War Is Personal

Eugene Richards

Reportage by Getty Images

Project Description: From a distance, war can appear a tally of cold statistics. Since the beginning of the war in Iraq, 4373 American soldiers have been killed, more than 30,000 men and women in the U.S. military maimed and wounded, with the numbers of stress-related illnesses and military suicides increasing every year. But dramatic as these figures are, they are but numbers. To begin to comprehend what war means, one needs to encounter people whose lives have been wholly and permanently altered by it. FORT DIX, NEW JERSEY, 2005. Members of Alpha Company, Pennsylvania National Guard, anxiously await discharge at the demobilization center at Fort Dix. One of the young soldiers prays after it is mistakenly announced that a commanding officer in his company had just been killed in combat in Iraq.

Eugene Richards, "War Is Personal," in POYi Archive, Item #44673, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/44673 (accessed November 23, 2024).