This Is Our War

It's the faces of war that stand out most vividly in This Is Our War, by David Friedman & the Editors of GQ. Two-hundred and fifty-six photographs, all taken by servicemen in Iraq, were selected from tens of thousands to put a soldier's face, perspective and feel to the increasingly, perhaps, all too political war.

It is not the politicians living and dying in Iraq, after all. And This Is Our War brings that home, sometimes perhaps, even somewhat uncomfortably.

By no means filled with carnage, the entire book has only some few truly bloody war images, but there is death and dying in the photographs, and it contrasts starkly with the bright smiles and uncompromising promise of so much noble youth.

From the foreword by General Wesley Clark:

These are the men and women who patrol, fly and sail to serve our country, and who, when called upon, fight for it. They are young. And they bring with them all the vitality of their youth ... There are heros here ... They are the reservoir of our strength.

Organized around seven chapters, the book touches different aspects of the war, from embarkation, through the battlefield, and even mourning, with the bulk of the material focused on the daily rituals and surprises which comprise an average servicemen's typical day.

Somewhat ironically, it is, perhaps, a compendium of otherwise un-notable images made exceptionally notable due to time and place.

One can almost feel the confusion in a soldier clasping unto his children for a final goodbye before shipping out. But you'll also see and feel a strong sense of kinship in images of comrades in arms gathered together in groups and squads, posing with the bravado one might expect in a snapshot from the battlefield in Iraq. In some ways, it is very much a book of contrasts played out with conflict as the stage.

In one image several black uniformed, yet almost angel-like Iraqi school girls dare to raise their eyes toward the camera, distracting you briefly from the new white high tech running shoes upon their feet - that, and the back of some dust covered soldier walking off down a street strewn with the piled rubble of the war.

The book also holds five soldier's stories, including that of Medal Of Honor recipient, Sgt. 1st Class Paul Smith, to date, the only man to have received the Medal of Honor for service in Iraq. In another bit of biting irony, one story is entitled A Military Family.

Father and son, Rodney and Christopher Campbell of Harrison, Arkansas served together for five months in Iraq. The elder Campbell was still stationed in Iraq when he lost his son in a car accident involving a drunk driver after the younger Campbell had been shipped home.

From a dust covered jeep making its way through the desert with a Bush bobble-head doll on the hood, to defaced images of Saddam Hussein and a landscape filled with Iraqis looking for long lost relatives in one of Saddam's mass graves, This Is Our War helps to make Iraq every man's war. It's filled with the sights and imagined sounds one might expect to see and hear were they on the ground.

In that sense, it does bring the war home. Unfortunately, in the final chapter, Last Images, you'll see the mostly smiling faces of a handful of good men who only managed to come home in those images. God rest their souls.

This Is Our War is not a political book. Its focus is not on the war, so much as it is on some number of the many faces that wage it. They are faces every American should have the privilege of looking upon ... and proudly so.

Photographs not for reproduction. Images reduced and used with one time use permissions from THIS IS OUR WAR: A Soldiers' Portfolio: Servicemen's Photographs of Life in Iraq by Devin Friedman and the Editors of GQ Magazine (Artisan). Copyright 2006

Click images above and below to enlarge.

Comments

[frried]

Thank You Dan,
I am a veteran with a son in military service today.
most only see and hear what they are told about any conflict. It is good to see someone showing us what the soldiers see.

[chrys]

Just THANKS for this post Dan.

[PoorPaulaNNJ]

Thank you for writing about this book. Everyone should have one!

[Sincerely]

Thank You Dan. Nice write up.

[Lone Pony]

Thank you Dan. Very nice.

[MrsLevy]

Bunchcha crybabies.

I didn't ask them to do anything for me.

Let them eat cake.

MrsLevy

[annie]

Mrs Levy

So nice of you to volunteer to be on the enemies' death list!

These men an women are true heroes. May God Bless Them All.