Somewhere in Korea, September 1952: The original caption of this image — captured by U.S. Marine Corps photographer Ed Scullin and published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes, Sept. 27, 1952 — read “Corpsman Mahannah treats Marine PFC Darrell Denton for a minor head wound, as HM/3 William J. Alrutz, chief corpsman for Fox company, fills out a casualty ticket.”

The article that accompanied the photo noted that Mahannah was in his fifth month with the third platoon of F Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines and one of their two medics. Mahannah had been luckier than his boss, chief corpsman Alrutz. Alrutz had been wounded twice already during his 5-month tour of the front lines.

Even though we do not know exactly when and where the image was taken, the accompanying article by Cpl. Orlando Potter, assigned to Stars and Stripes Pacific’s Korea bureau, notes that Mahannah was in his fifth month with the third platoon of F Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines and one of their two medics. Mahannah had been luckier than his boss, chief corpsman Alrutz. Alrutz had been wounded twice already during his 5-month tour of the front lines.

Much of the news photo prints in our archives do not have exact date and place information included and information is gathered through notes from the photo department scribbled on the back of the print, articles the image ran with and independent research into the subject matter.

Although we prioritize the preservation and scanning of our own material, given their historic importance we made an exception for the images in our collection of the Korean War taken by these military photographers. Few of our own images from that war survived as all pre-1964 Stars and Stripes Pacific negatives and slides were unwittingly destroyed by poor temporary storage in 1963. The prints created by Stars and Stripes Pacific’s photo department to run in the print newspaper are the only images left of Stripes’ news photography from those early decades.

In this month of the 70th anniversary of the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement, we share some of these historic images with you.

Looking for Stars and Stripes’ coverage of the Korean War? Subscribe to Stars and Stripes’ historic newspaper archive! We have digitized our 1948-1999 European and Pacific editions, as well as several of our WWII editions and made them available online through https://starsandstripes.newspaperarchive.com/