“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

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.