Definitive Image of War?
 

What is the "picture of war", do you think?

This one really got me:

http://www.173rdairborne.com/images/...0war_small.jpg


2hp

picture of a red poppy...

In your head? No way to share?


2hp

http://www.abc.net.au/southwestwa/st...on_m931614.jpg

Complete disregard for human life. comes through in this one fairly well.

http://www.aliciabock.com/images/vib...-Red-Poppy.jpg

Long before the Great War, the red poppy had become a symbol of death, renewal and life. The seeds of the flower can remain dormant in the earth for years, but will blossom spectacularly when the soil is churned. Beginning in late 1914, the fields of Northern France and Flanders became the scene of stupendous disturbances. Red Poppys soon appeared.

In 1915, at a Canadian dressing station north of Ypres on the Essex Farm, an exhausted physician named Lt. Col. John McCrae would take in the view of the poppy strewn Salient and experience a moment of artistic inspiration. The veteran of the South African War was able to distill in a single vision the vitality of the red poppy symbol, his respect for the sacrifice made by his patients and dead comrades, and his intense feeling of obligation to them. McCrae would capture all of this in the most famous single poem of the First World War, In Flanders Fields.

The doctor's work achieved immediate universal popularity which was subsequently reinforced by his own death in 1918 from pneumonia and meningitis. He was buried in a military cemetery near Calais on the English Channel, thus becoming one with those of whom he wrote in his famous poem. Probably by the time of his internment, John McCrae's verse had forever bound the image of the Red Poppy to the memory of the Great War. The poppy was eventually adopted by the British and Canadian Legions as the symbol of remembrance of World War One and a means of raising funds for disabled veterans. An American war volunteer, Moina Michael, helped establish the symbol in the US where the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion also embraced the Red Poppy tradition.

why this picture is important is at that time, winston churchill was made aware that the germans were going to bomb a town by means of cracking their code. Not wanting the germans to figure out that england had learned to break their codes = he had to allow the bombing and deaths of thousands of civilians in order to keep the upper hand.

the feeling that must have been in his gut to know he could have save thousands but didnt - and the idea that he saved millions with that sacrific shows on his face

http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/conte.../2005_0233.JPG

but this will always be the image of war


http://www.archives.gov/publications...s/iwo-jima.jpg

http://www.mikebennettgraphics.com/h...figuration.jpg



2hp

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/3...rael_ap300.jpg


2hp

http://www.redstream.org/images/cove...rge_Chrona.jpg

2hp

Out fucking standing!

I couldn't find any pics, but def the night vision "green" images from when CNN became the news company it is today. During the gulf war in 90-91, When they broadcasted the live bombings of Baghdad from their hotel room in the middle of it all.

That was something which was absolutely amazing to be witness to. A live war on national television.

BradM

http://profitlabinc.com/PROFITBLOG/I...rge_Chrona.jpg

2hp

The original, "found" URL looked a little sketchy loadwise, so I duped, but the URL for this response is up there.

the cemetaries in europe from WWII have always, to me, been the perfect image of war. it is something tangible. you can read casualty statistics all day long, it doesn't make it real until you see it in front of you.

http://www.larkcom.us/ancestry/cemet...teries/170.jpg

Yes, numbers can be very powerful symbols -- rather than the reverse, which is the usual.

http://clantons.net/O.G.Clanton/Pix/3.Bush.War.Dead.jpg


2hp

Jesus.... that's insane. Kid couldn't be more than 13.

thats the one

http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/asgur..._kim_phuc2.jpg

The innocent suffer the most...

EDIT:skinnywussy beat me to it.

Appearently he was 16 or 17 but I always thought he was younger.
http://www.historynet.com/acw/bltwo_pics_jemison/

skeletons from pol pot are also very compelling.

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily...-98/fields.jpg

http://www.10mpb.com/images/stories/...er-911_001.jpg

2hp

" Only the Dead have seen the end of war! "

Plato

Plato indulged a self-service, there -- presuming an end is still presumption, even in death.


2hp