Death hangs like a cloud over these photos. I wonder how many of the subjects made it through the war alive.
Those D-Day soldiers, especially.
WWII photos are among most harrowing and iconic images in human history.
The technology is right on the line between old and modern. You can easily imagine yourself there with the tinny radios and the smell oil and grease. The planes and ships look scrappy, like they could easily be blown apart. Cranked out in volume to overpower the enemy, or at least have a few survive.
And then there's the suffering of people in the concentration camps, people who've had their cities bombed. Their faces tell you everything.
The sense of foreboding is palpable.
That is, perhaps, the hedonic treadmill [1].
What a privilege to live in a stable part of the world!
It's no privilege: if these pictures show us one thing is that it was a hard earned right. These men paid the price. Freedom is never granted, it is earned.
It was astonishing how quickly we reached a state of "bored adrenaline". By the second day, we were preparing our breakfast and not even looking outside when we heard (real) gunfire or airsoft pellets striking our shack. I remember sitting down, very tired and bored, thinking about nothing, but my hands still trembling from the adrenaline.
The ways that I naturally felt like moving (I think I'll lean on the wall of this shack for a while and watch the street, I think I'll lean against the wall and keep a hand on my gun) I eventually realized were the same poses I've seen civilians take in pictures of war zones.