14 Facts About Damien Parer

Damien Peter Parer was an Australian war photographer.

Damien Parer became famous for his war photography of the Second World War, and was killed by Japanese machine-gun fire at Peleliu, Palau.

Damien Parer was born at Malvern in Melbourne, the seventh child of John Arthur Parer, a Spanish-Catalan-born hotel manager on King Island and his wife Teresa, the daughter of JP Carolin a Tasmanian and Mary Corcoran from Tipperary, Ireland.

Damien Parer joined the school's camera club, and decided that he wanted to be a photographer, rather than a priest.

Damien Parer said later that he learned most about photography from Dickinson and Max Dupain.

Damien Parer finished his apprenticeship in 1933 and, in mid-1934, obtained work with the director Charles Chauvel on the film Heritage, where he met and became friends with another up-and-coming filmmaker of the time, John Heyer.

In September 1935 Damien was offered and accepted via telegram the Assistant Cameraman position on Chauvel's film Rangle River.

Damien Parer filmed in Greece and in Syria, covering the action from aircraft, the deck of a ship and on the ground with the infantry.

In November 1941 while looking to cover the battle at Sidi Omar, Damien Parer was driving Major Randolph Churchill, only son of the wartime British PM Winston Churchill, and newsman Chester Wilmot when they nearly were killed by British artillery mistaking them for enemy combatants.

Damien Parer shot footage during the Battle of Guam that won him a posthumous Headliner Award from the American Journalists' Association.

Damien Parer was killed on 17 September 1944 by Japanese gunfire while filming a United States Marine advance in Palau on the island of Peleliu.

Damien Parer's body was initially buried in a shallow grave on Peleliu but later exhumed and moved to Makassar War Cemetery, Celebes, South Sulawesi, Indonesia after the war in 1946.

Damien Parer married Elizabeth Marie Cotter on 23 March 1944, and his son, named Damien, was born in 1945,6 months after his father had died.

Fragments of War: The Story of Damien Parer was a 1988 telemovie for Network 10 directed by John Duigan with Nicholas Eadie as Parer.