WW2 in color

Unpublished color photos from the Normandy invasion, 6 June 1944:

On the anniversary of D-Day, LIFE.com presented a series of previously unpublished color photographs made in northwest France by Life photographer Frank Scherschel. The impulse behind posting the gallery, meanwhile, is really no more complicated than this: to commemorate those Allied troops who fought and died; to honor those who fought and lived; and to mark the occasion by also remembering what happened to countless towns— and townspeople— in northwest France and around the globe when the Second World War unleashed hell in the very midst of their lives. Frank Scherschel (1907-1981) was an award-winning staff photographer for Life well into the 1950s. His younger brother Joe was a Life photographer, as well.
In addition to the Normandy invasion, Frank Scherschel photographed the war in the Pacific, the 1947 wedding of Princess Elizabeth, the 1956 Democratic National Convention, collective farming in Czechoslovakia, Sir Winston Churchill (many times), art collector Peggy Guggenheim, road racing at Le Mans, baseball, football, boxing, a beard-growing contest in Michigan, and countless other people and events, both epic and forgotten.
Information on the specific locations or people who appear in the photographs in this gallery is not always available; Scherschel and his colleagues simply did not have the means to provide that sort of data for every single one of the countless photographs they made throughout the war.

Armor in Avranches

 British troops with Nazi flag.

 French house, German sign

 Clearing debris in St. Lo

 DUKW on the beach at Normandy

 GI resting near the Rapido River in Italy*

 GIs in a French town

 GIs in northwestern France

 GIs marching toward Rome*

 Armor in a French town

  A jeep in a French town

 LSTs on the beach at Normandy

 Medics on the road toward Rome*

 Monte Cassino*

 Northern France

 On the road to Rome*

 GIs with destroyed German tank

 Ruins in Northern France

  GIs with destroyed German tank near St. Gilles

 Armor headed toward Rome*

 Tank headed for Rome*

 GIs in a French town

 Ships on the beach at Normandy

 Jeeps in Mariguy

GI in northwestern France

Rico says that many of the Italian campaign photos (those marked with an asterisk) were taken by Carl Mydans, a Time/Life photographer that Rico knew (along with his son, Seth, who now works for Time, and his daughter, Misty) after Rico's parents bought the Mydans' house (now torn down by a Google millionaire) in Palo Alto, California.