War Is Personal

Eugene Richards

Reportage by Getty Images

ROSLINDALE, MASSACHUSETTS, 2006. Lance Corporal Alexander Arredondo, a U.S. Marine, was killed in combat in Najaf, Iraq on his father Carlos’s birthday. Sitting in a darkened room in his home, Carlos struggles with his feelings. “When I first approached my son Alex’s casket,” he said, “I thought it might be hard to recognize him, because we hadn’t been told yet what killed him, that he had a hole in the back of his head. But it was him. I lay on top of the casket, on top of my son, apologizing to him because I did nothing for him to avoid this moment. Nothing.”

Eugene Richards, "War Is Personal," in POYi Archive, Item #44681, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/44681 (accessed November 23, 2024).