Combat Reels formed as a corporation in 2005 with a mission
to bring never before broadcast World War II film reels to the
public. However, this company was originally formed around the
personal research of Tyler Alberts, beginning in 1998, and today
he serves as the corporate president.
After the death of Alberts' grandfather, Tyler was struck with
a need to know as much as possible about his grandfather's experiences
in World War II. This need manifested itself into a quest of
talking to as many of the veteran's as possible, who served
with his grandfather in the 90th Infantry Division. The 90th
was formed in Abilene, Texas, but these soldiers not only came,
in some cases, from all over the USA, but they certainly scattered
at the end of the war. He soon found himself crisscrossing the
USA, again and again to do personal interviews with this quickly
disappearing population. It seems the long journey of searching
for film footage and historical information about this unit
at libraries across the country and in the National Archives
in Washington D.C. had begun.
After just two trips to the National Archives, he quickly located
all of the available and already identified footage of the 90th.
Strongly feeling that the 10 reels of labeled footage, that
he had found, could not be the only footage out of the over
10,000 World War II reels stored there, he decided to spend
more time going through the combat footage, reel by reel, searching
for any hidden or unidentified reels showing the information
he was looking for. His intuition would soon be confirmed, as
he began to find footage of the 90th Division on reels that
had no unit or location identification associated with them.
He also began noticing that there were many other units on these
reels that were not properly identified. From the beginning
of his dedicated research, he had been wise enough to catalog
all information on every reel associated with the European Theater.
This would become the database that Combat Reels would eventually
be built around.
Over the next 8 years, Mr. Alberts’ knowledge of World
War II would grow, and he would become a historian for the 90th
Division and the general conflict of Europe. He would also become
directly involved with providing information of previously unseen
90th Division footage to U.S. Army historians, veterans and
their family members. During the time fellow historians and
personal friends began to inquire about the availability of
footage for other units involved in the European Theater. Up
to this time Documentary film makers used the same war film
footage over and over. They just put it into a different format
to fit their varying subject matter. Enthusiasts were tired
of seeing the same old information redressed.
Alberts decided to find a way to bring never before broadcasted
footage, in its entirety, to the general public. He wanted to
design and produce a DVD for each division that fought in World
War II. This was truly the beginning of a new way to view the
lost footage of this heavily researched conflict. Now after
a long journey to bring these reels out of storage he is releasing
these videos to the general public for all to enjoy. It seems
the years of work are paying off as his first few releases have
generated a great deal of excitement and praise. In compliance
with his original vision, Combat Reels is dedicated to providing
more footage of all units in World War II and all other conflicts
America has been involved in.
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