This past Memorial Day, I happened upon a large batch of photographs from World War II posted on The Atlantic website. There were hundreds in various categories with titles like “Pearl Harbor,” “The Allied Invasion of Europe” and “The Fall of Imperial Japan.”
Among some of the famous images of the war were many I hadn’t seen before. These were not the iconic photographs that appeared in Life magazine or in newspapers across the country. These were pictures that an editor looked at once before moving on. They were ordinary pictures, almost snapshots of the war.
As I scrolled through the category called “The Fall of Nazi Germany,” I stopped at image number 23. The caption reads: “Men of the American 7th Army pour through a breach in the Siegfried Line defenses on their way to Karlsruhe, Germany, on March 27, 1945, which lies on the road to Stuttgart.”
What caught my eye in this particular photo wasn’t the detailed picture of the Siegfried Line or even the composition. It was much more personal. There, in a jeep, looking straight at the camera was Capt. Sidney P. Kozak, my father.
