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EXCLUSIVE by Vikki White THEY were five of the greatest-ever filmmakers who answered the call of duty by swapping Tinseltown for the hell of battle.
Some were wounded as they risked their lives to show the world the horrors of war.
Westerns director John Ford was in the Pacific, Frank Capra was commissioned days after Pearl Harbor and John Huston filmed the bloody Italian campaign.
William Wyler joined B-17 Flying Fortresses on bombing raids but perhaps the most harrowing experiences were endured by George Stevens.
The celebrated director had made his name delighting film fans with witty and charming romcoms and musicals starring the likes of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.
After what he saw in the Second World War he never made another comedy.
His footage of prison camps Dachau and Duben opened the world's eyes to the monstrosities of the Holocaust.
For the first time people saw these concentration camps for what they really were - death factories. The bodies of men, women and children piled up in heaps and those still clinging to life were starved beyond recognition.
Stevens' heart-rending film would later be used in the Nuremberg trials, where 12 Nazis were sentenced to death.
The story of Stevens, who also filmed the D-Day Normandy landings with Ford, and the other directors is like a plot from one of their own blockbusters. And their experiences are being remembered and reflected on in a Netflix documentary series Five Came Back by some of today's cinematic greats - Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and Lawrence Kasdan.
Spielberg said the film from Dachau, people were killed, was footage the world had where nearly 32,000 pthe first Holocaust fever seen.
Lawrence Kasdan said: "might be prison camps xtermination camps. I e five directors Stevens' r was the most intense, g and in some ways the istory."
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