Bedrooms of the Fallen: Honoring the Casualties of War

5 minute read

Bedrooms are places of repose and rejuvenation. The Beach Boys sang of such special sanctuaries long ago, as the Vietnam War began: “There’s a world where I can go, and tell my secrets to, in my room, in my room,” they crooned. “In this world I lock out all my worries and my fears…”

Why can’t they also be places of remembrance? That’s the idea behind a starkly beautiful new book, Bedrooms of the Fallen, by photographer Ashley Gilbertson. The volume consists of still-life photographs of 40 bedrooms, where troops from the U.S. and around the world slept before dying in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, or their aftermath. It’s to be published by the University of Chicago Press this June.

“When we lived with our parents, most of us had one room to ourselves. Our bedroom was the space we took ownership of, and in it we placed the things we loved most, reminders of what we longed for and aspired to,” Gilberston writes. “It was a place to which we could retreat from the world and feel protected. There we could express ourselves without judgment, and only our mothers could make us clean it.”

Gilbertson spent seven years on the book, including six in Iraq. He dedicates it to Marine Lance Corporal Billy Miller, who accompanied him up a minaret in Fallujah in 2004, to photograph a slain militant who had been using the mosque’s highest point as a sniper’s nest. “Moments before we reached the top, Miller was shot pointblank by an enemy fighter. I ran out as fast as I could, covered in Miller’s blood, forever changed,” Gilberston says. “I came home…Billy Miller didn’t. I needed to photograph his absence.”

He decided to honor some of those who never made it back by visiting their empty rooms, preserved, usually, by parents. You get a sense, gazing at the photos and reading of their losses, that some Moms and Dads secretly hope that so long as the bedrooms remain as they were, the sleepyheads that rested there might return.

The black and white photographs (“I wanted to present them neutrally, without the distraction of color, so that the viewer could digest as much of the detail as possible”) capture the personality of their occupants.

There are sports trophies and hockey sticks. Cheap stereos. A Lord of the Rings poster on one wall; the Soldier’s Creed on another. The deaths date back more than a decade, which may account for a set of World Book encyclopedia on one shelf, and the not-so-flat TV screens on several others. Two belonged to women; another pair belonged to soldiers who killed themselves.

Gilbertson says his wife, Joanna, came up with the idea of capturing war by photographing barren bedrooms. Their emptiness, he adds, says as much about war as any of the photographs he made in Iraq while under contract with the New York Times. “The tragedy and the finality of this space was, to my heart, a more telling and honest explanation of what I had witnessed in Iraq than the countless photographs I had made there,” he writes. “The exploding bombs, morgues overflowing with corpses, and wounded soldiers being loaded onto helicopters were thousands of miles away. But in bedrooms like this, it felt like the conflicts were just outside, pressing against the walls.”

A website dedicated to the effort sums it up like this: “The purpose of this project is to honor these fallen—not simply as soldiers, marines, airmen and seamen, but as sons, daughters, sisters and brothers—and to remind us that before they fought, they lived, and they slept, just like us, at home.”

Hanging heavily over every photograph is the unspoken truth that while war is ignited by the old, they don’t fight it. “One thing that all the rooms here have in common is that they belonged to young people, people just out of high school, mostly, people well on their way to adulthood but still living in their parents’ homes, sleeping in single beds, often with a teddy bear or two looking over them—like children,” author Philip Gourevitch notes in the foreword. “That is who we send to fight our wars for us, our children.”

These are simply temporal temples to those who once dreamed there, frozen in pillowed amber. “Now it’s dark and I’m alone,” Brian Wilson and his brothers sang, when they were about the same age as those troops who didn’t come back. “But I won’t be afraid…in my room.”


Ashley Gilbertson is a photographer at VII Photo and is principal at Shell Shock Pictures

Mark Thompson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has covered national security in Washington since 1979, and for TIME since 1994.


Bedrooms of the Fallen
Marine Cpl. Christopher G. Scherer, 21, was killed by a sniper on July 21, 2007, in Karmah, Iraq. He was from East Northport, New York. His bedroom was photographed in Feb. 2009. Ashley Gilbertson—VII Photo
Bedrooms of the Fallen
Rifleman Paul Donnachie, 18, was killed by small arms fire on April 29, 2007 in Basra, Iraq . He was from Reading, England. His bedroom was photographed on March 11, 2011. Ashley Gilbertson—VII Photo
Bedrooms of the Fallen
Army Pfc. Richard P. Langenbrunner, 19, committed suicide on April 17, 2007 in Rustimayah, Iraq. He was from Fort Wayne, Indiana. His bedroom was photographed in Feb. 2009. Ashley Gilbertson—VII Photo
Bedrooms of the Fallen
Army Pfc. Karina S. Lau, 20, died when her helicopter was shot down by insurgents on Nov. 2, 2003, in Falluja, Iraq. She was from Livingston, California. Her bedroom was photographed in Dec. 2009. Ashley Gilbertson—VII Photo
Bedrooms of the Fallen
Cpl. Andrew Grenon, 23, was killed when insurgents attacked his vehicle on Sept. 3, 2008, in Kandahar, Afghanistan. He was from Windsor, Ontario, Canada. His bedroom was photographed in Dec. 2010. Ashley Gilbertson—VII Photo
Bedrooms of the Fallen
Army Lt. Brian N. Bradshaw, 24, was killed in an IED attack on June 25, 2009 in Kheyl, Afghanistan. He was from Steilacoom, Washington. His bedroom was photographed in Feb. 2010. Ashley Gilbertson—VII Photo
Bedrooms of the Fallen
Army Spc. Ryan Yurchison, 27, died of an overdose at his drug dealers house after a tour of Iraq and struggling with PTSD, on May 22, 2010 in Youngstown, Ohio. He was from New Middletown, Ohio. His bedroom was photographed in Sept. 2011.Ashley Gilbertson—VII Photo
Bedrooms of the Fallen
Captain Manuel Fiorito, 27, was killed by a roadside bomb on May 5, 2006 in Musa Valley, Afghanistan. He was from Verona, Veneto province, Italy. His bedroom was photographed on Aug. 19, 2011. Ashley Gilbertson—VII Photo
Bedrooms of the Fallen
Pvt. Robert McLaren, 20, was killed by a roadside bomb in Helmand, Afghanistan on June 11, 2009. He was from Kintra Fionnphort, Isle of Mull, Scotland. His bedroom was photographed on March 8, 2011.Ashley Gilbertson—VII Photo
Bedrooms of the Fallen
Marine Cpl. Chef Jean-Nicolas Panezyck, 25, was killed by small arms fire on Aug. 23, 2010, in Tagab, Afghanistan. He was from Versailles, France. His Bedroom was photographed on March 20, 2011. Ashley Gilbertson—VII Photo
Bedrooms of the Fallen
Marine LCpl Blake H. Howey, 20, was killed by a roadside bomb on Feb. 18, 2007, in Falluja, Iraq. He was from Glendora, California. His bedroom was photographed in Dec. 2009.Ashley Gilbertson—VII Photo
Bedrooms of the Fallen
Marine 1st Lt. Ronald Winchester, 25, was killed by a roadside bomb in Qaim, Iraq, on Sept. 3, 2004. He was from Rockville Center, New York. His bedroom was photographed in Feb. 2011. Ashley Gilbertson—VII Photo
Bedrooms of the Fallen
Army Pfc. Jack T. Sweet, 19, was killed by a roadside bomb on Feb. 8, 2008, in Jawwalah, Iraq. He was from Alexandria Bay, New York. His bedroom was photographed in Dec. 2009.Ashley Gilbertson—VII Photo
Bedrooms of the Fallen
Caporale Maggiore Marco Pedone, 23, was killed by a roadside bomb on Oct. 9, 2010, in the Gulistan Valley, Afghanistan. He was from Patú, Lecce, Italy. His bedroom was photographed on Aug. 20, 2011.Ashley Gilbertson—VII Photo
Bedrooms of the Fallen
Soldier First Class Tim Hoogland, 20, was killed in an ambush in Deh Rawod, Afghanistan. He was from Vroomshoop, Overijissel, The Netherlands. His bedroom was photographed in Oct. 2010. Ashley Gilbertson—VII Photo
Bedrooms of the Fallen
LCpl. Daniel Cooper, 21, was killed by a roadside bombon Jan. 24, 2010 in Helmand, Afghanistan. He was from Hereford, Herefordshire, England. His bedroom was photographed on March 13, 2011. Ashley Gilbertson—VII Photo
Bedrooms of the Fallen
Army Pfc. Nils G. Thompson, 19, was killed Aug. 4 2005 by a sniper in Mosul, Iraq. He was from Confluence, Pennsylvania. His bedroom was photographed in Sept. 2007. Ashley Gilbertson—VII Photo

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