Portrait From Hell: Larry Burrows' 'Reaching Out,' 1966

 

In October 1966, on a mud-splattered hill just south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in Vietnam, LIFE magazine's Larry Burrows made a photograph that, for generations, has served as the most indelible, searing illustration of the horrors inherent in that long, divisive war — and, by implication, in all wars.In Burrows' photo, commonly known as Reaching Out, an injured Marine — Gunnery Sgt. Jeremiah Purdie, a blood-stained bandage on his head — appears to be inexorably drawn to a stricken comrade. Here, in one astonishing frame, we witness tenderness and terror, desolation and fellowship — and, above all, we encounter the power of a simple human gesture to transform, if only for a moment, an utterly inhuman landscape.

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