Grafenwoehr Parade Ground, Germany, June 3, 1950: Members of the reviewing party come to attention as the colors are paraded past the reviewing stand.

The Big Red One — the Fighting First — celebrated the 33rd anniversary of its founding with a full-dress review on the huge Grafenwoehr parade ground. More than 20,000 soldiers marched past their commander, Maj. Gen. John E. Dahlquist, his honor guests, Lt. Gen. Clarence R. Huebner, the Commanding General of the USAREUR; Maj. Gen. Frank W. Milburn, depute Commanding General USAREUR and a large number of military officials on hand for the Organization Day ceremony.

Much of the digitization of Stars and Stripes’ negatives and photo prints occurs because the film or print has preservation issues. Archives staff conducted a preservation survey of its film-based collection in 2018 to identify film types and years showing signs of any deterioration and prioritized those for digitization.

One of the preservation issues found in our film collection can be seen here: the so called “silvering” or “silver mirroring” of silver based film which appears as a metallic sheen (seen here most in the top left and right sky) and occurs when the silver in the film starts to break down and moves to the surface. Irreversable it can — over time — destroy the image.