Photos Hearts and Minds

[AudieM249]

So many focus on the combat aspect of the military, but why we can't take focus on interactions with local nationals that are positive to each other? If you have been deployed, some of the best moments are realizing they are humans like you and me. Most want, what we want. To keep their families safe and provide for them. I miss that aspect, and to have fun with kids, and adults alike. We are not enemies by default. We can be friends, we can get along and enjoy the other's company. It is easier to do that than fight one another. It is a rhetorical question, but one I believe is worth addressing. It is too easy to see ourselves as separate, when we are very much alike. That type of empathy is just as important as combat drills.

"Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal." JFK

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Corey West, from 3rd Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 15th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, watches and smiles while a young Iraqi girl tries on his sunglasses in Ja'ara, Iraq, Aug. 31, 2007. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Timothy Kingston

Vietnam - 1964, American advisor, Captain Vernon Gillespie Jr. , playing with local children. by Larry Burrows

U.S. Army 1st Lt. Michael Moore, platoon leader, 3rd Platoon, C Company, 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, plays foosball with children during a patrol in Rusafa, Baghdad, Iraq, Feb. 17, 2008.
(U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Jason T. Baile

U.S. Marine 1st Lt. Gunter Dohse of Albuquerque, New Mexico, a 16 yr veteran of the Marine Corps, bounces a little South Vietnamese boy on his boot during an off duty moment at a village five miles from his base perimeter at Danang. Lt. Dohse was an officer of the 3rd Antitank Battalion determined to make friends with the villagers. Occupying a foxhole when fifteen of the enemy approached his position during a night attack against his company's sector by a force of estimated regiment strength, Private First Class Dohse held his fire to prevent a premature disclosure of his position while the intense small-arms, grenade, automatic weapons and machine-gun barrage continued. As the enemy closed in front of him, he suddenly opened fire with deadly accuracy, killing several and dispersing the others. With his weapon inoperative as the foe persisted in the onslaught, Private First Class Dohse hurled hand grenades to account for two more hostile soldiers as the bullets from an automatic weapo

 

[AudieM249]

Looking back, we had more positive interactions than not, as least directly. I miss the kids, they were just kids. Same you more or less could find in the rest of the world. I could play soccer (not football like you Anglo heathens ), and we all had a wonderful time. Smiles all around. Didn't matter who one, but we got to play with each other. Going to deep into the desert just to supply some grain to very remote villages. Those types of acts are boring, but they had impact.

2-87 Kandahar

1st Lt. Tommy Ryan holds up a young boy during a patrol through the Taji Qada, northwest of Baghdad, July 12, 2008. Ryan serves as an infantry platoon leader with the 25th Infantry Division. Photo by Sgt. Brad Willeford, 2nd Stryker Brigade 25th Infantry Division.

One of my own

This village had not seen Americans four years after the beginning of the Iraq War.

 

[AudieM249]

An Afghan child waves a flag at a coalition forces’ member as he travels to an Afghan National Security Forces-led medical clinic in Panjwai district, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, March 12, 2013. The clinics were held to enable conditions for improved security, governance and development.

Corporal Jamie Peters, RLC, for his portfolio of images from six months in Afghanistan. Soldiers from 1SCOTS bonding with their Afghan brothers at one of the checkpoints they visit regularly. The Jocks as they are affectionately known are there to mentor and advise the Afghan National Army (ANA) in conducting operations within Helmand Province
Photograph: Cpl Jamie Peters RLC

Italy October 1943 An American soldier shares his rations with two hungry Italian ... Fifth Grade (TEC 5) gives his rations out to two small Italian children, 1943.

A Japanese soldier was playing dead in a shell hole until two Marines came across him. After moving the grenade that was with in an arms reach of the Japanese soldier, the Marines ensure he wasn’t booby trapped. They then offer the man a cigarette before taking him captive.

 

[AudieM249]

Little more on the last photo.

US Marine gives a Japanese soldier a cigarette before pulling him out of a shell hole. Armed with a grenade, the soldier was lying in wait for 36 hours. Marines saw him buried in the black sand and were able to knock the grande out of reach. He surrendered, but thinking he might be booby trapped, they approached cautiously. He requested a cigarette and got it; then he was dug out of the shell hole. The 3rd and 4th Marine Divisions broke up the remaining organized resistance on March 16, 1945, the same day this photo was taken. Occasionally individual enemy soldiers armed with demolition charges and grenades raced out against tanks or groups of Marines but were shot down before they could do any great damage to personnel or equipment. Isolated pockets, totaling some 3,000 enemy soldiers, remained around the island. US V Amphibious Corps Command declared Iwo Jima secure at 1800 Hours on MArch 16, but another ten days of fighting remained. Only 216 prisoners were captured between February 19 and March 26, 1945. The US Army's 147th Infantry Regiment would capture another 867 between March 27 and May 1945. A major push by psychological warfare experts to encourage holdouts to surrender on March 17, 1945 netted few results. Japanese Commander Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi radioed nearby island ChiChi Jima, "They [the Americans] advised us to surrender by a loudspeaker, but we only laughed at this childish trick and did not set ourselves against them."
Caption Written By:
Jason McDonald
Photographed By:
Unknown
Date Photographed:
Friday, March 16, 1945
City:
Iwo Jima

 

[AudieM249]

Sgt Walter P. Goworek (of Jersey City, NJ) gives two French girls some GI candy, 4 July 1944

Gail "Uncle Wiggly Wings" Halvorsen, a USAF pilot, makes parachutes that carried candy for the children of West Berlin during the Berlin Airlift. 1948.

American Red Cross as American Red Cross workers Allene Haberfield of Auburn, New York plays the piano and Josephine Harris of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania sings while accompanied by U.S. Army soldiers in liberated Cherbourg. The town had been liberated by the Allies following the Battle of Cherbourg on 30 June 1944. Cherbourg-Octeville, Manche, Lower Normandy, France. 22 September 1944.