UKH

This is an absolutely amazing photo, sadly the photographer's last as it's a picture of the explosion that killed her, another military photographer and two other soldiers:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hilda-clayton-combat-photo_us_5908baf8e...

In reply to deepsoup:

Blimey

In reply to deepsoup:

I'm not sure what we gain by it, it just seems ghoulish to me.
jk

In reply to jkarran:


It illustrates the futility of conflict?

Although, you'd think most of humanity might have realised that by now.

In reply to jkarran:

I guess that's subjective. Some kids at school brought in a video, and it turned out to be footage of a guy being electrocuted on an electric chair, with cheery music over the top. Where the video was 'entertainment', the pictures in the link might make people stop and think - perhaps?

In reply to Phil79:

I kind of take the point but actually it was a training accident.

In reply to JayPee630:
It still brought home to me the other end of being fired at, though, in meeting an explosive death.

In reply to deepsoup:

Not so much a stunning picture, as the Huff Post has it, but a tragic one.

T.

In reply to JayPee630:


I know. Which makes it even more futile AFAIC!

In reply to Pursued by a bear:

It is certainly tragic. I don't think the two things are necessarily mutually exclusive, I think it's both tragic and stunning. It's certainly very affecting, in a way that some very famous photos are. The naked girl in the napalm attack in Vietnam springs to mind.

As for it being ghoulish, I don't think so personally. If we're going to continue with the business of killing each other I think it should be photographed, filmed, reported. It is all too easy to forget, with drone strikes and the like particularly, that the purpose of all that whizz bang exciting technology is to maim and kill human beings.

I'm not entirely convinced by the argument that this is just 'a training accident' either. The tragic deaths on the Brecon Beacons back in 2013 and again last year were training accidents, whilst not a part of an actual battle this live firing exercise was something immediately necessitated by the ongoing conflict and as far as I'm concerned those four soldiers were just as much victims of that conflict as if they'd been killed by 'enemy action'.

In reply to deepsoup:

Robert Capa, Larry Burrows, Ernie Pyle, Tim Hetherington, the list keeps growing. People trying to tell us that war is our species at its worst. Time we listened really.

In reply to Phil79:

it would be far more futile to have nice safe ministry of safety dry-firing training only and then have everyone killed the first time there is any shooting. The futility would be in making the training safe. Making training realistic and more dangerous is reckoned to save far more lives

In reply to DerwentDiluted:

Wars can have multiple identities depending on whose facts/propaganda you're being fed.
Invading nations, killing and subjugating people.. yes, our species at its worst. Defending nations and risking lives to protect people can be examples of our species at its best.

In reply to Stichtplate:

Indeed. Take landmines. Evil, unconscionable, and as despicable as Princess Di said.

Unless your village is about to be overrun by IS, the Lord's Resistance Army or any other random collection of batshit mental murderers and torturers. At which point I'd happily be burying bounding fragmentation mines in my cabbage patch.

In reply to deepsoup:


Agree. A sad loss of probably very fine people.

Mick

In reply to Ridge:


A fair enough point, but it's rarely such villagers who have the funds, or connections, to obtain landmines. And presumably they're of limited use against batshit mental murderers and torturers.