Looking Beyond the Image
Keith Nightingale
This is a Pulitzer Prize winning image by Kyochi Sawada. On initial glance, it is a Vietnamese family attempting to escape the horrors that war has brought to them. But if you look deeper, it is an image that encompasses all our experiences in Vietnam. Look at the image and close your eyes.
The person in the lead is an experienced veteran. This is not a new situation. The mission is to get the less experienced and more vulnerable charges to safety. Like the platoon sergeant who experienced combat in WW II and Korea, she knows that safety lies ahead and she is determined to get there as did our NCO's-the father's of their family.
Closing the rear is the next generation-the squad leader or the experienced in-country vet. She, as they, placed the newer troops in front and was responsible for leading, guiding and shepherding behind the senior. In between are the rookies, the new folks experiencing this for the first time and utterly relying on the experience and wisdom at the front and rear. It is abject horror for them as they know no better. That will come with time when they learn to subjugate personal fears for the greater good.
One of the junior charges is experiencing a now veterans moment-he is assessing his situation and has reasonable confidence in his leadership. But he looks with some apprehension and uncertainty as to the scene in his view. He acts as we all did under similar circumstances and will soon gain the competency to supplant those personalities to his front and rear.
Above all else, this image is of determination. They will persevere and they will prevail. They know they must to survive. There is nothing they have not seen and no action they will not take to preserve their charges and their collective future.
They accurately reflect the common ethos of all combatants in every war. A casual observer might note it is just locals and they ultimately won with what was displayed. However, these are not combatants but they displayed all the characteristics of combatants on both sides while remaining humanly neutral. A person of deeper thought would see that this is an image of all that served in combat and experienced the emotions that raged tempered by experience. The image specifically represents some, but in truth it displays us all.