Thomas Wictor

There’s an image making the rounds that appears to show an American soldier with his legs blown off, sitting in a chair, smoking a cigarette. It’s one of the many fake photos that either boost morale or sap it. I knew it wasn’t real; it took me three minutes to find the source.

This is the photo. Since it’s fake, don’t be upset. I’ll give you its origin in a couple of minutes.

Anyone who understands the military would know immediately that this isn’t an authentic photo of a wounded soldier. We don’t sit our men in chairs and pose them while they bleed out from traumatic loss of tissue that leaves their tibias and fibulas exposed. If this man’s injuries were real, he’d be lying on the ground, and tourniquets would be applied to his legs above the wounds. He’d be surrounded by frantic medics.

People who think this photo is real are extremely childish. They’ve been watching too many movies and playing too many video games.

There was a time when a soldier posed with an extremely serious wound, but it was a hundred years ago, and such photos are so rare that they’re almost nonexistent. I have one in my postcard collection.

Here’s German Reservist Augustin Tacherting, Bavarian 1st Reserve Infantry Regiment, just back from a trench raid. The picture was taken sometime in 1915.

Note his right thigh. His trouser leg is soaked with blood, and there’s a bulky bandage on the wound. Augustin should be in the hospital, but he took the time to pose for a photo, most likely because he’s a hand-grenade specialist and extremely proud of it.

His shoulder strap has a small “H” beneath the “1,” which stands for Handgranaten. Look at Augustin’s face; he’s in terrible pain. Still, he wanted a souvenir of his prowess as a trench raider and hand-grenade thrower. He even chose to stand in front of ivy, which symbolizes eternal life. Many German soldiers had their portraits taken in front of ivy.

This is the only such photo I’ve ever seen. A hundred years ago, life was cheaper and men were far more apt to put on crazy displays of machismo. Even so, I’ve never come across another photo of such a terribly wounded man posing when he should’ve been immediately evacuated to an aid station.

German trench raiders were, well, lunatics. They disdained pain and death, often choosing macabre symbols to separate themselves from everyday troops who just wanted to go home.

This German trench raider was photographed in a hospital.

He’s a non-commissioned officer in the 5th Guard Grenadier Regiment, so he’s got lots of pressure on him to “be a man.”

“‘Tis but a scratch! Strap a gun to my stump, and point me toward the war!”

The Germans made a fatal mistake in World War One: They put all their best men in assault units and encouraged them to die for the Fatherland. So the men did die, which robbed the German army of its most capable soldiers. By the end of the war, the German army had to draft “men” like this.

I’m not one of those people who think that little boys and girls are the same. It’s in the male DNA to fight. And you can’t blame society for the male attraction to guns. Even in a nation as neutral and pacifist as Sweden, little boys want to play soldier.

Soldiering is an honorable profession.

It is the Soldier, not the minister
Who has given us freedom of religion.
It is the Soldier, not the reporter
Who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the Soldier, not the poet
Who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer
Who has given us freedom to protest.
It is the Soldier, not the lawyer
Who has given us the right to a fair trial.
It is the Soldier, not the politician
Who has given us the right to vote.
It is the Soldier who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who allows the protester to burn the flag.

—Charles M. Province

The fake photo that appears at the beginning of this post was taken in 2009 at Fort Irwin, California, at a mock Iraqi village. A dozen such villages were used to train American troops how to deal with Iraqi culture and how to tell friend from foe.

Iraqi refugees were paid to play the role of villagers and insurgents.

This man also played a role.

Using faked photos sends several kinds of messages. I’ll leave it to the reader to decide how to interpret this particular fraudulence.