War Is Personal

Eugene Richards

Reportage by Getty Images

MINERAL, ILLINOIS, 2008. The day Dusty returned from Iraq, his longtime friend, Sarah, rushed to him and gave him a big hug. If she’d noticed the changes in me, he explained, she didn’t show it. “It was just that Dusty was home.” The two later became a couple and had a child, Alexandra. “I was always the one who said I never wanted to have kids,” Dusty admits. “Now, because of the injury, I don’t have to get up in the morning. I don’t have to go to work everyday. How many other people can have a five-month-old daughter and stay home and play with her nonstop?”

Eugene Richards, "War Is Personal," in POYi Archive, Item #44703, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/44703 (accessed November 23, 2024).