Or he might have been an unlucky young man with no prospects, recruited off the streets of Baghdad. He might have been devoted to the dictator who sent him to occupy Kuwait and fight the Americans. He’d fought in Saddam Hussein’s army and had a rank and an assignment and a unit. At one point, before he died this dramatic mid-retreat death, the soldier had had a name. On February 28, 1991, Kenneth Jarecke stood in front of the charred man, parked amid the carbonized bodies of his fellow soldiers, and photographed him. Fire has destroyed most of his features, leaving behind a skeletal face, fixed in a final rictus. The colors and textures of his hand and shoulders look like those of the scorched and rusted metal around him. In a photograph taken soon afterward, the soldier’s hand reaches out of the shattered windshield, which frames his face and chest. The flames engulfed his vehicle and incinerated his body, turning him to dusty ash and blackened bone. But the vital battle that would come to define the war in Britain had been won.The Iraqi soldier died attempting to pull himself up over the dashboard of his truck. The Luftwaffe continued to bomb Britain until the end of the war. On 17 September, Hitler was forced to delay his plans to invade Britain. RAF fighters shot down 61 German aircraft for the loss of 31, inflicting the highest losses the Luftwaffe had suffered for over a month. However, the German raids were decisively defeated. On 15 September, now known as Battle of Britain Day, the Luftwaffe mounted its largest and most concentrated attack on London in the hope of drawing out the RAF into a final battle of annihilation. This would be the first of 57 consecutive nights of bombing known as the Blitz… Hitler was outraged and on 5 September, he ordered the Luftwaffe to concentrate its attacks upon London and other major British cities… On 7 September, nearly four hundred German bombers targeted docks in the East End of London, killing 490 civilians and injuring 1,200. Churchill immediately ordered RAF Bomber Command to launch reprisal raids on Berlin the following night.
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