The Faces of War Stare Back at Society

The face of Johnny Spann stares at me from a bulletin board next to my computer, torn from the front page of the newspaper a few days ago.

It’s a face of such youth and vitality that I can almost imagine his presence in the room, watching the words I write. His smile is open but hesitant, as though there is something he wants to say, a secret he wants to impart, a truth he has discovered.

But whatever his words, they will never be said now. Johnny Spann is our latest hero, offered up in tears by the world’s newest nonwar. A CIA agent, he was killed in a prison uprising near Mazar-i-Sharif, the first American combat fatality in Afghanistan.

And now we mourn.

The word “hero” is not a term of my choosing but one applied by others to explain an atrocity. Johnny Spann was a victim, not a hero. His intent was not to die at age 32, beaten bloody by fanatic militiamen, but to experience life in a new place, to do a job he had chosen to do and then to go home again.

When he did go home, it was in a coffin.

The day we stop thinking of young men killed in war as heroes may be the day we begin wondering why we keep fighting wars. It will be the time to ponder how the human race, alone among mammals, could ever allow such a periodic slaughter of its own future.

The morning will come when we’ll ask, why do we do this to each other?

Iwas thinking of Spann as I watched a 1968 documentary called “A Face of War.” It follows a Marine company for 97 days during combat in Vietnam, its cameras open to every twist and bloody turn of the fighting.

But mostly it focuses on the faces. And you can see Johnny Spann in every one of them.

Hailed by critics for its “numbing power” and “unbearable poignancy,” the film was produced by legendary documentarians Gene and Natalie Jones, who for 51 years as partners, and as husband and wife, have traveled the world in search of the people and places whose images reflect the history of our time. They live now in a hilltop home in Bel-Air, writing of their exploits, surrounded by the arts and artifacts they’ve gathered over a lifetime of travel.

A Marine combat photographer in the second World War, Gene has been wounded five times over the long course of covering nine wars. He was hit at Iwo Jima as a Marine, then twice in Korea and twice in Vietnam as a civilian. He worked first for NBC and then freelanced with Natalie.

Their work has been nominated for an Oscar and an Emmy and was notable in the 1960s as a powerful statement against war. “A Face of War” ran in theaters for 14 months and over the course of a year on television throughout the U.S. A small network of stations showed it for 16 hours straight, over and over, as a hallmark of the peace movement.

Few have seen as much of war as Gene Jones. Few have seen so many young faces swept from the world like smoke in a breeze. Few have shared the peril and pain of our young warriors to such a degree.

Generals posture and pontificate like figures in a comic opera, but Jones was close to the humanity of battle. He’s the expert on people, not units, at war. And as an expert, he was asked to define it in a sentence.

He replied in a tone flattened by experience, “War is the most terrible thing human beings can do to each other.”

What troubles me is how easily we have accepted the presence of this war, this nonwar. The peace movement, if there is one, has been muted by the yahooing out of Washington. We have marshaled not only our military forces but also our minds into the shape of a weapon ready for battle.

Flags and mottos do the job. A combination of country-love and battle images from abroad stirs the soul like the sound of trumpets. Drumbeats rally the masses. And the faces of men like Johnny Spann will continue to adorn the front pages of our newspapers, their forever-smiles frozen on film and tape, their words never said.

In his long career of recording the sounds and images of war, Gene Jones has concentrated on faces. “They’re the masks of rage and terror that bare the soul,” he said the other day in a telephone conversation. “The worst and best of humankind emerges at the point of a bayonet.”

All of it emerges in “A Face of War.” We see fear and bravado, courage and nostalgia, determination and pain reflected back in expressions that alter like images in a slide show, shifting quickly from one to the other as situations change.

And all the men remind me of Johnny Spann. Guys from down the block, from across the street, from around the corner.

We’ll see more of their faces. We’ll hear more of how bravely they died. The word “hero” will be repeated many times to the words and music that will celebrate their youthful courage. But a grim fact remains. Johnny won’t be marching home again. And that’s the saddest song of all.

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Al Martinez can be reached at al.martinez@latimes.com.