PFC Raymond Bowman (R) and Lehmann Riggs (L) with their 30. Cal machine gun on a balcony in Leipzig, Germany, on April 18, 1945. Just minutes later Bowman was killed by a German sniper on that balcony, just 16 days after his 21st birthday.
The photographs by Robert Capa were published in Life magazine on 14 May 1945, shortly after Germany surrendered, with the caption "The Picture of the Last Man to Die."
He was a member of a platoon of machine gunners who entered a building in Leipzig and set positions to cover foot soldiers of the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division who were arriving to the Zeppelin Bridge. Soldiers Bowman and Lehman Riggs of Cookeville, Tennessee took positions in an open balcony with a clear view of the bridge. One fired the gun, while the other soldier fed it. Riggs came inside, leaving Bowman alone firing the gun. When he was reloading the gun, he was shot in the cheek by a sniper's bullet which came from the street below. He crumpled to the floor, already dead.
War photographer Robert Capa climbed through the balcony window to the flat and he took a picture of the dead soldier, who lay in the open door with the Luftwaffe sheepskin helmet he had looted still on his head. He took other pictures showing how the blood spread on the floor, while other soldiers attended to Bowman and to his fellow gunner.
Bowman was actually not the last US serviceman killed in WWII, that unfortunate distinction went to Anthony Marchione. He'd just turned 21 and was killed by renegade Japanese fighter pilots three days after the August 15 ceasefire between the Allies and Japan went into effect.
Source: Internet
