By Chuck Myers
Knight Ridder Newspapers

NEW YORK - As he stumbled and fell forward in the surf under heavy German gunfire at Normandy, 21-year-old U.S. Army Pvt. Edward Regan had no idea that he had caught the attention of another nearby D-day shooter - famed war photographer Robert Capa.

Virtually from the moment it was taken, Capa's famous blurred photograph of Regan stretched out in the water on D-day morning, which recently graced the cover of Newsweek magazine, became one of the most famous and enduring images of not only the invasion, but also of the war.

Regan was in Company K of the 116th Infantry Regiment's 3rd battalion when he landed with the second wave of U.S. troops to hit Omaha beach.

After a rough and choppy ride to the landing area, Regan exited his landing craft and stepped into forehead-high water. "When we jumped into the water it was just a matter of survival, not fighting - just survival," said the 71-year-old veteran, who recently was in New York to view the Capa D-day photographs at the International Center for Photography.

Burdened by 60 pounds of equipment and struggling to get ashore, the exhausted GI fell down into the water as he neared the beach. Waiting a few feet away was Capa, who snapped the now memorable image of him.

"When the picture was taken, I just couldn't make it any further. I was just physically and emotionally spent," remembered Regan. "I thought I'd flop down and rest - get my second wind back so to speak - and that's when that picture was taken."

Tired and preoccupied with the Germans up ahead, Regan says that he didn't see Capa take the picture. "I didn't see Robert Capa. I didn't see anybody take the picture. Of course, I think I was in that spot about 15 minutes before I went in, and he could have taken the picture and gone on    It was a sad, miserable and frightening scene, and I was scared to death."

After American troops beat back the Germans at Omaha, Regan's regiment advanced on the nearby town of St. Lo. There, he sustained a head wound from a German bullet that pierced his helmet and whipped around inside like a roulette wheel marble.

Remarkably, the bullet never penetrated his skull, and only caused a minor scalp wound.

When he returned to his home in Olyphant, Pa., Regan's mother showed him the picture that had appeared in Life magazine. Considering the facial features of the GI in the photograph and remembering his position on the beach that morning, Regan thought that it might be him.

Photographer Cornell Capa, the brother of the late Robert Capa, later sent Regan copies of the few pictures that survived from Capa's invasion rolls. The image of combat engineers preparing to destroy a beach obstacle corresponded to Regan's memory of the scene, and convinced him that he was indeed the soldier in Capa's photograph.

In 1984, Life magazine identified Regan as the soldier in the picture. Shortly afterward, however, the nephew of another D-day veteran wrote Life and said that it was actually his uncle who appears in the Capa photograph.

Nonetheless, Cornell Capa still remains certain that Regan is the soldier in the image. Author Richard Whelan also confirmed the same in his 1985 biography of Robert Capa.

After the war, Regan earned undergraduate and master's degrees and went to work for the Veterans Administration in Pennsylvania. Today, he is retired and lives with his wife, Eleanor, in Atlanta.

Regan returned to Normandy in 1984 for the first time to take part in the 40th anniversary of the invasion.

But he decided not go to France this year for the 50th anniversary.

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