WWII, a flag, myself and social media: you can call it serendipity.

"Hi, Marina. The officer holding the flag is my father."

Colorizing photos is a lonely thing. Before I even begin the colorization itself, I spend hours – or even days – reading, researching, studying, and finding stories. It is something that I love to do, of course. But it’s also a time-consuming, sometimes emotionally draining process. My work gave me the opportunity to meet incredible people: teachers, renowned historians, authors; some of whom became close friends. However, none of this is enough to prepare me for the moments in which I have the opportunity to talk to relatives of people portrayed in the photos that I colorized.

It is as if those “historical figures” – strangers who ended up becoming so close to me, since I spend so many hours in “their company”, restoring and applying colors to their faded photos) – could jump off the screen and materialize in front of me. I cannot describe the feeling.

This is what happened when Frank Garahan, the son of Captain Thomas H. Garahan – portrayed in one of the dozens of World War II photos that I colorized - reached out to me on Twitter.

When the war broke out, Thomas H. Garahan was 28 years old, married for two years and father of one daughter, Kathy. His wife Kate was pregnant with their second child. He was older than most of his troops, had completed officer training and reached the rank of Captain in the 398th Regiment, Company E. Writing letters to Kate was a habit he practiced whenever possible, and fortunately, Kate saved all of his correspondence while overseas.

After reading these letters (quite a few times, I imagine) and his father’s raw first-person accounts, Frank decided to embark on a journey and retrace his footsteps:

“In 2015, I began to contemplate a trip that would retrace the entire combat tour of my father and the 100th Infantry Division in 1944-1945. I made several earlier trips to Germany and France and have even been to Bitche, France in 2005. To accomplish an accurate retracement I would need to employ different modes of travel along the way: air travel across the Atlantic Ocean instead of sailing, but beyond that, I was as precise as possible in sticking to the actual route.”

You can read his entire description of the journey here, but I’d like to focus on a particular bit to explain how our worlds collided – Mine, Captain Garahan’s and Frank’s – so many decades later.

On December 13, Tom’s company is part of a crushing offensive against unrelenting German positions as recorded in the history of the 398th Regiment:

“German resistance had become increasingly evident as we approached the gates to Bitche. Artillery fire was heavier and curtains of automatic fire screened strongpoints and towns. At the slightest provocation, the Germans poured in artillery. For the next two days, the Regiment moved with caution as it jockeyed into position for the attack on Reyersviller. Then suddenly on 13 December like a cloudburst, the 398th swept in upon Reyersviller behind a rolling barrage of artillery fire from the 375th Field Artillery Battalion. With the 2d Battalion in the lead, pillboxes and strongpoints, which only a short time ago were spitting fire and raking the terrain before them, were blasted open. The Krauts who could, came stumbling out to surrender. The battalion continued on to the high ground north of Reyersviller with Company F being the first unit of the 100th Division to reach the Maginot Line and come under the fire of its heavy guns. Outside of the town, the Regiment dug in before the divisional objective, Bitche.”

Tom’s action on December 13-14 earns him the award of the Bronze Star Medal. On March 16th at 7:30 am, E Company, followed by the second battalion, entered the streets of Bitche. The townspeople quickly became aware that liberation was at hand. Among the first to greet the troops was George Oblinger, innkeeper and proprietor of Auberge le Strasbourg. He brought out the American flag that his wife Maria had secretly created and presented it to Captain Thomas H. Garahan.

Soon after receiving the flag, Tom, with a few members of his company, took it to a second-floor apartment above a shop, just a few doors away. A war correspondent photographer was present and took the photo. And this is where I enter the story.

I colorized the original black and white photograph back in 2016, and since then I created a habit to republish it every year on my social media channels. This is exactly what I did on December 13, 2020 - not knowing what would happen a few hours later.

As soon as I saw the tweet, I sent a private message to Frank, and he explained how he first came across the colorized photograph:

“The short version is our family was always enamored with the photo but our father rarely spoke about it. After he died in 1988 we engaged his troops at reunions and when you colorized the photo it brought new life to the event and I became determined to learn more. This led to my trip and how the town has embraced your artwork as the most important milestone of the legacy of a history going back centuries. You should be so proud of your contribution to the history of Bitche France.”

So I told Frank that after a week in which I allowed the imposter syndrome to take over a few times, his message was everything I needed. I think the word here is serendipity. People often say that my work transforms lives. I dare to contest and say that I am the one who undergoes a profound transformation every time I have the privilege of hearing and telling these stories.

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