文/快哉风
Behind every classic photo, there is an unforgettable story. Today, Brother Feng told me a classic photo of the Vietnam War.
On June 18, 1965, at the Baorong airstrip in southern Vietnam, AP photojournalist Horst Faas randomly photographed the American soldiers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade. This is the most famous one. Zhang.
The soldier in the photo is young and handsome, and his bright eyes are in stark contrast to the lacklustreness of other soldiers. Although his face was dusty in the war, he was still smiling, just like taking a picture of a high school yearbook. What's more eye-catching is the graffiti on his helmet: War IS HELL (WAR IS HELL).
American soldiers have their own graffiti attributes. Whether it’s arms, helmets, shells, tanks, or planes, they often use arbitrary graffiti to express their feelings about war. Of course, it is usually a feeling of "negative energy".
This soldier’s graffiti comes from a famous speech by the Northern Army general Sherman during the Civil War: “You don’t know how terrible war is. I have experienced two wars, I know. I have seen it. In the ashes of the city and houses, I saw thousands of people lying on the ground, their dying faces looking up at the sky. I tell you, war is hell!"
this one After the photo was published, it quickly spread throughout the United States and became one of the most touching and iconic photos of the Vietnam War. However, the identity of this soldier has been a mystery for decades.
It wasn't until 2010, 45 years later, that a woman named Fran was disclosed to the media. The soldier in the photo was her late husband Larry Wayne Chaffin (Larry Wayne Chaffin). Chafin was born in St. Louis, and married her after graduating from high school at the age of 17, and entered the military service in Vietnam in May 1965. Chafin in this photo is only 19 years old.
Fulan recalled that when she received Chaffin at the airport, who had returned to China from the military, he held a Stars and Stripes magazine that published this photo in his arm and told her jokingly: "This photo will make me rich."
However, Chafin did not become rich. Not only that, but his health is very bad. He developed diabetes very early and died of complications at the age of 39, leaving his wife and three children behind.
Young and strong Chafin, why did he die early? The reason is already notorious in the United States: the sequelae of Agent Orange.
During the Vietnam War, in order to destroy the concealment of North Vietnamese soldiers, the US military sprayed a large amount of defoliant, commonly known as Agent Orange, on more than 4.5 million acres of jungle. This defoliant is powerful and can make trees dead, but it contains very toxic dioxins, which is extremely harmful to the human body, and almost all US soldiers are unsuspectingly exposed to this "toxic gas".
After the war, a large number of deformities and idiots appeared in Vietnam, and the Vietnam War veterans in the United States were not much better. The incidence of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer was much higher than that of normal people. Due to the "agent orange sequelae" and war traumatic sequelae, the United States has also created a shocking record: the number of suicides among Vietnam War veterans reached 60,000, which even exceeded the number of deaths of 58,000.
The Vietnam War is the longest war in the history of the United States. It cost a lot of money and ended in failure, causing great trauma to the people of the two countries. For American soldiers, it is a war that you don't know why.
Chafen, the young American soldier, used his tragic death to prove how correct the line he wrote on the helmet.
