"Hot off the presses, an extraordinary event: 125 of the world's best photographers snapped anything and everything related to the armed forces for A Day in the Life of the United States Armed Forces, the latest project in the Day in the Life series. We've seen these beautiful photography books—and they've been bringing us to other worlds since 1981—but this is the biggest one yet."
—Diane Sawyer, Good Morning America


"An unprecedented insider's view of a remarkable one-day mission: to photograph Americans on guard."
—Charles Gibson, PrimeTime


"A snapshot of the U.S. military—actually 60,000 snapshots—all taken during one 24-hour period. 125 of the world's best photojournalists fanned out across the globe to capture a day in the life of the U.S. armed forces. Not an easy task, considering that there are 1.4 million men and women on active duty, stationed around the world for this country."
—Ted Koppel, Nightline UpClose


"When you go to a movie and enjoy it, you can't take the movie home and put it on a coffee table. But you can take a piece of work like this, especially if you really treasure experiences and assoications in the military, and put it on a coffee table. And every time you sit down to watch television you pick up that book and look at the troops... it's a meaningful piece of artwork."
—Army General Tommy Franks

MAJOR PRESS COVERAGE

U.S. News & World Report

"As the men and women of America's armed forces prepare to come home from Iraq, they return to a life with which most of their compatriots are wholly unfamiliar. To document that life, more than 125 of the world's finest photographers fanned out across the globe over a single 24-hour period late last year. The result is A Day in the Life of the United States Armed Forces."

Exclusive photographs from the book are featured in the May 12, 2003 edition of U.S. News & World Report. See U.S. Army paratroopers from Ft. Benning, Georgia parachuting from a C-130; join members of a joint task force Full Accounting team at Kuy Thuong Mountain in Vietnam, and experience "The Crucible" the grueling marine training at Camp Pendleton. (May 12, 2003)

****************

This set of photographs was made on October 22, 2002 as part of a 24-hour continuous window of shooting done for the Day in The Life of The U.S. Armed Forces book project. Info about the book project is available at www.daymilitary.com.

My main assignment was at the Jungle Warfare Training Center (JWTC) in Okinawa, Japan. The JWTC is the U.S. military's only jungle training facility. There was once one in Panama, but it closed some years ago. With all of the anti-terrorism efforts in the Philippines and other East Asia locations, the JWTC in Okinawa has become a very important training facility.

These photos were shot in the morning and featured a squad of U.S. Marine grunts practicing their search and destroy patrol techniques in a jungle environment. The scenario was similar to what the Marines may face if called into direct action to hunt al-Qaeda terrorists in the Philippine jungles.

These were all shot with an FM2 body, 20mm/f2, 50mm/1.4, and 105mm/f2. I used TMAX 400 b&w and Fuji 800.

NEWS COVERAGE:

Copyright 2003 Cox Enterprises, Inc.
Cox News Service
May 16, 2003 Friday

SECTION: Entertainment, Television and Culture
LENGTH: 533 words
HEADLINE: Military life gets human touch
BYLINE: LAURA DEMPSEY
DATELINE: DAYTON, Ohio

Any day, every day, 24 hours a day, the military is awake, working, ready. It's one thing to know they're there, patroling, carrying out missions and searching for caffeine; it's another thing altogether to see the faces of the paratroopers in Afghanistan, carrying out a night patrol.

On Oct. 22, 2002, a group of 125 photographers were deployed across the country to record a typical day in the life of people in the military—key word being "people."

The invitation-only group of shooters included 12 Pulitzer Prize winners, the result being "A Day in the Life of the United States Armed Forces" (HarperCollins, $40), released just in time to be passed around at Memorial Day picnics (wash your hands first, please).

The project was conceived after 9/11 and before the war in Iraq, an amazing feat of timing and conclusive evidence of the fact that the military and the media were interested in crossing some chilly boundaries even before embedded journalists took their place with the fighting desert troops. On one hand, this book is an incredible triumph of public-relations pragmatism, a testament that military leaders are waking up to the fact that the secrecy is not necessarily all it's cracked up to be. By allowing members of the media to chronicle the people involved in our country's defense, they're drawing the curtain back and letting some light illuminate on what, for the average citizen, can be an easily dismissed necessity of American life.

"A Day in the Life of the United States Armed Forces" is one of about 20 "Day in the Life" projects, one of those brilliantly simple ideas that works by virtue of its very basic premise. One day—it's all there, random events tied together by the human factor and the fact that we're all getting by, doing whatever we need to do.

"A Day in the Life of the United States Armed Forces" has the requisite tanks and guns and uniforms, but it's the human moments that make the book so valuable. A staff sergeant puts on her mascara; a sergeant plays with his 3-year-old son before reporting for duty; a technical sergeant helps a recruit tie his tie; Coast Guard recruits in New Jersey stare at breakfast—a griddle of fried eggs—that seems to star back at them.

There's a photo of an Army major in Hawaii, saluting with one hand while the other holds a surf board; there are war games in Iceland; female Marine recruits taking a "combat swim" and soldiers searching for MIAs in Vietnam. There's the all-male crew on the Trident submarine; soldiers hunting for al-Qaida in the eerie light of night-vision goggles; a recruiting meeting at a Pizza Hut in Iowa.

Walter Cronkite, writing in the forward, makes the point that the book has "very few words, but is not a quick read." The book is an amazing testament to the diversity and widespread presence of the U.S. military. We're everywhere, doing a little bit of everything.

Project co-producer Matthew Naythons, an emergency room physician who became an acclaimed combat photographer, found the cliche to be all-too true.

"We can sleep at night," he said, "because they don't."



Laura Dempsey writes for the Dayton Daily News.
E-mail: ldempsey(at)coxohio.com
LOAD-DATE: May 17, 2003