On Veterans Day, A Look Back at Photos That Brought the War Home
War Photography: A World Beyond Words
For much of the 20th century, photography was the single most powerful method for conveying the horrors and triumphs of warfare. To commemorate Veterans Day, LIFE.com shares extraordinary photographs from three 20th-century conflicts: World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. These are the photos that brought the war home to millions of Americans. Here, Marine Gunnery Sgt. Jeremiah Purdie (left), wounded in a firefight during "Operation Prairie" in Vietnam, reaches out to a stricken comrade. That the image, made in 1966 at the height of the Civil Rights era, depicts a black soldier desperately trying to aid a wounded white comrade only heightened an emotionally devastating tableau.
Larry Burrows/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.
World War II: Women in the Fight Marie Hansen's striking 1942 striking photograph of Women's Auxiliary Army Corps members, commonly known as WAACs, donning gas masks at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, illustrates enduring themes from the war: fear, courage, and—in an unsubtle message to the country as a whole—the power of unity in the face of an unknown threat. The WAACs were famously praised by General Douglas MacArthur, who called them "my best soldiers."
Marie Hansen/TIME & LIFE Pictures.
World War II: Four Aces Members of the U.S. Army Air Corps legendary 99th Pursuit Squadron, the Tuskegee Airmen, receive instruction about wind currents from a lieutenant in 1942. The Tuskegee fliers—the nation's first African American air squadron—served with courage and distinction in the segregated American military.
Marie Hansen/TIME & LIFE Pictures.
World War II: Unconquered A grizzled, weary American peers over his shoulder during the final days of fighting during the July, 1944 Battle of Saipan. The pivotal Allied victory there, 1,500 miles south of Tokyo, was earned at the cost of 3,000 American lives. This picture—among the most immediately recognizable of LIFE's countless war photos—was the 1940s equivalent of saying to the American public: We didn't start this fight. But we're going to finish it.
W. Eugene Smith/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.
World War II: Bunker Busters
This Eugene Smith picture—of Marines taking cover on an Iwo Jima hillside as a Japanese bunker is obliterated—captures the sheer destruction in war as well as any other image ever published in LIFE.
W. Eugene Smith/Time & Life Pictures.
World War II: Peace at Last Eisenstaedt's famous "kiss" picture was hardly the only terrific photograph he made in Times Square during the hours and days when news of the Japanese surrender shook the world. The image above—quiet, almost elegiac—perfectly captures the flipside of the breathless, exuberant national response to the long-sought victory over Japan. The stillness of the pair here, the absence of the revelry depicted in his iconic V-J Day image, allowed Eisenstaedt to present the other, equally powerful face of the Allied conquest: the somber gaze that commemorates the profound cost of victory.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/TIME & LIFE Pictures.
Vietnam: Race to Safety The war in Vietnam was building up, but many Americans remained optimistic about our chances of victory. LIFE editor-in-chief Hedley Donovan penned an editorial for the Feb. 25, 1966, issue of the magazine asserting "Vietnam: The War Is Worth Winning." But this image, depicting members of 1st Marine Division carrying their wounded during a fire fight near the southern edge of the DMZ, was a confidence shaker.
Larry Burrows/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images.
Vietnam: Exhausted The country was growing increasingly weary of war when in, the May 22, 1970, issue of LIFE, Clark Clifford—a former Secretary of State who was also an adviser to presidents Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson—wrote an editorial urging the American government to set an end date. While our servicemen and women, like this American infantryman exhausted from the heat near the Cambodia-South Vietnam frontier, put their lives at stake, Clifford asserted that President Nixon "continues to exaggerate Vietnam's importance to our national security."
W. Eugene Smith/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.
Vietnam: Blood on the Beach The face of the U.S. medic in this Paul Schutzer photograph exudes the same disbelief that stunned LIFE readers half a world away.
