Reuben Weiner was born in Los Angeles, California on Bastille Day [Annotator's Note: national day of France] in July 1920. He grew up there and graduated in 1938 from L.A. High [Annotator's Note: Los Angeles High School, the oldest public school in Southern California]. Between 1938 and 1941 he attended City College [Annotator's Note: Los Angeles City College] and worked at Columbia Pictures [Annotator's Note: Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. in Culver City, California] as a messenger boy. He was interested in photography and got a position in the still lab. He had some early photo work in LOOK magazine [Annotator's Note: a biweekly magazine published in Des Moines, Iowa]. It was very difficult to get a card in the unions. To be a cameraman in the film industry was very difficult as one had to get a card. He could not get a job without a card and vice versa. He enlisted in the Army shortly after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, through the studios. They had programs for teaching photography to the military. Wiener was sent to Fort MacArthur and then Camp Carter, Missouri for Signal Corps headquarters [Annotator's Note: he likely means Fort Crowder, Neosho, Missouri]. Weiner joined his company there in 1942 after several months of basic training. They had no photographic equipment, so it was all physical training. He then transferred to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas and also went on training maneuvers in Louisiana. Weiner's group then went to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. He was on the ship [Annotator's Note: SS Pasteur] that was captured at the Battle of Oran [Annotator's Note: part of Operation Torch, invasion of French North Africa in November 1942]. The food and accommodations were awful. He would sneak on deck to get fresh air. It was a fast ship, so it did not travel in a convoy. They landed in Bristol, England during an air raid. They received their assignments in a small town nearby. Each unit would consist of two to three photographers and drivers with one officer. They lived with Canadian Forces at Epsom Downs racetracks [Annotator's Note: Surrey, England]. The Germans would dump any remaining bombs on the area, Leatherhead Surrey, when returning to their bases. Weiner was sent to the Airborne [Annotator's Note: US Army Airborne] which he had never heard of. They were asked to volunteer and took jump training with the 82nd [Annotator's Note: 82nd Airborne Division]. Jimmy Bates [Annotator's Note: James L. Bates, 165th Signal Photographic Company, 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division] tells him they made six jumps, including the one into Normandy, and not three as Weiner recalls.

Reuben Weiner enlisted as a photographer in the 165th Signal Photographic Company. He was assigned to the 4th Infantry Division and his first impression was that it was crazy to jump out of an airplane. It was fairly safe though, as the chute would automatically open when they jumped. There was a lot of on-the-job training, and most of the time they did not know where they were. He does not know where they left from for the Invasion of Normandy [Annotator's Note: D-Day, Normandy landings on 6 June 1944]. Weiner's unit consisted of First Lieutenant Witscher, the commanding officer, Joe Legalt, Jimmy Bates, and Harold Reilly from the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment [Annotator's Note: 325th Glider Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division]. After their jump they crossed the Merderet River in France. He ran into Harold who had made the jump okay and became a good friend. Later in Belgium, before the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or Ardennes Counteroffensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945, Ardennes, Belgium], Harold went to sick call and Weiner never saw him again. On the D-Day jump they all jumped with a different Regiment. Weiner went with the 508th Infantry Regiment [Annotator's Note: 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment], Joe with the 504th Infantry Regiment [Annotator's Note: 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division], Jimmy Bates with the 507th Infantry Regiment [Annotator's Note: 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division], and he is not sure who the lieutenant jumped with, but likely with Gavin's [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General James Maurice “Jumpin’ Jim” Gavin] group. Weiner was the only one who wound up with pictures. Joe was injured and captured by the Germans. Bates landed in the water and lost all of his equipment. Witscher got in a firefight and buried his equipment. Harold had stills but only Weiner had motion pictures. There was supposed to be a CP [Annotator's Note: command post] on the beach to give them new supplies but Weiner could not find one. Target drop was supposed to be Sainte-Mère-Église but they were dropped around ten miles away. On D-plus-two [Annotator's Note: D-Day plus two days, 8 June 1944] they arrived at the coast and dug in with the paratroopers. There was a halftrack with multiple .50s [Annotator's Note: either a M13 or M16 Multiple Gun Motor Carriage (MGMC)] every few hundred yards for antiaircraft defense along the beach. Two Messerschmitts [Annotator's Note: likely Messerschmitt Me-109 fighter aircraft] came in so low he could see the pilots about 50 yards offshore. As the second one went by, the tail was shot off the plane and he saw the pilot bail-out. Yet he had no film. The cameras had only about 100 feet of film. He shot about 1,500 to 2,000 feet of 35mm black and white movie film and about a half a dozen rolls of 35mm Leica stills. He finally found a naval officer who took his film back to London with him. From the lack of stills taken, a lot of what we now see as still pictures are actually stills from motion picture film.

Reuben Weiner has gone through compact disc collections of photos from World War 2 and he sees a lot of photos that come from his films, but he does not know what happened to a lot of the pictures. One photograph that is in the collection at The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana is an image of an American paratrooper patrol moving through a French courtyard in St. Marcouf, France on 8 June 1944. This is a still from a motion picture he took while assigned to the 325th Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division. Weiner saw Gavin [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General James Maurice "Jumpin' Jim" Gavin], Ridgway [Annotator's Note: US Army General Matthew Bunker Ridgeway] and the 325th Airborne Division colonel. He took their pictures in a ravine and then they stood up and just walked down the road. The Germans had been hiding and opened up with Schmeissers [Annotator's Note: MP-40, or Maschinenpistole 40, 9mm submachine gun]. A jeep driver was shot, and the jeep then headed straight towards Weiner. He had to get behind a pole and the jeep hit the pole. Everyone was scrambling and he somehow managed to get across the road. The image from St. Marouf was taken on D-plus-one [Annotator's Note: one day after the D-Day, Normandy Invasion began or 7 June 1944] on the way down to the coast. Nothing was happening but they went down a road boarded by a wall with a cemetery on one side and a church on the other. He only had one reel of film left and the soldiers were ordered to fix bayonets. He saw an Allied aircraft going overhead and being shot down. He's never seen those images. Back when his unit jumped on D-Day, they landed in a cow pasture that had pointed poles sticking out of the ground to stop the gliders. He fell on his back and he could not turn over due to the weight of his equipment. His straps were too tight for him to move. He saw figures coming towards him and he drew his revolver. They were friendlies and one of the guys cut him out of his harness. They ran back and were hunkering down as the Navy started shelling the area. The ditch was deep enough to protect them pretty well. The next morning, they came upon a village where there were a lot of dead French citizens. He and his unit sat down to eat some rations. He was taking photos and saw a German coming toward him. He shot at him with his .45 but did not hit him. About ten minutes later, the Germans attacked them with mortars but no one was injured. Later they came upon a farm house and while there, the Germans tried to take it back. Allied aircraft were called in and the Germans left. An older man showed up in full uniform with a walking stick. He thought it was Quentin Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Weiner is likely referring to Roosevelt's father, US Army Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, III], and he just walked up the road. He says these generals never ducked under fire. He was out of supplies, so he did not take any more pictures. They left the next day and came across two large guns which the Army destroyed. He rejoined his unit [Annotator's Note: 165th Signal Photographic Company] and that's when he got new supplies and a shower and found out his friend had been captured.

From Saint-Marcouf, France, Reuben Weiner went to Cherbourg with the 2nd Infantry Division. His unit slept where they could and moved between other divisions. He was placed in a new unit because his commander received a promotion and left. This new unit then went to St. Lo. He rode on the back of a tank destroyer and they were shelled regularly. They jumped into slit trenches and the man next to him lost an earlobe. Then they went to the Falaise Gap [Annotator's Note: Falaise Pocket or Battle of the Falaise Pocket took pace between 12 and 21 August 1944] just after the Air Force had just destroyed the area. Going down a road on the way to Paris, France, he spotted three aircraft coming towards them and he had the unit get off the road. Spitfires [Annotator's Note: British Supermarine Spitfire fightr aircraft] were strafing them, and they kept swapping positions until the pilots recognized the colored tarps that were codes for friendlies. They wagged their wings in apology. Weiner then joined the 2nd French Armored Division in the Versailles Forest. The Germans strafed them there. They went into Paris for the liberation of the city. Stevens, [Annotator's Note: George Cooper Stevens, US Army Signal Corps] a photographer had a battery of Hollywood cameras there. The combat photographers were envious of the attention Stevens got but he never went through combat and had great Mitchell cameras [Annotator's Note: Mitchell Standard Studio Camera, Mitchell Camera Corporation] to use, which they did not have.

Ruben Weiner says that the Eyemo camera [Annotator's Note: Bell & Howell Company 35mm, motion picture film camera] he used in World War 2 had been developed for the Air Force. It used a 100 foot roll of film which came in a can. They would lose a few feet to fog loading and unloading it. During the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or Ardennes Counteroffensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], it was so cold it would ruin the cameras. It made it difficult to get good continuity in film. [Annotator's Note: Weiner talks about technical issues with the cameras he used]. He said the German equipment was so much better than ours. The Eyemo was rugged though. He feels the US Army Air Corps and US Navy got the better equipment to use for filming. At the liberation of Paris, Weiner climbed up on the Arc de Triomphe and took pictures of the parades. After that he was assigned to the 5th Armored Division. They were sent out just before dark with no lights. They jumped out of the jeep they were in when the traffic in front of them stopped. The front jeep turned back and left them stranded along the road. They thought they were heading back towards camp when they were halted by an American trucking outfit who took them in for the night. The Germans had cut down trees to block the roads. They finally found the 5th Armored Division in Verviers, Belgium. They would be sent out from there on assignments and there would be no one for miles and miles which he says was frightening.

Reuben Weiner was sent on a run with the 105th Infantry Division. He stayed in a two-story building with a photo intelligence outfit. They had photos that showed the Germans were building up tanks along the border. He knew something was going to happen, but he said nobody was doing anything. He still wonders why. He was then sent about 100 miles to join the 82nd Airborne Division who had just come off of Market Garden [Annotator's Note: Operation Market Garden, Netherlands, 17 to 25 September 1944] for rest and rehabilitation. They then got sent up with the 101st Airborne Division to the Ardennes Forest in Belgium. He was shot at a few times while there. When the snow would clear, they could see the land mines literally covering the ground everywhere. His unit captured a German officer and sergeant once. The German sergeant screamed that he had been hit even though he had not. The officer was telling him to be quiet. The lieutenant gave Weiner a Mauser pistol and Zeiss binoculars that he took from the Germans as a souvenir. The next morning Weiner discovered they had been stolen. Someone even stole his pistol at two different times before this. After the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or Ardennes Counteroffensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], he was sent to take pictures of a German cemetery. The fog was really thick, and he could not find the cemetery. He wandered into the courtyard of a large estate. Mortar rounds started coming in and he was knocked into a cellar by the concussion. He says there was no hesitation by the Germans to shoot individuals with 88s [Annotator's Note: 88mm multi-purpose artillery].

After the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or Ardennes Counteroffensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945], Ruben Weiner was assigned to the 7th Armored Division sweeping in through Germany. He was in the leading reconnaissance outfit in an open jeep. They went through German towns and the troops were shooting up the towns. There was not much heavy fighting then. He came across two concentration camps that had been liberated. The Allied soldiers were making the civilians walk through the camps. He says that the horror of the camps was worse than the battlefield. In Pilsen, Czechoslovakia he learned Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt] had died. He was with the 82nd Airborne Division for the Pottsdam Conference in Berlin, Germany. He was sent home after approximately three years in the military. He left service as a Staff Sergeant. He had been offered a field commission as a second lieutenant to go to the Pacific, but the Japanese surrendered. He has never seen any of his footage from the concentration camps. He knows the Russians, French, English and Americans all took images. If people say It never happened, he wants to know what was he looking at. There were a lot of small Russian children, aged six to eight years old in some camps. Nothing could be done to save a lot of the people and in many places the bodies were piled very high. He saw places of execution, but he never saw a crematorium.

Ruben Weiner received the Bronze Star for his actions with the 7th Armored Division. He relates how they had come to a square and were stopped. There was a church steeple on the edge of the square and he took his pistol out and started shooting the church bells. He does not remember where this occurred. He does not recall where he crossed the Rhine River but he remembers he was with the 5th Armored Division as they came up to the Dragon's Teeth [Annotator's Note: Drachenzäahne; square-pyramidal fortifications of reinforced concrete]. It was very quiet until dark and then the Germans unleashed on them. They left there, driving on a flat tire. They were going across a bridge somewhere in the Black Forest and would have been sitting ducks if the Germans had attacked. After the war he went back to work for the motion picture studios. He shot a lot of Westerns and he would do anything to get experience. He was taking stills and introduced the studios to using 35mm cameras on the set for stills. The Hollywood strikes started just after he had returned to work. They stayed out on strike and then lost their jobs, so he opened a small portrait studio which failed. His father worked in the recycling industry and together they started a business. They had three different companies but sold them to Japanese businessmen. Weiner had three children and three grandchildren. One grandchild is an attorney and one is working on a doctorate in electrical engineering. His son is a dentist. Weiner feels that his military experience helped him later in business. He is interested in how many women are now involved in the military. He says he is rarely asked about his war experiences. He is disappointed that World War 2 is not really taught in schools. Some people today are not even sure who we fought in the war. He talks of Desert Storm [Annotator's Note: the Gulf War, code-named Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm against Iraq, from 2 August 1990 to 28 February 1991]. Shinseki [Annotator's Note: US Army General Eric Ken Shinseki, 34th Chief of Staff of the Army] was right about how to run the war but let go. He feels Iraq is like Vietnam [Annotator's Note: Vietnam War, or Second Indochina War, 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975] all over again. We can't just walk away. We did not lose Vietnam, we walked away and it was a worse war than World War 2. Desert Storm is even worse than that. He wonders who we are fighting and how can we tell.