Sue Kaufman Schiller claims that the soldier in historic D-Day photo "The Face in the Surf" is her late father, Cpl. Joseph Kaufman.
By: Marisa Maldonado
EAST WINDSOR The man in the picture has fallen into the surf. Waves creep toward his shoulders as the battle rages on around him.
His identity who he was, if he survived the battle has been a mystery to many historians for the last 60 years, ever since photographer Robert Capa snapped the photograph on Omaha Beach in France during the historic D-Day invasion in 1944.
But if Sue Kaufman Schiller’s research is correct, the soldier in "The Face in the Surf" is her late father, Cpl. Joseph Kaufman. She, along with friend and co-worker Ed Humphrey, prepared 20 pages of letters, photographs and D-Day landing accounts which she said proves this.
Ms. Schiller, an assistant manager at Brunswick Lanes in East Windsor and a resident of Plainsboro, said she has known her father was the man in the photograph since childhood because the family hung a copy in their house.
Mr. Kaufman died in 1972 and although he rarely talked publicly about D-Day or the photograph, he acknowledged to his family that he was the soldier in the photograph.
Ms. Schiller said she did not have reason to look into the matter until last summer, when an article ran in World War II Magazine that identified Washington state resident Hu Riley as the man in the picture.
"This guy had no proof," said Ms. Schiller. "He was in the war, and I give him credit for coming out alive. However, we got the proof."
After an hour of crying, Ms. Schiller got to work. She enlisted Mr. Humphrey in compiling a report filled with letters and documents that she culled from family members, including her mother, Dee Smith, and her brother, Alan Kaufman.
Their findings show that Cpl. Kaufman arrived on the shore of Omaha Beach with the 743rd unit in the early morning hours on June 6, 1944, after traveling across the English Channel. His tank sank and Cpl. Kaufman had to rely on his skills as a lifeguard to travel safely to the shore, Mr. Humphrey said.
Delays in his unit’s plans caused his path to cross Mr. Capa’s between 6:30 and 7 a.m., when the picture was taken, Mr. Humphrey said.
Ms. Smith, who married Cpl. Kaufman in 1943, told her daughter that her husband wrote to her after he was hospitalized for a blood infection, recounting the battle.
"I looked up in the middle of all this hell, and there’s this nut taking pictures," Ms. Schiller recalls him saying.
They noted the resemblance to Cpl. Kaufman, including the nose, chin and dark eyes. Stephen Ambrose, the author of "D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II," wrote in a 1994 letter to the family that he was convinced Cpl. Kaufman was the man in the picture.
Mr. Ambrose had planned to credit Cpl. Kaufman as the soldier in the paperback edition of his book until he died.
"What a handsome guy and who could mistake that distinguished nose?" Mr. Ambrose wrote.
Cpl. Kaufman, the only member of his unit to survive the D-Day battle, received a Purple Heart for saving the life of a fellow soldier who was about to drown. But he returned home after the D-Day invasion, Ms. Schiller said, on disability leave after exploded shrapnel entered his circulation system.
He later worked as a mechanic and accountant and also owned a piano and organ store in Spring Valley, N.Y., she said.
Her father’s identity also was recognized, she said, through an invitation to the 1962 premiere of "The Longest Day," a movie depicting the D-Day invasion.
But Cpl. Kaufman is not the only soldier to be identified as the famous face.
Besides Mr. Riley, at least one other former soldier has come forward claiming himself as the man in the picture. In June 1984, Life magazine interviewed Edward J. Regan, who said he was the soldier in the picture.
Although the family hung in the basement a copy of the picture, which they got from Look magazine not long after the war, Ms. Schiller said her father rarely discussed the war when she was growing up.
"He came back very uptight," she said. "They went through hell out there."
Now she wants others to know. She pitched the story to People magazine, only to receive a response saying the magazine does not do those types of stories.
The magazine that profiled Mr. Riley also turned the story down, Ms. Schiller said. Despite her ongoing quest to get his identity out, she said the truth already is evident to herself and her family.
"We know who he is," she said. "We know that’s him. We know in our hearts it’s him, and that’s all that really matters."