If you saw the photo I’m sure you remember it.

It was the photo taken by Michael Yon of a U.S. soldier cradling and comforting Farah, a little Iraqi girl fatally wounded in a car bomb attack. It appeared in many places around the blogosphere (including this blog) and as a Photo of the Week in Time magazine. It is a powerful, haunting image that has already been recognized by Time‘s readers as one of the 10 best photos of the year.

The magazine is now holding open, on-line voting to identify the Photo of the Year, and you can get more details at the link above or vote directly here (a balloting page appears after you click through the slide show of the top 10). Yon’s photo is the only one in the top ten not taken by a professional photographer, but when I voted earlier today he had a commanding lead in the balloting. Still, I urge you to go over and cast your vote if you haven’t already. The other photos in the competition are spectacular as well, as you might expect, so it’s definitely worth a trip.

I remember the first time I saw the photo on Michelle Malkin’s blog. Each year it gets harder and harder for things to stop me in my tracks (unfortunately) but this photo did. It was the way the soldier cradled the little girl in his arms, his head bent low to hers and his face completely obscured by her body. In other circumstances it could have looked like a father cuddling his daughter, wrapped in towels and her hair tousled after a bath. It could be, that is, but for the soldier’s helmet, the tension in his neck and shoulder, the dirty street, the smear of blood on the girl’s leg and foot. And it is the feet that get to me every time.

When I see the picture, or think of it, I am always reminded of the photo of little Bailey Almon, clutched to the chest of a firefighter outside the remains of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. My own daughters were not much beyond the age of Bailey then, and I easily recognized the remaining sock on her foot as the kind I had slipped on and off many a tiny foot, usually with a little tickle or squeeze on the toes. Inside my head I can still hear the squeals and feel the life in the tiny legs as they kicked and pumped in my hand. It is my memory of those sounds and that feel, combined with the sight of those little, dying feet that always stabs my heart in these two photos.

Update:

I’ve restored the links above.

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