Gene Smith is a great photographer for LIFE, rather than a correspondent for TIME. But the letter he wrote Correspondent Shelley Mydans the night before he was wounded on Okinawa is so filled with the spirit with which so many other TIME & LIFE men have shared the dangers of our troops in a hundred battles that I believe you should see it.

For I think you may understand all these men better if you understand why Gene Smith, all unarmed, volunteered to face the enemy in the darkness of the front line for a story to which he was not assigned, but about whose importance he felt passionately.

In a few hours I shove off on something very tough--an effort to photograph 24 hours in the life of a soldier under fire. I am afraid that I cannot say what really must be said. This hurts deeply, and I am scared.

I don't know whether my fright is from my own sense of inadequacy or from the physical danger involved. I think it is from the fright of failure. I cannot bear to fail. It would be much better to die tomorrow night than to live and fail these kids and in the battle for peace.

Tested infra-red flash tonight in the hope that somehow I could cover the night attack, but even the flash's dimness could cost lives and I can endanger no one. So instead I am going to try to shoot by the light of flares, and they will be enemy flares, but I have to try for this terror in the darkness. People somehow must realize what it means.

If I do not die in this attempt I will ship the film some time during May 23. If I die I hope the , will be essentially complete before this happens. If I live, would you send a wire to the office and ask them to call my home and say that I am OK? Thank you, Shelley. I'm very fond of you and Carl. . . .

P.S. This would be so easy to ham and fake and gag to make a "good layout." Above all else it will be an honest story.

Cabled General A. V. Arnold: "Eugene Smith was wounded while accompanying troops in an attack south of Yanabaru. He was acting with splendid courage which we appreciate and we are thankful that his condition is not critical. We of the Seventh Division have the utmost respect for Smith and the deep sincerity he has shown in his work. We are proud of his action. The Commanding General of the Tenth Army concurs."

Gene Smith typifies the spirit in which TIME & LIFE men have been risking their lives on every front -- from Kasserine Pass to Salerno and on up through the Apennines, from the beaches of Normandy through the Ardennes and on to the Elbe, on Bataan and in the retreat with Stilwell,

on Guadalcanal, Bougainville, Tarawa, Iwo Jima and now Okinawa. Without this spirit we could never have brought you the true picture of what this cruel war has meant to the boys who are doing the actual fighting.

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