Claim:   Photograph shows a tearful veteran embracing a wounded Marine.

Status:   True.

Example:   [Collected on the Internet, 2004]

Picture worth a 1000 words...and, really, no words needed! We truly take a lot for granted. Forget the football "heroes"... and pass this on, please.

Origins:   This moving photograph of a veteran overcome with emotion while embracing a wounded Marine is a cropped version of a photograph that originally appeared in newspapers in November 2004:


The occasion of this photograph was a Veterans Day Commemoration at Dallas City Hall on 11 November 2004. The veteran pictured is Houston James, a survivor of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, and the Marine is Staff Sgt. Mark Graunke Jr., a member of an ordnance-disposal team who lost his left hand, one leg, and an eye while defusing a bomb in Iraq in July 2003.

Last updated:   13 March 2005

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