February 23, 1945

Worth A Thousand Words: Or, In Some Cases, Even More Than That.

Last Friday we mentioned that February 19th was the anniversary of invasion of Iwo Jima, the tiny hulk of volcanic rock just 750 miles south of Tokyo. Hitting the beaches with the Marines that morning was a short, bespectacled photographer for the Associated Press named Joe Rosenthal. Risking life and limb to tell the story of the struggle to the American public, Rosenthal followed the Marines inland, unwittingly about to capture one of the most iconic images in the history of photography, let alone warfare.

On February 23, 1945, Rosenthal climbed to the top of Mt. Suribachi and was fiddling with his film while some marines kicked around in the nearby debris. The men were going to put up a large American flag, replacing a smaller flag put up a little while before. Since every American in sight of the mountain had rejoiced at the first flag raising, and since the battle was still raging below the summit, Rosenthal had no idea he was about to witness a landmark in history. In fact, still not ready as the men were hoisting the pole, he thought he'd missed the whole show.

The story of the Flag Raising on Iwo Jima has been well chronicled, most notably and eloquently by James Bradley's Flags of Our Fathers. But Rosenthal's photo was not the only image of World War II to live on in history, so today, in honor of one of the Marine Corps proudest events, we'll look at some other notable photos that have outgrown the very circumstances they depict.

Confederate Dead at Devil's Den

This Confederate soldier fell in an assault on a rocky bottom near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in one of the decisive engagements of the American Civil War. Or so the picture would have you beleive. The photographer, Alexander Gardener, posed the dead Southerner and his rifle at the photo site; he was killed somewhere else.



Today, you can go to Gettysburg National Military Park to visit the battlefield, and pose bodies of your own.

Execution of Sergeant Leonard Siffleet

This incredible picture catches an Imperial Japanese Army officer about to behead an sickly prisoner of war. You might want to keep this sort of damning evidence to your depravity from getting out right? In fact, moments before the officer ordered a nearby soldier to snap the photo.

Raising the Banner of Victory

Incredibly, the Soviets seemed to have an Iwo Jima-like moment of their own. Two soldiers, with the smoke of the raging battle in the background, climbed to the roof of the Reichstag and raised the flag of the Soviet Union over the city of Berlin in May, 1945. Even more incredibly, a photographer was there to immortalize the act.


Not quite. The picture was taken two days after the flag was first raised over the building. The photographer Yevgeny Khaldei hand picked the two men; one Russian, one Georgian (just like Stalin). You can see in the original that smoke was later added to the image, and a watch was removed from the right wrist of the soldier below. Multiple watches were a sign of looting, and what good communist boy would need to loot a watch?

Execution of a Viet Cong Prisoner


We thought we'd finish off with this picture of Chief of the South Vietnamese National Police Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing Nguyen Van Lem, a VC officer in Saigon during the Tet Offensive. Actually, we're only posting this picture for the student in a history course at Temple University, who showed this to our Editor-in-Chief as an example of American brutality in Vietnam.

In short, war is Hell, folks. Brave men and women risk their lives every day to show us just how horrible it is. These images don't need our stories or fabrications to enhance the horrors of war. What can not be forgotten, and what so often is, is the figures in the images are real people, flesh and blood. They had dreams and fears; virtues and short-comings; wives, sweethearts, mothers. Their experiences were terrible enough, to steal a phrase from Abraham Lincoln, "far above our poor power to add or detract."