Just a boy

I have scanned this photograph from one of my books ‘The Great Photographer’.

Photo by John Florea 1945.  A 15-year-old German prisoner of war, Giessen, Germany.  This is one of the most heart wrenching images I have ever seen. When I first saw this photograph I felt deeply disturbed. Even the hardest of people could not help but feel some kind of compassion towards this boy. He looks totally heart broken, terrified and bewildered; his clothes look to be the only thing that he owns. He is just a boy that has been ordered to be a man and nobody knows what he has just witnessed or what could happen to him. The terror on his face really shows the stark reality of war. He looks hungry, cold and tired, a feeling of no hope and despair. many  poems are said every year on Remembrance Sunday, and yet after the two minutes silence this is easily forgotten. Society today has all the essentials and nessessitys we want but this word want soon turns easily to need. It seems we have not learned any lessons from the spoils of war, even as I write these words people are dying and suffering from conflicts all over the world.