Survivor

He had been lost in the suffocating smoke and chaos of a doomed monolith.  He had emerged from the ruins coughing, sputtering, staggering, wounded, to wander among the dying and the maimed.  He had cheated death, survived to bear witness to a calamity that altered the world and changed his life.  He hated the way politicians created a myth, and used it for their own purposes, to settle old scores or to get re-elected.  He had seen heroism that day, but not everyone had been a hero.  Most survivors, like him, were victims, tormented now by rattling lungs and memory.

U.S. Navy Photo by Photographer's Mate 2nd Class Jim Watson