Mary Archer 21 Nov. 2013

As listed on The Portland Press Herald’s website, by August 14 2009, 41 Maine residents

stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan had fallen. Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard, a New Portland

resident, died on the 14th from a rocket-propelled-grenade hit to the leg while on his patrol in

Dahaneh village, Helmand province, Afghanistan. He became the 42nd fallen. Besides his one

line obituary is his portrait. He is dressed in his Marines uniform against the backdrop of an

American flag.

The Portland Press Herald wrote only this of Bernard’s death, that he “died while fighting

in Helmand province.” Other obituaries are as long as three lines and contain details of the cause

of death, like Army Pvt. Tyler J. Smith who died March 8 2008 of “indirect fire” at Forward

Operating Base Falcon near Baghdad. Other deaths are grisly, like that of 1st Lt. Benjamin

Keating who was killed in November 2006 “when his truck rolled over in Nuristan province.”

The reader is given a name, an age, a location, and sometimes, a cause of death. It takes

five seconds to read these words, and another three to look at the smiling (or not smiling) close-

up, medium-shot, and long-shot of a soldier in uniform. The reader comprehends the word

“death,” but she does not see it. It is sanitized, to use the word of Santiago Lyon, director of

photography at The Associated Press. However, in war, the death of each of Maine’s 42 fallen

must have been vivid, grim. The words are not enough to evoke the terrible intensity of these

soldier’s deaths. That’s why photos like Julie Jacobson’s that showed Bernard’s squad’s rush to

administer to his missing leg is necessary. It brings intensity back.

If I were the editor of The Portland Herald Press, the newspaper of Bernard’s hometown,

I would authorize Jacobson’s gruesome photo for the front page. Thus is the reality of war.

Jacobson showed her series of photos to Bernard’s comrades. They paused at the one mentioned.

Yet, as Jacobson wrote in her journal, excerpted in The New York Times Len’s blog in 2009,

“none of them complained or grew angry about it. They understood that it was what it was. They

understand, despite that he was their friend, it was the reality of things.”

When soldiers sign up to the military they understand the potential outcome that they

may die horribly, violently. The withholdment of these photos is denial of the risks of war, and

an insult to the honor of those soldiers who knew the risks but who chose to go anyway.

Jacobson further wrote her intention was to “start some conversation,” to move others to

send those care packages and letters they’ve put off or to inspire someone to say “I love you.”

Despite the anguish the photo may have caused Bernard’s parents, and despite The Portland

Press Herald’s admonition that ‘running the photo would be in poor taste,’ at least some good

would come out of the photo’s release in the form of small acts of good will.