That's all good. What I meant about the officers is the inevitable, "Soldier, why are you filming the firefight instead of firing that weapon?" question. It's one thing if the army assigns you to document a battle, but quite another if you were ordered to fight it. Somehow, I don't think Lt. Calley would have let anyone who filmed the atrocities at My Lai in Viet Nam get out with that film... the massacre would have been revealed earlier, had there been any surviving photographic documentation.

Processing really was key to the scarcity of color from WWII. Kodachrome was a *very* complex process that involved removing a jet-black carbon backing from the film before it was processed, and "selective re-exposure" to red and blue light during development. Equipment was highly specialized. Temperature control was critical. Some variations of the process ran for over an hour and a half. The Kodak guys I knew recommended ± about 1/4°F, and that is hard to maintain anywhere, let alone in a war zone. Significant lab volume was required to keep the process economically viable, which is why it died. There are rumors of its rebirth, but...