About the Photographer: Col. Dr. Richard P. Johnson

Born in 1907 at New York City and growing up on the south side of Chicago, Col. Dr. Richard P. Johnson landed at Normandy on D-Day +12 as Commanding Officer of the US Army Medical Corps 45th Evacuation Hospital. After moving the 45th Evac across France and into Belgium, RP Johnson was promoted to Division Surgeon of the 2nd Armored Division in October 1944. After the war, his service continued at Fitzsimons General Hospital in Denver, at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Brooke General Hospital in San Antonio, and Letterman General Hospital in San Francisco. He retired from service in 1956 to take up civilian medical practice as Chief of Medicine at the Veterans Hospital at Rocky Hill, Connecticut. RP Johnson retired from the VA in 1969 to Old Saybrook, Connecticut, where he died in 1986 of cardiac arrest, while swimming.

For his service as CO of the 45th Evacuation Hospital he was awarded the Legion of Merit, and for his service as Division Surgeon of the 2AD he received the Bronze Star and the USA Typhus Commission Medal, as well as the Soviet Order of the Red Star and the Belgian Fourragère.

The photographs RP Johnson took while with the Second Armored Division were published in 2025 by his grandson and archivist, Eliot Masters, as 'On the road with the 2nd Armored Division (Hell on Wheels) from Limburg to Magdeburg, 1944-45' - the second volume of the series War without anger: An American medic in the European theatre, 1944-45 (Inspiratorium Press). Many of the photos can also be found on the RP Johnson Archive page on Facebook.