Mesmerizing Photographs Of Soldiers' Faces Before And After A War

[Scuba]

http://www.upworthy.com/mesmerizing-photographs-of-soldiers-faces-before-and-after-a-war?c=ufb1

[DesertFlower]

1. my friend's son was in both afghanistan

and iraq. i know what he looks like now. didn't know him before. have to ask my friend. i know he talked about suicide.

[snot]

2. Is the middle photo "during"?

[Scuba]

3. Per the link, yes.

[pinboy3niner]

4. I remember what my now-deceased little brother told me long after the VN War

He said that mom told him, "Pinboy was never so angry before he went to Vietnam."

I had my catharsis and changed later, but it hurt to hear that.

[Half-Century Man]

5. My dear Countrymen.

Are you just now noticing the faces? They've been coming back like that for over a hundred years. Some wounds are not caused by bullets or shrapnel.

[nolabear]

6. Amen.

Makes me want to weep.

[Rozlee]

7. I remember my first day in theater in Kuwait

waiting for my flight to BIA back in '05. I looked at some guys from the Big Red One who were redeploying to Ft. Riley. I remembered the thousand yard stare from the Vietnam War. I was shocked to see it on some of those infantry guys. What shocks me even more is to realize that many of them probably went back for several more tours. A couple of the guys in these pictures have that same slack-eyed 'yarding' stare.

[NV Whino]

8. I see a lot of emptiness in those third photos

[Botany]

9. Thousand-yard stare (WW II term)

This has been going on for a long time .....

Looking out across the distance for the person who wants to shoot you.

[Scuba]

11. No, looking for enemy is an active role. Looking across the universe for a different dimension...

... or perhaps more accurately, looking at the horrors within, is an unconscience act. This is what causes the 1,000 yard stare.

[Botany]

12. war changes people forever

my dad who is now 84 still wakes up and thinks he is in a battle in
Korea where the ship he was on was being shelled.

[oldbanjo]

10. When your 18 or 19 years old 4 years makes a

big change in your looks. My twin brother was in Nam I was not and a few years ago one of his boys mistook me for him. We look alike today like we always have.

[Rainngirl]

13. That's the handiwork

That's the handiwork of GWB*. I wish someone would put this in front of his stupid face and say, "Look, you a$$hole. Look what you did." I'm sure he's way too clueless to acknowledge he and the devil (Dick) are responsible.

[BeatleBoot]

14. How can your eyes go from brown to blue then back to brown (last set of pics)?

[GreenStormCloud]

15. The lighting is different in the middle picture.

The light is more from the front, lighting up the eyes, in the middle picture.

[MADem]

23. Coloured contact lenses, perhaps? nt

[90-percent]

16. I always found it upsetting

How GWB's vanity war demanded multiple tours for all units, and sent over a lot of National Guard Troops for the same hot combat and multiple tours.

It was such a terrible thing our country asked these young men to do. And for nothing, on top of that!

I always found it absurd that we went to war, and then the rational for going was constantly changing over the years. Not to mention Wolfowitz, BEFORE THE WAR STARTED, said publicly that the chose WMD's, BECAUSE THAT WAS THE ONLY THING THEY COULD ALL AGREE ON.

Step one - decide to go to pre-emptive war
Step two- find a justification we can all agree to

That is treason, murder and high crimes against humanity to go off to war based on bullshit!

-90% Jimmy

[Scuba]

17. +1,000

And not just any war. Gulf of Tonkin is another example.

[DaveHee]

18. Vietnam, the same images

The year was 1967, as an army brat I was traveling back to the states after two years in India. Pan Am from Delhi to Bangkok, then on a C-141 Starlifter to Saigon. The plane from Bangkok had a few new recruits that looked to be my age. We stayed on the ground and on the plane for two hours in Saigon while soldiers boarded the plane to return home to the states. The guys loading on were two years older than the guys loading off, but they looked to be twenty years older. BIG difference, and a strong influence to an army brat at 17. Damn the bastards who put us into Vietnam, damn the bastards who put us into Iraq and Afghanistan. Can we stop this endless war?!!

Peace,
Dave

[colorado_ufo]

19. Stress, stress, stress.

Notice the pinched lines between the eyes in all the middle photos. This is the same effect you see in people who are in chronic physical pain or post surgery. Same effect in long-term stress. In the last photos, some of that stress has been abated.

[sodom]

20. propaganda

The camera, lighting, position of the heads are not consistent. Its the same bullshit you see on advertisements that hawk wrinkle removing crap. I'm sure the stress of being deployed has a physical effect on ones appearance. But this example is garbage. If you have light being cast directly in your eyes you're going to squint/ grimace/ frown. You can see the reflection of the light in their eyes.

[Scuba]

21. Yours is a very interesting post.

[mojowork_n]

22. There was a good essay on the general topic today...

...over at Counterpunch.

I followed the link over to Upworthy and looked at all the faces and whether or not there was an agenda or a bias or trick lighting involved, the general observation made still strikes me as likely to be true and accurate:

Excerpt:

For the ordinary soldier, experience of combat is unadulterated by any comforting reflections that the butchery is required in the furtherance of a just cause, and actions he would ordinarily look upon with disgust he is now encouraged to view as the height of valour. Paul Fussell, an American officer during WW2 and later a famous professor of literature, recorded that as an unblooded soldier the effect of stumbling upon a clearing strewn with the corpses of German soldiers was to suddenly deprive him of his ‘adolescent illusions’, instilling an abrupt realisation that: ‘I was not and never would be in a world that was reasonable or just.’ Wryly commenting on the hellish conditions his platoon encountered during their advance he noted: ‘Getting it over was our sole motive. Yes, we knew about the Jews. But our skins seemed to us more valuable at the time.’

Link (Long but worth a read):

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/17/russia-the-west-and-world-war-ii/