"The last man to die"

 "The last man to die"

War photographer Robert Capa took this iconic photo of an American soldier shot dead by a German sniper in the battle for Leipzig on April 18, 1945. 

The soldier was known as the "last man to die" in World War II. after the image appeared in Life magazine. Victory issue.

During the last days of the war, a platoon of machine guns entered a Leipzig building in search of positions to establish fire points that protected the infantrymen of the second US infantry. UU. They were advancing across the bridge.

 Two members of the platoon found an open balcony that ordered an unobstructed view of the bridge and prepared their weapon. For a while, one soldier fired the gun while the other fed him.

 Then one soldier entered and the other manned the smoking gun alone. Once absorbed by the charge, a German sniper bullet from the street pierced his forehead. He collapsed to the ground, dead.

War photographer Robert Capa went up a balcony window to the floor to photograph the dead man, who was lying at the open door, with a looted Luftwaffe sheepskin helmet on his head. 

The subsequent series of photographs shows the rapid spread of the soldier's blood through the parquet floor when other IGs attended to him and his fellow gunner took over his position in the machine gun.

 "It was a very clean death, somehow very beautiful, and I think that's what I remember most about the war," Capa recalled two years later in a radio interview.

The soldier was identified as Raymond J. Bowman, 21, born in Rochester, New York. In January 1944, he was sent to the United Kingdom in preparation for Operation Overlord.

 Bowman served in France, where he was injured in action on August 3, 1944, and later in Belgium and Germany. He reached the rank of private first class during his service.

 The Life magazine article did not identify the soldiers in the photographs by name, although Bowman's family recognized him by the small pin (which bore his initials) that he always wore on his neck.