A Glimpse Into Future Past
Meandering the long, dimly lit hallways of the Mayville museum on a private tour, pondering the rusting mining equipment, the dusty tomes slowing aging on sagging bookshelves, and archaic medical devices lying forever frozen under gentle florescent lighting on chipped glass shelving, I found myself impressed by the history of these amazing artifacts lovingly gathered together in this one location. The tools of trades long since past, replaced by modern equipment and techniques was standard fare for museums such as this. I was captivated but emotionally unmoved…until I noticed this photograph:
This photograph, when taken in as a whole, is not that remarkable. What made it stand out in my mind was the face of one young soldier in particular. Inching forward, hands clasped behind my back to give the observing docent the reassuring feeling that I wasn’t going to touch anything, I stared intently for several minutes at the forlorn face of this young man:
As his comrades seethed in anger, anxious to pounce on the enemy with conditioned hatred and well-practiced war cries, this was the one soldier who was not looking at the camera, but rather at a distant point well beyond the camera and our understanding. It’s as if he’s had a long talk with himself in recent days, and he was deeply disturbed by what he heard; I can imagine him numbly accepting the terrible truth that, odds are, this was to be the final picture that he was ever going to pose for, and in the next few days he’ll be on the chaotic front lines, his unavoidable fate sealed with the dull impact of a predestined bullet, a slow choking invisible death deep in a rolling cloud of mustard gas, or in a quick blinding concussive blast of an exploding shrapnel-spitting shell. Bound by duty and contract, heavy with the acceptance that he most probably will not be coming back this way again, his solemn expression tells me everything I need to know about the horrors of war, and how brave the World War I generation truly was.
