--- title: Vietnam War: Looking Again at Larry Burrows' Photo, 'Reaching Out' description: LIFE.com revisits one of the most searing photographs made during the long, divisive war in Vietnam: Larry Burrows' 'Reaching Out' canonical: https://time.com/3491033/life-behind-the-picture-larry-burrows-reaching-out-vietnam-1966/ author: Ben Cosgrove article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-12-02T13:01:41.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:07:28.361Z og:title: Vietnam War: Looking Again at Larry Burrows' Photo, 'Reaching Out' og:description: LIFE.com revisits one of the most searing photographs made during the long, divisive war in Vietnam: Larry Burrows' 'Reaching Out' og:url: https://time.com/3491033/life-behind-the-picture-larry-burrows-reaching-out-vietnam-1966/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt208865dcb5c0557a/6987600cf887dc5b17e876ae/vietnam-war-larry-burrows-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1500 og:image:height: 844 og:image:alt: vietnam-war-larry-burrows-01 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Vietnam War: Looking Again at Larry Burrows' Photo, 'Reaching Out' twitter:description: LIFE.com revisits one of the most searing photographs made during the long, divisive war in Vietnam: Larry Burrows' 'Reaching Out' twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt208865dcb5c0557a/6987600cf887dc5b17e876ae/vietnam-war-larry-burrows-01.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Portrait From Hell: Larry Burrows' 'Reaching Out,' 1966 > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture recommendation newsletter, edited by culture editor Eliza Berman. Each week it surfaces the books, shows, films and ideas TIME's editors think are worth your attention, and explains why. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Does TIME have a culture newsletter? Yes. Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published weekly. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-worth-2026q3/newsletters?i=f0c9285b-9efb-47e0-9f49-44000a444918&cr=time-nl-worth-2026q3-v1) by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Dec 2, 2014 1:01 PM UTC  Wounded Marine Gunnery Sgt. Jeremiah Purdie (center, with bandaged head) reaches toward a stricken comrade after a fierce firefight south of the DMZ, Vietnam, October 1966. Wounded Marine Gunnery Sgt. Jeremiah Purdie (center, with bandaged head) reaches toward a stricken comrade after a fierce firefight south of the DMZ, Vietnam, October 1966. Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images by [Ben Cosgrove](https://time.com/author/ben-cosgrove/) ## Ben Cosgrove Dec 2, 2014 1:01 PM UTC In October 1966, on a mud-splattered hill just south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in [Vietnam](http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war), LIFE magazine’s Larry Burrows made a photograph that, for generations, has served as the most indelible, searing illustration of the horrors inherent in that long, divisive war — and, by implication, in all wars. In Burrows’ photo, commonly known as _Reaching Out_, an injured Marine — Gunnery Sgt. Jeremiah Purdie, a blood-stained bandage on his head — appears to be inexorably drawn to a stricken comrade. Here, in one astonishing frame, we witness tenderness and terror, desolation and fellowship — and, above all, we encounter the power of a simple human gesture to transform, if only for a moment, an utterly inhuman landscape. The longer we consider that scarred landscape, however, the more sinister — and unfathomable — it grows. The deep, ubiquitous mud slathered, it seems, on simply everything; trees ripped to jagged stumps by artillery shells and rifle fire; human figures distorted by wounds, bandages, helmets, flak jackets; and, perhaps most unbearably, the evident _normalcy_ of it all for the young Americans gathered there in the aftermath of a firefight on a godforsaken hilltop thousands of miles from home.  A black-and-white negative of a color image, depicting the scene on Hill 484 a few moments after Larry Burrows shot the picture that would become known as Reaching Out. Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images The scene, which might have been painted by [Hieronymus Bosch](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieronymus%5FBosch) — if Bosch had lived in an age of machine guns, helicopters and enormous, mechanized military interventions on the far side of the globe — possesses a riveting, nightmare quality that’s rarely been equaled in war photography, and certainly never surpassed. All the more extraordinary, then, that LIFE did not even publish the picture until several years after Burrows shot it. The magazine _did_ publish a number of other pictures Burrows made during that very same assignment, in October 1966 — pictures seen here, in this gallery on LIFE.com, along with other photos that did not originally run in LIFE. But it was not until five years later, in February 1971, that LIFE finally ran _Reaching Out_ for the first time. The occasion of its first publication was a somber one: an article commemorating Burrows, who was killed that month in a helicopter crash in Laos.  Larry Burrows (1926 - 1971) in Vietnam, 1965. Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images In that Feb. 19, 1971, issue, LIFE’s Managing Editor, Ralph Graves, wrote a moving, appropriately understated tribute titled, simply, “Larry Burrows, Photographer.” A week before, Graves noted, a helicopter carrying Burrows and fellow photographers Henri Huet of the Associated Press, Kent Potter of United Press International and Keisaburo Shimamoto of _Newsweek_ was shot down over Laos. “There is little hope,” Graves asserted, “that any survived.” He then wrote: --- > “” --- All these years later, it’s still worth recounting one small example of the way that the wry Briton endeared himself to his peers, as well as his subjects. In typed notes that accompanied Burrows’ film when it was flown from Vietnam to LIFE’s offices in New York, the photographer apologized — _apologized_ — for what he feared might be substandard descriptions of the scenes he shot, and how he shot them: “Sorry if my captioning is not up to standard,” Burrows wrote to his editors, “but with all that sniper fire around, I didn’t dare wave a white notebook.” In April 2008, after 37 years of rumors, false hopes and tireless effort by their families, colleagues and news organizations to find the remains of the four photographers killed in Laos in ’71, their partial remains were finally located and shipped to the States. Today, those remains reside in a stainless-steel box beneath the floor of the [Newseum](http://newseum.org/index.html) in Washington, D.C. Above them, in the museum’s memorial gallery, is a glass wall that bears the names of almost 2,000 journalists who, since 1837, have died while doing their jobs. [Kent Potter](http://www.corbisimages.com/photographer/kent-potter) was just 23 years old when he lost his life doing what he loved. [Keisaburo Shimamoto](http://www.newseum.org/scripts/Journalist/Detail.asp?PhotoID=731) was 34\. [Henri Huet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri%5FHuet) was 43\. Larry Burrows, the oldest of the bunch, was 44. _Liz Ronk, who edited this gallery, is the Photo Editor for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter_ [_@lizabethronk_](https://twitter.com/LizabethRonk)_._  Wounded Marine Gunnery Sgt. Jeremiah Purdie (center, with bandaged head) reaches toward a stricken comrade after a fierce firefight south of the DMZ, Vietnam, October 1966. Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  U.S. Marine in Vietnam, October 1966. Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. "Escorted by tanks and supported by air strikes that sear the jungle just ahead, troops of the Second Battalion, Fifth Marines, begin a sweep." Vietnam, October 1966. Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Caption from LIFE. "Four Marines recover the body of a fifth as their company comes under fire near Hill 484." Vietnam, October 1966\. NOTE: At right is the French-born photojournalist Catherine Leroy (1945 - 2006); she was cropped out of the version of this photo that originally ran in LIFE. Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. U.S. Marines carry their wounded during a firefight near the southern edge of the DMZ, Vietnam, October 1966. Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  American Marines aid wounded comrades during Operation Prairie near the DMZ during the Vietnam War, October 1966. Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. American Marines aid wounded comrades during Operation Prairie near the DMZ during the Vietnam War, October 1966. Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  American Marines aid a wounded comrade during Operation Prairie near the DMZ during the Vietnam War, October 1966. Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Cover image, LIFE magazine. American Marines aid a wounded comrade during Operation Prairie near the DMZ during the Vietnam War, October 1966. Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. An American Marine looks at the body of a North Vietnamese killed during Operation Prairie near the DMZ during the Vietnam War, October 1966. Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. A dazed, wounded American Marine gets bandaged during Operation Prairie near the DMZ during the Vietnam War, October 1966. Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  American Marines, Operation Prairie, near the DMZ during the Vietnam War, October 1966. Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. A wounded American Marine, Operation Prairie, near the DMZ during the Vietnam War, October 1966. Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. American Marines eat rations during a lull in the fighting near the DMZ during the Vietnam War, October 1966. Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Not published in LIFE. American Marines receive the sacrament of Communion during a lull in the fighting near the DMZ during the Vietnam War, October 1966. Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images   LIFE magazine, Oct. 28, 1966. Larry Burrows—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  LIFE magazine, Oct. 28, 1966. Larry Burrows—LIFE Magazine  LIFE magazine, Oct. 28, 1966. Larry Burrows—LIFE Magazine  LIFE magazine, Oct. 28, 1966. Larry Burrows—LIFE Magazine  LIFE magazine, Oct. 28, 1966. Larry Burrows—LIFE Magazine  LIFE magazine, Oct. 28, 1966. 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