The Images That Moved Them Most: Photographers on America’s Veterans
The Images That Moved Them Most: Photographers on America’s Veterans
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Sterling Jones.Balazs Gardi, Oct. 25, 2007. Korengal Valley, Afghanistan.
"Minutes before the ambush men from Battle Company's Second Platoon stood surrounded by tall pine trees on top of the Abas-Ghar ridge listening to Specialist Sterling Jones spill a seemingly endless train of jokes, a performance that would put most professional comedians to shame. This was the third time I visited the notorious Korengal Valley, arguably the most dangerous battlefield in the Afghan war theatre at the time. This 6 miles long valley was just as crucial to smuggle in weapons and fighters from neighboring Pakistan almost three decades ago to crush the Soviet army as it was in 2007 to fight the occupying US forces. Seconds after the firefight broke out I saw Jones standing behind a giant tree trunk unleashing a shower of lead towards the invisible enemy. While we were pinned down the insurgents overran the nearby position of the scouts unit killing Staff Sergeant Larry Rougle.At the time I took this photo of Jones towards the end of the operation I did not know that same night his Company would lose two more soldiers, Sergeant Josh Brennan and Specialist Hugo Mendoza, nor that the US Army would abandon its posts in the Korengal Valley only a few years later.
When I look at this image I not only see an exhausted paratrooper but the faces of the comrades he lost, the bodies of dead villagers and the wounded women and children he saw. The photo of Jones makes me think of the true achievements and the real cost of war."Balazs Gardi
On Veterans Day, TIME explores the profound effects of war—both on those who serve, and the people who support them.
LightBox asked 26 documentary photographers who have covered conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan to describe which of their own photographs of veterans had a deep impact on their lives or moved them in a significant way.
Their testimonies are part of TIME’s veterans project. Find out more about it on the #TIMEvets page here.
Phil Bicker is a Senior Photo Editor at TIME
Corporal Brian Knight. David Guttenfelder, July 3, 2009. Helmand province, Afghanistan."In 2009, I joined the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, 1st Battalion 5th Marines on an operation into a district called Nawa in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. The Marines said that it was the biggest air assault since the Vietnam War. We were inserted by helicopter in the middle of the night and went on foot for days through the desert carrying everything on our backs. Resupplies were sling loaded into open terrain by helicopter every three days. It was one of the roughest, hottest trips I experienced during the decade I spent covering the war in Afghanistan.
This was July 3 at the end of the day. It was well over 100 degrees. The Marines had been walking since early morning and some guys had already been evacuated by helicopter for heat stroke and broken ankles. We passed by a few others lying in stretchers on the dirt road with IVs in their arms while medics and fellow marines poured water on their bare chests. Everyone still had more to travel and a river to cross. When they arrived they would still need to dig trenches so they could sleep under the ground for protection from Taliban mortor attacks. They were promised a resupply of water. Every fifty meters or so men would stop and stoop at the waste, trying to rest under these heavy packs and body armor. Cpl. Brian Knight had it the worst. He was one of the guys on the mortar team so on top of the water, food, usual combat kit and ammo, he also had to carry rockets, the mortar base plate, and more. He was only 21 years old and small. I think he told me that he weighed 140 pounds. His huge pack weighed the same.
The next morning was the 4th of July. So many others back home in the USA were grilling burgers and drinking cold beer by the lake that day. These guys woke up at first light, after sleeping in holes in the ground that looked like graves, hoping only some drinking water would arrive. I think about all of the guys I met over the years in Afghanistan and Iraq. I’d been living abroad my whole adult life and so these guys were the few Americans of their generation I’d ever really known. On Sept. 11, 2001, Brian Knight may have been in 7th or 8th grade."
David Guttenfelder—APTyson Johnson III. Nina Berman, May 6, 2004. Prichard, Ala.
"I had spent the previous eight months doing portraits and interviews with severely wounded veterans who had returned home from the Iraq War. Tyson Johnson III, 22, was one of the last veterans I photographed. He had been badly injured in a mortar attack on the Abu Ghraib prison.His job in the Army was to fix vehicles. He loved cars and trucks and said he could fix anything faster than anyone. He joined the military looking for a career and a purpose and to escape a home town that offered him nothing. Nearly half the young people in Prichard, Alabama live below the poverty line. 'All my high school friends are dead, in jail or cracked out, I knew where my life was heading so I joined the Army,' he told me.
Seeing him back at his mother’s home, I wondered what kind of future he might have. What will this country offer him now? To make matters worse, the military wanted his nearly $3000 signing bonus returned because he didn’t fulfill his whole contract – because he was injured. For a while he was homeless, living in his car. I kept in touch with him a bit, tried to help him in small ways, and eventually a national TV station featured his story and his debt was forgiven. But then a hurricane blew away his home, and I never found him again."
Nina Berman—NOORMarine from U.S. Marine Corps 2nd battalion, Echo Company.Stephen Dupont, Aug. 2005. Kunar province, Afghanistan.
"I was covering the Afghan national provincial elections in August 2005 and I was embedded with the U.S. Marines in Asadabad in Kunar Province. They were guarding a UN Compound at the time and there was torrential rain. I walked through the camp and noticed a Marine taking cover under a shelter and holding a white dog. It was one of those quite unexpected moments in war. The Marine staring back into my lens holding this puppy tenderly, it seemed he was taking solace from the estrangement and loneliness of being so far away from home. This moment for me captured an everyday scene in such an alien kind of landscape."Stephen DupontBobby Henline.Peter van Agtmael, June 2014. San Antonio. "Six months after shooting a photo essay about Bobby Henline for TIME, I went back to visit him in San Antonio. It can be a real leap of faith to trust a stranger with a camera but Bobby was always very self-assured about the process. I follow his Instagram account and noticed he'd been posting a lot of pictures of himself after work outs, as well as proud photos of his teenage son. I wanted to do something collaborative with him which intersected how I see him with how he sees himself. We decided to riff off one of his Instagram posts and do some father-son poses. His son Skyler looks strikingly like Bobby did when he first enlisted in the Army."Peter van Agtmael—Magnum10th Mountain Division.Robert Nickelsberg, August 2006. Nuristan province, Afghanistan.
"It was a blue cloudless morning in Kamdesh, a remote part of Nuristan province in eastern Afghanistan. The previous day’s 4-hour hike up a mountain to resupply a Combat Outpost had been grueling but without incident. Kamdesh was constructed for a Provincial Reconstruction Team and looked as though it was located deep at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, with craggy surrounding walls running vertically to the sky. This was a Hindu Kush mountain range where the landscape is not kind or forgiving.
The day’s resupply platoon jammed supplies into their empty backpacks and a hired Afghan loaded up a team of six donkeys with boxes. Ninety-minutes later, sounds of rocket-propelled grenade explosions and machine gun fire reverberated down to us inside the base. Radio chatter ensued. The group had been ambushed by Taliban fighters and within 20 minutes two wounded soldiers, came down under their own power, their bloodied heads bandaged. The third soldier needed more help. They had taken cover behind a rock and were hit by shrapnel and rock shards in their heads and shoulder while firing back. A Blackhawk Medevac helicopter was called in and extracted the wounded trio.
Three years later, on October 3, 2009 the outpost, which by then was known as Combat Outpost Keating, was overrun by 300 Taliban who had surrounded the camp from the ridgeline and soon broke through the perimeter wall. Only 60 men were defending the base at the time. In the fighting, eight soldiers were killed. As part of a larger plan, three days later the U.S. military abandoned the camp."
Robert NickelsbergStaff Sergeant Jeremy Boutwell.Stephanie Sinclair, Oct. 28, 2011. Camp Lejeune, N.C.
"Staff Sgt. Jeremy Boutwell, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 2003-2012, gets ready for the start of the 2011 U.S. Marine Corps Birthday Ball held especially for soldiers from the Wounded Warrior Battalion-East regiment. Boutwell was severely wounded with brain and eye injuries in an attack during a routine patrol in Iraq’s Anbar province in March 2004. With most of his family in the service, he was very reluctant to leave the USMC, even with his injuries. 'Being in the Marines is all I ever wanted to do, from the time I was 5 years old. I wish I could continue but my injuries continue to slow me down,' he said. 'I believe in what we do for our nation.'
I chose this photograph because I spent most of my time covering the civilians caught in the crossfire during my years of covering conflict in the Middle East. However, upon my return home to the U.S. after being based abroad, I learned that the wounds from the wars we engage in as a country run very deep, even for the soldiers involved. Some have more pronounced physical injuries other wounds are psychological. But I am amazed and humbled with the human spirit's ability to heal, no matter whose side of a conflict one is on. I was grateful that night to attend the ball. Marines who fought for us, and were gravely injured on our behalf, had a moment to be joyous with their loved ones. It was a night I will never forget."
Stephanie SinclairStaff Sergeant Larry Rougle.Lynsey Addario, Oct. 23, 2007. Afghanistan.
"Moments before they emerged from the dust carrying Sgt Larry Rougle’s body, one of the troops with the 173rd Airborne nearby said: 'we have to go get the K.I.A.' I hadn’t yet connected the dots that the person who was killed in action was Sgt Rougle. I knew that in the chaos of the ambush, there were three men down. As bullets pierced the narrow cedar trees around us, I had heard the call on the radio that three men had been hit, and heard that Wildcat was one of them. Wildcat was Rougle’s call sign.
But when the MEDEVAC helicopter lifted off the mountainside with two of the three wounded, the words smacked me in the face: 'we have to go get the K.I.A.' Wildcat was not among the wounded. Four members of the Scout team carried his body in a body bag through the gnarly and lonely landscape. In the hours, days, and weeks before, Rougle was so alive, so strong and sturdy, and suddenly, he was lifeless, in a black, shiny, rubbery bag. I asked permission from his comrades to photograph, and they nodded yes. I was crying so hard, it was difficult to focus. Rougle’s mother didn’t even know her son had been killed. His fiancee didn’t know her husband to be was no more. The war seemed so futile in that very moment. Across a dusty ridgeline in the middle of nowhere, in Afghanistan, where so many foreign soldiers had died before the Americans arrived, and so many more probably would in years to come, the war had never seemed so close yet so incomprehensible all at once."
Lynsey AddarioSantiago Lyon comments on a June, 2011 photograph of U.S.Marine Corporal Burness Britt taken by Anja Niedringhaus. Niedringhaus died earlier this year.
"Whilst embedded with the U.S. Army's Task Force Lift 'Dust Off,' Charlie Company 1-214 Aviation Regiment, the late Associated Press photographer Anja Niedringhaus made this photo of injured U.S.Marine Corporal Burness Britt after he was loaded on a helicopter in Afghanistan in June, 2011. Britt and two other Marines from the 2nd Battalion 12th Marines, 3rd Marine Division had been hit by shrapnel from a large IED. Britt's injuries were particularly serious, a major artery had been cut.
After making this photo, Anja reached over and squeezed Britt's hand in support. He returned the gesture, squeezing tighter and tighter until eventually slipping into unconsciousness.
Niedringhaus then noticed a piece of wheat stuck to his ripped shirt, which she plucked off and put it in a pocket of her body armor.
Something about Britt stuck with Niedringhaus, a vastly experienced combat photographer who had documented war and conflict for over 20 years.She vowed that she would track Britt down and see how he was doing. She also carefully stowed away the piece of wheat in a safe place.
Six months later, after a great deal of effort, she finally called Britt at the Hunter Holmes McGuire Medical Center in Richmond and when she got through, a nurse answered. Niedringhaus heard her yell: 'Britt, there is a phone call for you from a photographer in Switzerland who was there in Afghanistan when you got picked up.'
The next thing she heard was Britt's voice. He sounded relieved that she had reached him.
Anja related: 'The memories of Helmand flooded through my head. I fumbled my words. I wanted to come to Richmond, meet him, interview him, show him the images of that day, give him the wheat sheaf and talk about his recovery. I had so many questions. He listened and in a gentle, soft voice, he said: "Yes, ma'am, I would like to see you. Come."
During that time Britt had undergone many surgeries, had suffered a major stroke and is now partially paralyzed on his right side.
The two finally met.
Sitting on his bed, he looked at Anja and asked: 'Did you bring some pictures with you?' He wanted to see those moments in the helicopter. He studied each photo. When he looked up, he had tears in his eyes. 'Thank you so much,' he said.
Anja pointed to one of the pictures with the piece of wheat. She told him she had brought it with her. He couldn't believe it. She left the piece of wheat with Britt. He said it was his new lucky charm.
Tragically, Anja's own luck would run out on April 4, 2014 when an Afghan policeman opened fire on the car where she was sitting with AP reporter Kathy Gannon.
Anja was killed instantly. Gannon survived and continues to recover from her injuries."
Anja Niedringhaus—APIdentities UnknownTyler Hicks, Dec. 12, 2010. Sangsar, Afghanistan.
"Countless firefights and bombs have cost the lives of thousands of Americans in Afghanistan. Through news images we’ve witnessed their bloodshed and suffering for more than a decade. This photograph moves me because it speaks to dignity in the field. The soldiers knew it was too late for the six Americans killed when a suicide bomber exploded his charge next to their outpost. The urgency to free their bodies from the rubble of the mud-walled building was their final farewell, and the start of a journey home their brothers who died in action."Tyler Hicks—The New York Times/ReduxSpecialist Adam Ramsey.Erin Trieb, 2010. Watertown, NY. "The day I photographed Adam Ramsey in the hospital is difficult for me to forget. Adam was then a Specialist in the 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division. In 2009, he had served a 12-month deployment in Logar Province, Afghanistan, as an infantry soldier, operating the 240 machine gun. After returning home, he became heavily medicated with prescription drugs given to him by the military for severe neck and back pain, a common problem for infantry soldiers. For months he had also been having suicidal thoughts. After receiving a panicked phone call from Adam, I drove to Fort Drum’s infantry barracks, where Adam was living at the time. It was Valentine's Day so I brought him a silk rose that I bought from a gas station on the way there. When I arrived, I found blood-soaked paper towels he used to stop the bleeding from his arm. Adam had cut himself in an attempt to relieve his emotional anxiety. That night he was the only person in the military post's barracks – his fellow soldiers were gone on leave – so he was totally alone. We stayed up the entire night talking about his situation, and by sunrise he consented to let me take him to the hospital.
In this image Adam was waiting in a hospital room, reflecting quietly while examining his arm. He was having intense hallucinations. When I took this photograph it was a silent and still moment in the midst of so much chaos and confusion.
Looking at this image continues to impact me because of the intense loss that Adam and I both felt when we were in the room together. I knew the hospital was the safest place for him, but the loneliness and desperation of the situation was overwhelming. Many veterans like Adam experience psychological and emotional trauma after returning home from war. Currently, nearly 56% of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom veterans have been diagnosed with at least one mental health condition by the VA. Mental health conditions such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury can trigger depression, anxiety, changes in personality, sleep disturbance, substance abuse, and violent behavior, while the most extreme cases result in suicide. In 2009, the rate of suicide among US military service members began surpassing the number of those killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Today, one US veteran commits suicide roughly every hour, totaling to about 22 a day.
In 2011 Adam got out of the military, quit drinking, stopped taking prescription meds, and sought treatment. He is currently happy and healthy, living in Vermont with his girlfriend. We've known eachother for 5 years; he is like a brother to me. Adam is the example I reference to veterans who are suffering - that it is possible to get help, seek treatment, find a community of support, and that they are not alone. I'm grateful for the unique friendship I have with Adam and that he has included me in such an important part of his journey."Erin Trieb Staff Sergeant Travis Brill.Andrea Bruce, 2006. Columbus, Ohio.
"This scene looks unremarkable at first. A quiet morning Sergeant Travis Brill, a Marine just home from Iraq, reads the paper. But two things stood out to me. First, the desperate desire of his family to connect and cross an expanse of experiences--to see what he sees. His son dresses like him, mimics him. His wife decorates the house with a print from the Vietnam Memorial. Everyone tries to understand, to share in the pain or grief or courage or rage, while Travis remains far away, still in the war. This subtle moment also shows the changing relationship we have to war in a lifetime. It starts as a toy-gun spectacle, changes to real life, the now, Travis’ war. (He deployed again in 2010). And then, remembrance. Iraq changed the people experiencing the war more than they could have imagined, guiding and afflicting them in ways many are still struggling to understand. At the time of this photo, in 2006, Lima took more casualties than any U.S. company in Iraq, losing 23 Marines killed in action."
Andrea Bruce—The Washington Post/ NOORSterling Jones.Balazs Gardi, Oct. 25, 2007. Korengal Valley, Afghanistan.
"Minutes before the ambush men from Battle Company's Second Platoon stood surrounded by tall pine trees on top of the Abas-Ghar ridge listening to Specialist Sterling Jones spill a seemingly endless train of jokes, a performance that would put most professional comedians to shame. This was the third time I visited the notorious Korengal Valley, arguably the most dangerous battlefield in the Afghan war theatre at the time. This 6 miles long valley was just as crucial to smuggle in weapons and fighters from neighboring Pakistan almost three decades ago to crush the Soviet army as it was in 2007 to fight the occupying US forces. Seconds after the firefight broke out I saw Jones standing behind a giant tree trunk unleashing a shower of lead towards the invisible enemy. While we were pinned down the insurgents overran the nearby position of the scouts unit killing Staff Sergeant Larry Rougle.At the time I took this photo of Jones towards the end of the operation I did not know that same night his Company would lose two more soldiers, Sergeant Josh Brennan and Specialist Hugo Mendoza, nor that the US Army would abandon its posts in the Korengal Valley only a few years later.
When I look at this image I not only see an exhausted paratrooper but the faces of the comrades he lost, the bodies of dead villagers and the wounded women and children he saw. The photo of Jones makes me think of the true achievements and the real cost of war."
Balazs GardiSergeant Brian Keith.Damon Winter, March 29, 2010. Fort Drum, NY."Sergeant Brian Keith, 28, broke down in tears as he shared the last few minutes with his wife Sara Keith, 24, and their 6 month-old son Stephen, during "designated family time" from midnight to 2:30 am as members of Fox Company prepared to deploy. On March 29, 2010 the men and women of the US Army 87th Infantry Battalion, 1st Combat Brigade, 10th Mountain Division deployed from their post at Fort Drum in upstate New York for a year-long mission to Kunduz Province in Northern Afghanistan. The soldiers would soon find themselves battling an elusive enemy that most would never see as well as the tedium and monotony that for most would define their year deployed. This was always a very powerful moment for me, as I was taking the photo, as I reflected on it later, but never so much as after having my own son. I didn't know Sargent Keith at all when I photographed him and his family, the night he had to say goodbye to them in that tiny, non-descript shack. I would come to know him and his fellow soldiers from the 87th Infantry Battalion very well over the course of the following year and come to understand the kind of strain that wartime deployment puts on families. But it was only after my own son was born that I could truly understand what he was feeling that night. Beyond fearing that he may never see his son again, Sgt. Keith must have known the toll his absence would take on his young son and wife. A year later, he returned to an empty home. His wife had left him."
Damon Winter—The New York Times/ReduxSergeant Chad Caldwell.Maya Alleruzzo, March 30, 2008. Mosul, Iraq.
"We wanted to cover the daily lives of soldiers in Iraq’s most dangerous area. We chose Mosul - our stories referred to it then as al-Qaida’s last urban stronghold. On one of the first days living with the platoon, we asked soldiers to show us their good luck charms – the things they carried to keep them safe, grounded, connected.
Staff Sergeant Chad Caldwell had nothing in his pockets but was eager to talk. 'I am my own good luck charm,' he said. 'I am what keeps me alive. They’ve tried to blow me up, shoot me, throw hand grenades at me, everything they can throw at me. This far I have walked away without a scratch on me, knock on wood.' Then he smirked. 'I am Superman. I cannot be defeated. I am invincible.'
Now it was time for a portrait. He stepped into the center of the room in the partially destroyed building we were using as a studio.
He was slight, wiry – barely taller than me. But he stood tall. He looked like a boy, barely old enough to shave, but he’d fought in Iraq three times. He gazed into my lens as the sun filtered through the rubble, backlighting him. He looked, in this light, in this place, like a ghost. I drew in my breath and pressed the shutter.
He was killed exactly one month later by a bomb during a foot patrol. His death shook me. Sometimes, irrationally, I still worry that this photograph, or talking to him about his invincibility, was the thing that broke his lucky streak.
Maya Alleruzzo—APSquad Leader Michael Gegenheimer.Benjamin Lowy, Aug. 19, 2005. Mosul, Iraq.
"Following the shooting death of a platoon mate during a routine patrol, Squad Leader SSG Michael Gegenheimer, left, of the Alpha Company 3-21 Stryker Battalion watches a video of his newborn child in the small trailer that has been his home for a year in Foward Operating Base Courage in Mosul, Iraq.
I stayed with this particular unit for months documenting their lives, their routines, their fears, and their courage. Back in 2005 when I made this image, I myself was not yet a father, but I remember being tremendously touched by the Sergeant’s emotional display. Many of the soldiers in the unit choose to process their teammate’s death in different ways. Some were angry, some watched violent movies, others comedies. But looking at his newborn child was more of a reminder for Gegenheimer of what was waiting for him at home when he finally survived and left Iraq."
Benjamin LowyArmy Sergeant Cody Anderson.Adam Ferguson, Sept. 11, 2009. Tangi Valley, Afghanistan.
"In 2009, on a military operation in Afghanistan’s notorious Tangi Valley, I made this picture of U.S. Army Sergeant Cody Anderson. Six months later, after he retuned home, he was found dead in his apartment in Watertown, N.Y. It wasn’t officially called a suicide, but Anderson had been diagnosed with PTSD and was struggling with life at home. Anderson had served in Iraq also, so he knew the backwaters of America’s wars intimately. There was much Anderson couldn’t reconcile about the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, and he wasn’t scared to tell me about it. If I made a picture that epitomizes the ‘1000 yard stare’, this is it. To me this image signifies the emotional toll caused by war, damage that is not easily washed away when the war is over.”Adam FergusonAlexandra Boulat's mother presents an entry from Boulat's personal diary dated April 9, 2003, and written in Baghdad. The entry is translated from the original French. Boulat passed away in 2007 at the age of 45 after suffering a brain aneurysm.
"April 9, 2013, D-Day in Baghdad. The power has unleashed, and the Marines are at the gates waiting for the robbers to finish their work. Men from Saddam City, who have immediately renamed the City of the Revolution, have come down to ministries and snatched whatever they could find: armchairs, sofas, tables, chairs, fans, cable electrical, etc. Effigies of Saddam are burned, torn, smeared, but the city center is not yet reached. Meeting no resistance, tanks entered further than they had expected to reach the 14th Ramadan Mosque at the foot of the [Baghdad] Hotel, which is a real liberation for us, the journalists. The Marines brilliantly orchestrate the toppling of the statue of Saddam by some Iraqis. As the sun sets, dozens of soldiers are sitting on Al-Sadoun Street. People come to bring them some flowers, but they are so exhausted that they have difficulties communicating with civilians. Some have the haggard look, the face of those who have seen too much and are very frightened, coming from the battlefields. The locals are relieved, not so much by the arrival of the Americans, but because they know they can finally sleep well tonight because the bombings are over."
Alexandra Boulat—VIISergeant Princess Samuels.Eugene Richards, Aug. 31, 2007. Landover, Md.
"The flag-draped coffin holding Sergeant Princess Samuels was wheeled slowly down the aisle into the chapel. Then, though I’d been told that the coffin would remain closed, the lid was raised. In the sudden glare of the overhead light, what I saw at first seemed an image out of a fairy tale: a beautiful young woman asleep in a kind of jewelry box. When I moved closer, I could see the unnatural thinness, brittleness of her eyelids, her swollen, impacted lips and the scars that ran down her face beneath her jaw."
Eugene RichardsSargent Sheena Adams.Paula Bronstein, Nov. 21, 2010. Musa Qala, Afghanistan. "When I embedded with the Female Engagement team, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I slept in the same dorm room with them so we got to know each other pretty quickly, and it allowed me to have exclusive access to see what their lives were like behind the scenes. I knew the women weren't going to see front line combat so my photos would need to concentrate on how they made a difference to this all male battalion. What their mission focused on was engaging with the community in a less threatening way, being females meant that they got access into the homes where men were not allowed. Once inside, they were able to acquire more intelligence.
I think this photo of Sargent Sheena Adams, 25, blowing bubbles with the Afghan children while we were on patrol in the village of Musa Qala, really tells the story. Often the women had candies for the kids so they would gather around. On this same day I watched as one of the boys grabbed a small point and shoot camera from the pocket of one of the female marines as they handed out free gifts to the children. The boy ran off with it, and we had to guilt the others into chasing him down to get it back. For many poor Afghans living in these rural areas, they want to take what they can from people who they see as invaders. While they want the Americans to flight the Taliban and bring more peace to their battered region, there were other important tasks such as like fixing the electricity, the phone towers and building more schools."
Paula Bronstein—Getty ImagesLieutenant Tim McLaughlin. Gary Knight's composite image blends his photograph of Lieutenant Tim McLaughlin taken in McLaughlin's apartment in Charlestown, Mass. in 2013 and a photograph of McLaughlin's diary taken in 2010.
"Lieutenant Tim McLaughlin, whom I followed during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, was in the 3/4 Marines. We subsequently became friends.
Tim was at the Pentagon on 9/11, then went to Iraq as a tank commander. His unit was at the fore of much combat, and he was at the front of his unit, so he had a substantially violent war. When he left the Marines in 2006, he trained as a lawyer. While attending law school at Boston College, he worked overseas as a prosecution intern at the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in its war crimes section. He subsequently founded and serves as the president of the Board of Directors of Veterans Legal Services, which is a Boston-based 501(3)(c) that provides pro bono legal services to homeless and low-income veterans. He has been open about his experiences during the war, about killing other men and watching your friends being killed, and he is public about the struggles he has had with PTSD. He is a noble, generous and understated man who I have great admiration for."
Gary Knight—VIIJD Williams.John Moore, Aug. 7, 2012. San Antonio.
"I spent a week in August 2012 at the Center for the Intrepid, the U.S. military's flagship rehabilitation center located at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. A public affairs officer told me about the different physical therapies they offer to wounded soldiers, and she went down the list of adaptive sports: basketball, rock climbing, swimming, weightlifting and wave machine. I stopped her and said, "Excuse me, wave machine?" She explained that, in addition to being a good workout, it is especially useful in helping amputees regain a sense of balance and adjust to their new weight and body shape.
She took me to the indoor facility where there were several soldiers in bathing trunks preparing for the therapy. An instructor introduced me to JD Williams, 25, a triple amputee who had lost both his legs above the knee and most of one arm in southern Afghanistan. He and his Army unit had been on a foot patrol in the Arghandab Valley in 2010 when he stepped on an improvised explosive device (IED). I had also been to the Arghandab on an infantry embed. The Taliban buried IEDs everywhere, and the place was a nightmare for U.S. forces and journalists alike. New York Times photographer Joao Silva, a friend of mine, lost his legs there that same year.
JD's enthusiasm for the wave machine was infectious. The instructor cranked it up. JD grabbed a flow board and surfed. He wiped out, tumbling through the white water, out of breath, before gathering himself up, climbing out and back up to the top. He wiped out again. On the third try he zoomed down the wave, barely in control, drifting to the right and then suddenly to the left, at first unsure, but then slowly finding his balance. He cut across the surface of the water, surfed and conquered that wave. The thrilling sight made me gasp as I continued to shoot.
For that young veteran it was just another day, in another week, in another year of recovery, in a reality that will be the rest of his life. For me, that moment was much more."
John Moore—Getty ImagesCaptain Fred Adams.Todd Heisler April 10, 2005. Iraq
"Around our third week, the writer and I were driving down 'Route Bug', a rural road just south of Baghdad, with members of the Army's Lightning Troop, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, just after dawn when a vehicle parked on top of multiple artillery shells detonated next to our up-armored Humvee. I remember a flash, feeling like I was punched in the face and then I blacked out. When I came to a second later, I was flying out the door. I ran as fast as I could to catch up to it as it careened down the road and sputtered to a stop. Motionless. Panic is a funny thing-I thought for sure I was the only one who survived. Finally, Captain Fred Adams, pictured at left, jumped out, visibly shaken and fuming. They looked for a culprit but found no one. Not a shot was fired. I remember Staff Sergeant Justin Vasquez, who was in the vehicle behind us, walking down the road picking up our gear that had been blown out of the trunk. He put his arm around me, asked if I was ok, then laughed. I recall thinking “nothing will ever happen to this guy.' I went back to the base that day, but they went back out on patrol.About a month later, Captain Adams was hit by another IED in roughly the same spot and again, survived. Staff Sergeant Vasquez, and two other soldiers, standing on the side of the road securing the perimeter, were killed by a secondary IED that was buried beneath them. I spent that next week with Vasquez’ family in a small town on the eastern plains of Colorado as they laid him to rest. We were two years into the Iraq War, and I had already spent countless hours in living rooms watching mothers lay out photographs of sons killed in action. Suddenly this was different-I knew the face in the photographs. I could hear his voice. Looking back is difficult, but as I do, I realize that because of the experience from that third trip to Iraq, I was able to empathize in a way that I could not before with the Marine notification officer and the families he visited back home. The fact that I survived has always haunted me, in a way - and maybe the many families perceived this and opened their doors a bit wider. I'll never really know. But what I do know is how thankful I am to all of them for allowing me in. When I first met Major Beck, he said 'This isn’t just another story for you. This is flesh and blood. This is real.'Now I know."
Todd Heisler—Rocky Mountain NewsMaster Sergeant Cedric King.James Nachtwey, October 2014. Bethesda, Md. "Master Sergeant Cedric King is the most memorable of many memorable veterans I have had the privilege of meeting. He is also one of the most remarkable human beings I’ve ever met. Words are not adequate to describe him, but a few that come to mind are courage, determination, perseverance, character, strength, pride, will, faith, heart, spirit."James Nachtwey for TIMESpecialist Vargas and brother. Michael Kamber, June 5, 2004
Sadr City, Baghdad. "I was working in Sadr City this day and U.S. forces were getting hit from all sides. We responded to a call for help from a convoy hit by a roadside bomb. When we arrived, I watched soldiers pull the remains of a dead American out of a destroyed vehicle, trying respectfully to hold his body together as they worked. Nearby, I saw these two brothers, both members of 759th MP Battalion. The soldier on the left had serious wounds to his right leg and was bleeding badly. His brother, right, said, 'I just can't take this anymore, I can't take it, I want to go home.' The wounded brother replied: 'We came here together to do a job, we're going to do that job and we're going home together. Call our mother and tell her I'm okay.'"
Michael Kamber—The New York Times.Staff Sergeant David Brown.David Furst,
March 22, 2007. Baghdad, Iraq.
"U.S. soldiers provide first aid to Staff Sergeant David Brown on March 22, 2007. Brown was shot in the leg while securing the area around a weapons cache found on patrol in the Dora neighborhood of southern Baghdad.
When I see this image, I’m instantly transported back in time. I was a young photographer with Agence France-Presse when gunmen unexpectedly opened fire on the unit I was embedded with. Suddenly I felt someone grab me by the back of my flak jacket and hurl me into a doorway toward the cover of a concrete wall. Brown fell on top of me as a bullet hit him in the thigh. The stranger who saved my life was now bleeding heavily.
Brown eventually recovered from his wounds and returned to Iraq. But his lighting quick actions that day reflected a professionalism as well as an instinct to protect others. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t in uniform, and that he barely knew me: Brown’s first thought was to help the person beside him."David Furst—AFP/Getty ImagesSergeant Eliot Alcantara, May 2008. Korengal Valley, Afghanistan.
Photographer Stephen Mayes draws directly from a conversation he had with Tim Hetherington in 2009 about sleeping soldiers. Hetherington took this photo in May 2008 in the Korengal Valley, Afghanistan.
"In this intimate contemplation of sleeping soldiers the viewer is compelled to reflect on the contradictions of vulnerability and aggression, and the public role that soldiers play. Here in the midst of battle yet stripped of the hardware that defines them as soldiers, Tim Hetherington's pictures of Sleeping Soldiers separates the individuals from their public persona. The point is not to create a sentimental attachment to the men but to encourage a deeper look at where they are and why. Without the trappings of war, they are no longer in role, they are only men. The paraphernalia of war is missing, and by its absence the visual attributes of soldiery are revealed as props in the symbolic representation of something else. Hetherington pointed out that the American soldier has become one of the most pervasive icons of the American brand, along with McDonalds and Coca-Cola. His message is that these individuals are being dressed and put into roles to be used as instruments of power, and it’s this process that was the subject of his work.
Tim said of the work, 'The truth is that the war machine is the software as much as the hardware. The software runs it and the software is young men. And in some ways I’m part of the software. I was a young man once. I’m not so young any more but I get it, I get the operating system. I am the operating system.'
Tim's intimacy with the men is only a symptom of his deeper exploration. He wanted to know what is it about being a man that draws us to conflict, so his study is as much about himself as about the soldiers. In effect, Sleeping Soldiers is a meditation on the nature of masculinity that looks deeper than the role-play and performance of war, and it strips away the familiar iconography of conflict to contemplate the origin rather than the consequences of aggression."
Tim Hetherington—Magnum
