Medina: WW II veteran's color war films discovered

MEDINA -- A World War II veteran is making another contribution to U.S. history, more than 60 years after the Bronze Star recipient served his country.

Herman Graebner, 89, remembers virtually every detail of his four years in the U.S. Army. What he didn't reveal until recently though, was that he had shot two reels of color movie film of the action he saw in the war.

Graebner, spry, alert, and bright eyed, says he put the two canisters of film into a box sometime after the war ended in 1945. "I had come back home," he said, "and my wife Marilynn and I were starting a family."

Three daughters and more than 60 years later, Captain Graebner's re-discovered treasures will become part of a History Channel documentary series.

"The value of what Herm has captured on 8 millimeter film is not only a documentary, but a record that will soon be gone," says Dr. James Banks, Graebner's neighbor, and an historian with the Crile Archives at Tri-C West.

"I say that they'll be gone because 15 years from now there might not be any World War II vets left to give us their first-hand accounts of what they did and what they saw," Banks tells WKYC.

A few years ago Banks became aware of his neighbor's rare color films and had them preserved at his Crile Archives. Then a few weeks ago the two men were filmed at their homes in Medina for the History Channel special that will feature such "basement discoveries."

The 38 minutes of film document Graebner's experiences as he trekked across Europe in 1944 and 1945 as a member of the Army's 5th Armored Division.

"There's one almost near the end of the war where our observation planes shot down a German observation plane, a Storch, a short takeoff and landing plane, and I got pictures of that and a video here," Graebner explained, as the memories of what he'd filmed came back in every detail.

"These aerial photographs of Aachen, Germany are just fantastic," he continued to recall, "they were taken at dusk in the evening."

"I filmed the Siegfried line, the bomb craters," he told WKYC, "and then on Christmas Day 1944 I've got a picture of our Christmas dinner with a turned over German tank in the background. It's beautiful color."

Herman Graebner says he's always been a photo buff, beginning with his days at Purdue University where he was photo editor.

"I've had a camera in my hands my whole life so it was just natural that I had to take pictures of whatever I was doing," he explained. And soon his once hidden treasures and his personal account of his wartime experiences will be a new gift to history.