Describing a Picture: 101st Airborne Bazooka Team

 

All right, I'll be honest with you. I had no idea what picture I should pick to describe. The reason is that I hate describing pictures. What's more, I have this feeling I suck at it. But since I obviously had to pick something, and because World War 2 warfare (specifically the airborne operations) is among the few of my interests, I chose this picture of two men reenacting a US paratrooper bazooka team of the famous 101^st Airborne Division.

The guys are kneeling in a shell scrape – a shallow military earthwork deep enough for a soldier to lie in. Like I already mentioned, these soldiers, or paratroopers, form a bazooka team. For anyone who never heard of what bazooka is, it's the long tube on the left guy's right shoulder. Seeing as the paratrooper on the right is loading a rocket into the bazooka, it's safe to assume there's enemy armor heading their way. It's a good thing they have more than one rocket – notice the bag with rocket tubes on the left.

While the bazooka team's main purpose is to fight off armored vehicles, they still have to be able to defend themselves from enemy infantry. That's what the two rifles in their position are for. The bazooka operator usually carried an M1 Carbine with a folding stock which we can see leaning against the wall of the shell scrape to the operator's right. An M1 Garand semi-automatic rifle, which presumably belongs to the loader, can be seen in the bottom right corner, albeit only partially.

Hopefully I didn't deviate too much from what we were assigned and this can still be considered as a picture description. Now that I think of it, I might have chosen this picture because paratroopers played a major role in D-Day operations on June 6, 1944, of which it will be the 70^th anniversary this year.