War Is Personal

Eugene Richards

Reportage by Getty Images

KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI, 2006. It was Tomas Young’s fourth day in Iraq when his army unit was ambushed. He was shot in the spine and paralyzed from the chest down. Early one morning, nearly two years after he was released from the hospital, Tomas, 26, accidentally overdosed on his prescribed dosages of morphine, and a half dozen other drugs. Struggling to sit upright, he began slamming his body as far forward and backward in his wheelchair as he could.

Eugene Richards, "War Is Personal," in POYi Archive, Item #44678, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/44678 (accessed November 23, 2024).