Martin bought a second-hand roadster (In his confession Martin Pearson stated: “Until I was in the army I never had a brand-new thing in my life. All my clothing, shoes, and toys were hand-me-downs from my brothers.”) and the photography business went into a slump; all the local people had photos and in the winter there weren't any tourists. Martin took pictures of a forest fire and sold them to a Syracuse paper, soon became a free-lance photographer for several small country papers. He would ride around the countryside, snapping weddings, accidents, church bazaars; returning to sell pictures to the people in the photos, to the local papers, and sometimes to papers in Syracuse, Ithaca, and Buffalo. Although he worked hard, had a good summer trade, Martin never averaged more than thirty dollars a week for a year.
When he was twenty-two, Mary graduated from college and was immediately hired to teach at the Bay Corners school. She and Martin were married and he moved into the Marsh apartment over the store. By local standards they had a decent income and Martin wasn't unhappy—he was bored. Nine months after they were married he received his draft notice and according to his own statement: “If I felt anything it was relief.”
Martin landed in an infantry basic training camp in the South. Every Friday afternoon the soldiers were reviewed by the elderly colonel in command. One Friday, while he was barracks orderly, Martin took his miniature camera and photographed the parade grounds. Using the camera as an en-larger, he ran off a few prints, found the soldiers eager to get copies—they offered him as much as five dollars per copy. Martin immediately wired Mary to send him supplies and was soon doing a flourishing business. A camp newspaper was being set up and Martin was made a Pfc., kept on permanent cadre, and assigned to the paper.
A large and steady stream of new men went through the camp, each new G.I. wanting a picture to send home. Martin had a stock shot in which he lay behind a small hill and snapped the new soldier jumping over the top, rifle and bayonet in hand, a scowl on his face. This was the five-dollar special and every payday Martin's hands were full of money, and it was all profit as he was now using army film and paper. Mary wrote dutiful letters, sent him homemade cookies and asked when he was coming home on leave, but business was too good for Martin to take time off. The editor of the camp newspaper was an earnest young man who was transferred in 1943 to Yank magazine. He wrote Martin the magazine might be interested in him too, but Sergeant Pearson wasn't the least interested in leaving his cozy deal.
In 1944 the camp cadre was suddenly shipped to Camp Kilmer, broken up for overseas shipment. Martin spent a fast week-end with Mary in New York City and in a fit of tender love-making gave her eighteen hundred dollars he had saved up, told her he'd won it in a crap game.
Three weeks later Martin was hanging around a huge repple-depple outside Naples, seemed to be taking his basic over again. One day Pearson read an article in Yank by his former camp editor and wrote to him, asking if it was still possible to be assigned to the magazine. The Yank man was stationed in Rome and to Martin's astonishment he spoke to somebody on Stars and Stripes and Martin was soon sent to Rome as a photographer on the army newspaper.
Pearson learned a great deal about photography here, for the other cameramen had all been professional newspaper and magazine photographers. Martin covered the front lines, flew a bombing mission, and rode a PT boat to Yugoslavia. Life was exciting but he missed the money he'd made back in the States and Pearson was constantly searching for an angle. Black-market cigarettes were small time; a bigger deal was selling G.I. photographic paper to Italian studios, but that was risky.
Almost any sort of camera sold for several hundred dollars, while a good camera would bring a thousand or more from the G.I.'s. A Yank photographer had a map of Germany with the towns with camera factories circled and he often talked of coming into one of these towns with the troops and “grabbing off a Rolleiflex or a Leica for myself.”
Martin saw bigger possibilities, copied the map when he was sent into France after D-day. Months later Martin was with an infantry company when they stormed a German city noted for its expensive reflex cameras. While the soldiers were mopping up snipers, Martin drove a jeep directly to the factory, walked in holding a carbine to find Polish slave laborers still at work.
They stared at him without much emotion, only a kind of patient beaten weariness, and stood at their benches as Martin carried twenty-seven cameras (each in a neat wooden box) out to his jeep. The Nazi factory manager, finally convinced Martin was alone, at last came out of his office, demanded to know what the hell Pearson was doing.
Martin answered by busting his head open with the carbine, then shouted at the Poles, “You're free! Understand—free! Take what you want and scram!” He waved his hands at the open doors, but they still didn't move. Martin had taken all the rations out of his jeep, to make room for the cameras, and he handed these out. When he left he saw the Poles gulping the rations, then trooping out with whatever instruments they could carry, and soon the factory went up in flames.
After giving cameras to the motor pool sergeant, the PRO captain, and several others, Martin still had sixteen cameras and within the following month he was able to sell these for an average of $800 each, giving him nearly $13,000.
When the war in Europe was over Martin was stationed in Frankfurt, then in Paris, and in both cities he lived well, for he was an American sergeant with money and a PX card that meant cigarettes, candy, and soap. He got into some big crap games, and at one time his $13,000 went to $21,000 and once it shrunk to $4,500. He had $11,000 in Allied currency when he was awaiting shipment back to the States. He managed to change this into $8,500 in American money and money orders.
In January, 1946, Pearson was discharged and returned to Bay Corners. Mary Pearson had carefully banked all his allotment checks, already picked out a house they would buy, with a garage that could be made into a studio. He never told her about his money. In his confession Pearson stated:
I really don't know why I kept the money a secret from my wife. But I did. It wasn't the money, rather it was something I knew I could never explain to her. She would think it wrong and well... to me it wasn't a matter of right or wrong. I'd merely been lucky.
When they were married Mary, as the college graduate, had been the brains and Martin a simple farm boy. But the Martin Pearson who returned to Bay Corners knew all the angles, spoke French, Italian, and German, had slept with many women, seen bombed cities and dead men and women, sunned himself on Capri, the Venice Lido, the beach at Cannes. He looked at the plain, plump, country-school teacher who was his wife and told her he couldn't take Bay Corners any longer. He didn't love Mary, but she was his wife and ho wanted to make a try at living with her.
Martin said he didn't know exactly what he wanted to do, but he wanted to live in New York City. Of course Mary Pearson thought this foolish: she had her teacher's job in Bay Corners, their families lived there, and ”... I hear some Syracuse people plan to build motels out by the lake. Means plenty of picture work for you. I figure you should make fifty dollars a week at least.”
She talked Martin into staying in Bay Corners and he remained there—for three months. The day they were to buy a house, he took a bus to New York City. Mary Pearson never knew what happened to him till seven years later when reporters swooped down on her with Martin's picture on the front page.
Pearson spent a restless year in New York, working in a photography studio. New York wasn't what he was looking for. He decided to study color photography under the G.I. Bill and while looking into the various schools, he overheard some ex-G.I.'s talking about Paris schools.