greatest generation

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I’ve searched high and low for more information about this great photo. Combat? Training? Theater of operations? If anyone knows…please share!

EDIT: probably Korean War and maybe training. The guy in the background is really throwing me off. Great photo nonetheless!

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picturesofwar:

This day in history:

Six American soldiers (five Marines and one U.S. Navy corpsman) raise an American flag atop Mount Suribachi, signalling its capture four days into the Battle of Iwo Jima.  

The moment itself was immortalized on film by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal, who later wrote of the event:

Out of the corner of my eye, I had seen the men start the flag up. I swung my camera and shot the scene. That is how the picture was taken, and when you take a picture like that, you don’t come away saying you got a great shot. You don’t know.

The triumphant image became one of the most famous images of the entire war, as well as one of the most reproduced photos of all time.

Three of the six flag raisers were killed in combat while on Iwo Jima.

February 23, 1945 - 67 years ago today.

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This makes it official. Margaret Bourke-White was a badass!

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LIFE photographer Carl Mydans (center) with other photographers aboard ship bound for Luzon and Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s “return to the Philippines” in 1945.

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My favorite of the Iwo Jima flag raising photos, taken by Jim Rosenthal who famously likened combat photography to “shooting a football game. You never knew what you got on film.” 

The Marines and corpsmen in the photo, their story made famous to today’s generation by the book and subsequent film Flags Of Our Fathers, had already suffered 40% casualties at the company level and more than half cheering in this image would be dead before Iwo Jima was over.

For a brief moment, all of that is aside. These men might as well have been on a Boy Scout excursion with their buddies.

the-seed-of-europe:

Two of the few surviving photos that Robert Capa took when he landed with US troops at Omaha Beach on D-Day. Most of the film from that day was accidentally ruined during development by a lab assistant at LIFE Magazine.

(Source.)

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