By 1966, images like this one taken by Time-Life photographer Larry Burrows, of a soldier being led off the field by his comrades after a fierce firefight were common. The heavy toll on U.S, troops belied the magazine’s optimistic forecast on the outcome of the war.

Burrows was born in London in 1926. He left school at 16 and took a job in Life magazine’s London bureau, where he printed photographs. Some accounts blame Burrows for melting photographer Robert Capa’s D-Day negatives in the drying cabinet, but in fact it was another technician, according to John G. Morris.

Burrows went on to become a photographer and covered the war in Vietnam from 1962 until his death in 1971. His work is often cited as the most searing and the most consistently excellent photography from the war, and several of his pictures (“Reaching Out,” for example, featuring a wounded Marine desperately trying to comfort a stricken comrade after a fierce 1966 firefight) and photo essays both encompassed and defined the long, polarizing catastrophe in Vietnam. One of his most famous collections, published first in LIFE Magazine on 16 April 1965, was entitled “One Ride with Yankee Papa 13”.

Burrows died with fellow photojournalists Henri Huet, Kent Potter and Keisaburo Shimamoto, when their helicopter was shot down over Laos. In 2002, Burrows’ posthumous book Vietnam was awarded the Prix Nadar award. At the time of the helicopter crash, the photographers were covering Operation Lam Son 719, a massive armoured invasion of Laos by South Vietnamese forces against the Vietnam People’s Army and the Pathet Lao.

On 3–4 April 2008, the scant remains of Burrows and fellow photographers Huet, Potter and Shimamoto were honoured and interred at the Newseum in Washington, D.C..

Remembering all who served and those who reported the war with an imprint on our souls, which will last forever…

A Vietnam Vet Looks Back: youtu.be/PHxrQE8zVv4

Larry Burrows Photo & Text Source: www.facebook.com/pages/Larry-Burrows/105506906150025?fref=ts#

The Agony Of Victory Photo Source: TIME, The Illustrated History of the World’s Most Influential Magazine by Norberto Angeletti & Alberto Oliva

Sharing History and Veteran Stories: www.JennyLasala.com