask of Scotch, he jumped with U.S paratroopers into Nazi-held Germany. At Anzio he landed with the assault troops; on D-day he hit Omaha Beach with the first wave of the 1st Division. "For a war correspondent to miss an invasion," Capa said jauntily, "is like refusing a date with Lana Turner after completing a five-year stretch in Sing Sing."

The pictures Capa liked best were those that told the "whole story," like his photo of an American machine gunner the instant he was killed, or his pictures of half-drowned G.I.s crawling through the heavy surf toward the Normandy beaches. Photographer Capa was no master technician; under battle conditions his lighting and his focus were often faulty. He got his best pictures by knowing and understanding war, and by staying close to it. "If your pictures aren't good," he was fond of saying, "you aren't close enough." The late Brigadier General Teddy Roosevelt once said: "Bob knows more about the art of war than many four-star generals." He also had a way with people and a flair for "getting around."

Salons & Saloons. Capa was born Andre Friedmann in Hungary. At 18 he went to Germany to study sociology, started to earn his way as a part-time photographer. When Hitler came to power, Capa skied across the border into Austria, then went to Paris, where he hit upon a unique scheme to sell his pictures. He invented a famed photographer--himself. He posed as darkroom assistant for "a rich, talented American photographer named Robert Capa." French newspapers and magazines were first impressed with the nonexistent Capa's buildup. Then they were impressed with the pictures Andre Friedmann sold them. He did so well selling them that he changed his name to Capa, married Gerda Taro, his pretty assistant, and went off to Spain to cover the civil war. After his wife was crushed to death by a retreating Loyalist tank, Capa left Spain to photograph the war in China.

Self-assured and suave, Capa was equally at home in the salons of Mayfair or in the waterfront saloons of Marseille. But it was on the battlefronts of World War II that Photographer Capa cut a commanding figure. Once with the 82nd Airborne Division, an admiring paratrooper who was preparing to jump turned to Capa and said seriously: "I don't like your job, pal. It's too dangerous." Near Bastogne, Capa got in front of an advancing U.S. column and was "captured" by G.I.s, suspicious of his thickly accented English. (He was freed after showing his photographer's pass.) After the Germans surrendered at Cherbourg, Capa was trying to photograph an arrogant Nazi general who turned his back to Capa and said haughtily that he was "bored" with the freedom of photographers. Needled Capa: "And I am bored with photographing defeated German generals." Angrily, the general wheeled around, and Capa got just the shot he wanted.

Croix de Guerre. At war's end Capa's excellent war record helped him to become a U.S. citizen. With four other top photographers Capa formed Magnum Photos, a cooperative agency. Capa went to Russia with John Steinback (TIME, Jan. 26, 1948), made two trips to cover the Israeli-Arab war. By choice Capa missed the Korean war. "I [am] very happy to be an unemployed war photographer," he once said, "and I hope to stay unemployed as a war photographer till the end of my life." But a month ago, in Japan, Capa changed his mind. LIFE asked him to cover the war in Indo-China, and he was quickly on his way to Hanoi. After he arrived he made a typically cocky pronouncement to newsmen, who have been complaining that censorship was preventing them from getting news. "You guys . . . don't appreciate that this is a reporter's war," said Capa. "Nobody knows anything and nobody tells you anything, and that means a good reporter can go out and get a beat every day."

One day last week, Photographer Capa, TIME Correspondent John Mecklin and Scripps-Howard's Jim Lucas set out at dawn with a French mechanized column to push deep into enemy-infested territory. Amidst exploding land mines, mortar fire and whining snipers' bullets, Capa sat in the front of the jeep, a thermos of iced tea and a jug of cognac at his side, Nikon and Contax cameras around his neck. Often the column was stopped by a volley of bullets or an exploding mine. Every time, Capa jumped out and snapped pictures as French soldiers searched for the source of the gunfire.

Early in the afternoon, the column was again stopped by an enemy attack. Capa jumped down, announced that he was "going up the road a little bit," and asked the others to "look for me when you get started."

Twenty minutes later they found him, 75 yards up the road. He had been killed by a Communist land mine.* In Hanoi, while a military honor guard stood by his casket, the French northern-front commander, General Rene Cogny, awarded a posthumous Croix de Guerre with palm leaf to Robert Capa, 40, the first U.S. correspondent to be killed in the Indo-China war. Said Cogny: "He fell like a soldier. He deserves a soldier's honors."

* Hours after his death, a cable arrived for Capa informing him that Swiss-born Werner Bischof, 38, another Magnum photographer and one of Capa's closest friends, was killed in Peru when the truck he was riding in plunged into a 1,500-ft.-deep canyon. This week LIFE and TIME (see NEWS IN PICTURES) publish the photographs taken by Capa the day he was killed.

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