The Story Behind an Army Combat Photographer's Final Picture
From TIME
It's an instance of war that we're not really meant to see, an unnerving blur of debris and fire before death. Nearly four years after a U.S. Army combat photographer was killed during a training exercise with Afghan forces, the military has released what is her final image taken in the moments before she died.Read more: http://time.com/4764127/afghanistan-army-combat-photographer/Spc. Hilda I. Clayton, a “visual information specialist” and a member of the 55th Signal Company, or Combat Camera, was photographing an Afghan National Army "mortar validation exercise" in the eastern Laghman Province on July 2, 2013, when a mortar tube accidentally exploded. Clayton, 22, of Augusta, Ga., was killed alongside an Afghan photographer she was training and several ANA soldiers. Her image was published with the Afghan photographer’s picture in the May-June issue of Military Review, a journal of the army.
“At the critical juncture of the war, when it was necessary for the ANA to increasingly assume responsibility for military actions, the story was not in the fighting but in the partnership that was necessary between U.S. and Afghan forces to stabilize the Afghan nation. One of the Afghan soldiers killed was a photojournalist that Clayton had partnered with to train in photojournalism,” the journal article states. “Not only did Clayton help document activities aimed at shaping and strengthening the partnership but she also shared in the risk by participating in the effort.”
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Speechless.
Wow, what a photo and what a story.
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