Looking Back

I look at old photos - mostly from WWII - and sitting here I really start to think about them. I find it amazing that to the people in the photos, the war wasn't history. It was the present. We view the past in a sort of jaded way. We are looking back on it and that changes our view in a way. We have to realize that these people, the ones in the photograph, and the one behind the camera, aren't just some people who did something once in a battle, they were people. They had families and lives and problems. They all loved, they all hated, they all needed money, they all knew what it was like to imagine the future. These people were caught up in a crazy bunch of events, collisions between nation's armies and intense political battles. Danger, heartbreak, fear, love. We look back on these things and say "oh why of course the Germans are the bad guys. All those guys were Nazis." But we forget that they were just people. Just normal people. All caught up in something crazy and out of their control. That is how I like to look at history.