Open to Sacrifice

[Brandon Cade]

A day where hell was reigning down on a father and son, a team of Marines lay themselves on top of them, willing to accept whatever punishment hell had to protect these two strangers from a foreign nation...

Photographer Unknown: Image Public Domain; US Federal Employee photographer.​

 

[Asher Kelman]

A day where hell was reigning down on a father and son, a team of Marines lay themselves on top of them, willing to accept whatever punishment hell had to protect these two strangers from a foreign nation...

Photographer Unknown: Image Public Domain; US Federal Employee photographer.​

Brandon,

It's a dramatic picture. I am impressed by the bravery of the gallant behavior of the soldiers. I have no doubt that some folk might be skeptical but I accept this as genuine. It would be wonderful to know the story behind this remarkable picture. If this was from a reporter from a news service, a Pulitzer prize would be forthcoming!

The camouflage of the uniforms and gear is impressive. I'd imagine that for the locals, normally, being easilly recognized might be helpful under peaceful conditions.

Asher

 

[Wendy Thurman]

Brandon,

It's a dramatic picture. I am impressed by the bravery of the gallant behavior of the soldiers. I have no doubt that some folk might be skeptical but I accept this as genuine. It would be wonderful to know the story behind this remarkable picture. If this was from a reporter from a news service, a Pulitzer prize would be forthcoming!

The camouflage of the uniforms and gear is impressive. I'd imagine that for the locals, normally, being easilly recognized might be helpful under peaceful conditions.

Asher

Asher-

These guys are Marines- they don't like being called soldiers! Marine camouflage patterns are distinctly different from the Army's (yes, I've been doing this too long).

The gear is heavy, and it is hot. You don't see the 10 kilos of body armor. The tactical equipment weighs more than that with the loaded magazines and what-have-you. I'd collapse!

Wendy

 

[Rick Greely]

Wendy,
What a great photo. Kudos

 

[Rachel Foster]

I cannot imagine going through such hell.

Speechless.

 

[Wendy Thurman]

Wendy,
What a great photo. Kudos

Oh, I can't claim credit for that one. Not my picture!

Wendy

 

[Paul Abbott]

I don't see much alarm in the faces in this image, is it just me?!

 

[Asher Kelman]

I don't see much alarm in the faces in this image, is it just me?!

Paul,

We really need tosee a sequence of pictures and more of the story. What happened before and after that. I'd like the original story!

The father is grateful, the son is still scared. Just look at his eyes. The marines are alert. That's their training.

Asher

 

[Michael K. Carberry]

Growing up with war does bad things to the psyche.What we see as hideous and terrifying is run of the mill.Sad.

Nice image though.

 

[Paul Abbott]

I agree we need to see more, and in this case also, i'd like to see more of the image, it appears cropped, no?

 

[Ruben Alfu]

A day where hell was reigning down on a father and son, a team of Marines lay themselves on top of them, willing to accept whatever punishment hell had to protect these two strangers from a foreign nation...

Photographer Unknown: Image Public Domain; US Federal Employee photographer.[/CENTER]

Hi Brandon,

Great photo. Even when your description of what´s going on here is absolutely credible, I can´t help wanting to know the facts of the story from a credited source.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Growing up with war does bad things to the psyche.

Not necessarily true. Have you had experience of that? Some men in awful circumstances come out with better understanding of man, like soldiers with great leaders and command structure or a person like Elie Wiesel. Others break and are ruined. What's your own experience?

The secure world of Wiesel's childhood ended abruptly with the arrival of the Nazis in Sighet in 1944. The Jewish inhabitants of the village were deported en masse to concentration camps in Poland. The 15 year-old boy was separated from his mother and sister immediately on arrival in Auschwitz. He never saw them again. He managed to remain with his father for the next year as they were worked almost to death, starved, beaten, and shuttled from camp to camp on foot, or in open cattle cars, in driving snow, without food, proper shoes, or clothing. In the last months of the war, Wiesel's father succumbed to dysentery, starvation, exhaustion and exposure.

After the war, the teenaged Wiesel found asylum in France, where he learned for the first time that his two older sisters had survived the war. Wiesel mastered the French language and studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, while supporting himself as a choir master and teacher of Hebrew. He became a professional journalist, writing for newspapers in both France and Israel.
For ten years, he observed a self-imposed vow of silence and wrote nothing about his wartime experience. In 1955, at the urging of the Catholic writer Francois Mauriac, he set down his memories in Yiddish, in a 900-page work entitled Un die welt hot geshvign (And the world kept silent). The book was first published in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Wiesel compressed the work into a 127-page French adaptation, La Nuit (Night), but several years passed before he was able to find a publisher for the French or English versions of the work.


In 1978, President Jimmy Carter appointed Elie Wiesel Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. In 1985 he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Freedom and, in 1986, the Nobel Prize for Peace. The English translation of his memoirs was published in 1995 as All Rivers Run to the Sea. A second volume of memoirs, And the Sea is Never Full, appeared in 2000. Over the years, Wiesel has spoken out on behalf of the victims of genocide and oppression all over the world, from Bosnia to Darfur. Although he is now known to millions for his human rights activism, he has by no means abandoned the art of fiction. His latest novel is A Mad Desire to Dance(2009). Source.​

So, man can overcome the worst experience of depraved cruelty and even use this increased insight to champion the cause of the oppressed and suffering. Wiesel is not an exception to the rule but an exceptional example of the good in us to be responsible towards our fellows and treat them decently.

What we see as hideous and terrifying is run of the mill.Sad.

"Run of the mill? To whom?

Asher