Arthur Green, USCGR

BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO COME BACK

1944

A Coast Guardsman is killed at his battle station. His ship blasted by enemy fire, this twisted and lifeless body symbolizes the sacrifice that American youth is making for Europe's liberation. An American youth thousands of miles from his home. Dying at his post, this boy represents the blunt expression of a Coast Guardsman's duty in peacetime as in war: 'You have to go out, but you don't have to come back.'

Government censors did not release photographs of American war dead until September 1943. After this, pictures of Americans killed in action could be published so long as their faces were not visible.