Shipping out
No matter what era, the moment when a soldier ships out is laden with bittersweet emotion—excitement, uncertainty, pride and trepidation
For soldiers and those they leave behind, shipping out is all about goodbyes. Iconic photographs of wartime goodbyes the world over tend to focus on loved ones—family and friends massed dockside to bid farewell to waving soldiers swarming a ship’s deck; American soldiers and sailors, filled with bravado, kissing their girls on the steam-clouded platforms of New York’s Penn Station; troops milling about on a tarmac, waiting with stoicism to board a transport flight while family members wave from behind barriers.
Mothers and fathers, wives and sweethearts, family and friends. Perhaps no goodbye is more wrenching than that of a son or daughter.
Cana...
