soldiers-of-war:IRAQ. March 9, 2006. A memorial service for Kevin Jessen, killed the previous day at
soldiers-of-war:IRAQ. March 9, 2006. A memorial service for Kevin Jessen, killed the previous day at the age of 28 by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). He died in the restive former Baathist stronghold of Rawah, in the Al-Anbar governorate. He left behind a wife, Carrie, and a 2-year old son, Cameron. It was his third tour to Iraq. He was a recent arrival to the unit, and not well known to most of the other soldiers. At the memorial service, bagpipes played a mournful hymnal, while the 400 soldiers that manned the base each filed past and saluted the memorial. In a tent reserved for passengers in transit, a lone civilian sat and wept after the funeral. He was an internet service technician working in Iraq as a contractor for a Halliburton subsidiary, lured by the high pay and the opportunity to ‘do his part.’ He had arrived the previous day by helicopter, and Kevin had picked him up at the landing pad. They had a friendly talk, and decided to continue the chat over dinner at the chow hall that night. The next day, Kevin went out on a patrol and was killed. The technician’s job usually insulated him from the daily realities of the war. Kevin was the first soldier he’d known who died. He pledged that at the end of his contract he would leave Iraq and never come back.“I would like to think that photography has had some positive influence. I found it very inspiring, [this idea] about photographs somehow ending war in some short-term fashion. [I’m] obviously being hopelessly naïve and ridiculous, but in the long view, I think it’s a goal to aspire to—not just photography, but all these different mediums. We co-exist with video, and we co-exist with the written word, and just plain old testimonies from soldiers at the V.F.W. maybe, or at a Memorial Day parade. It’s the collective weight of all of these things that at some point provokes change.”— July 2010, Brooklyn, New York.Photograph:Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos -- source link