Too young to join the Signal Corps, Tony Vaccaro defied his superiors and spirited a $47 camera into the teeth of battle, taking some of the most gripping photos of World War II while charting the course of his professional life.

Huddled alongside his fellow infantrymen in a transport speeding across the English Channel, Private First Class Tony Vaccaro didn’t know he was headed to Omaha Beach on June 18, 1944, a little more than a week after the D-Day invasion had commenced.