Less than a minute from death, this Gunner's fate is sealed. Life Magazine blocked the faces I imagine to spare the Dead Soldiers family. The telegram they would have received would of been bad enough, but too open up a Life Magazine and see your son... dead!
Thanks a lot for sharing, Bandit.<br /><br />I can’t help thinking of the MG gunner who was “spared” by the sniper. He must have been wondering why the German targeted his MG feeder and not him…
Kortxero, how do you know it was the “feeder” and not the gunner who was hit? I thought of that myself, tried to find something in common between one of this 2 soldiers and the soldier hit on the other photos but I didn’t find anything in them that could help, did you see something that I didn’t? Tks in advance, Neutral.
Thanks Kortxero, after reading your comment about the sniper sparing the MG gunner and shooting the feeder, I went back and read the magazine article. Unfortunately, the article gives conflicting accounts of the event. Here is the 1st. account; Two members of the platoon found an open balcony which commanded an unobstructed view of the bridge, and set up their gun. For awhile one soldier fired the gun while the other fed it.LIFE Photographer Robert Capa, who went into the building with the heavy machine-gun platoon took the picture at top. Then one soldier (left in picture) went inside and the other manned the smoking gun alone. While absorbed in reloading it, a German snipers bullet from the street pierced his forehead. He crumpled to the floor, dead. That was the account that was written in the article. But, in a caption below a photo, it reads; A moment later a bullet from the gun of a German sniper strikes the soldier (Left in Picture) squarely between the eyes. That caption infers that it was the MG gunner who was shot. But the first description suggests that it was the feeder who manned the gun and then was shot while reloading. Whoever it was that took the fatal bullet, it was a senseless death, that close too the end of the war.