Veteran's Day: Toy Photos Honor U.S. Military Heroes

To celebrate Veteran’s Day and our heroic soldiers in the last century of armed conflict, Water Mill photographer and DansPapers.com web editor Oliver Peterson shares some of his recent toy photographs.

The images chronicle moments from the United States’ history of warfare, from the skies over Rabaul on the island of New Britain in 1943, to the Allied D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, the difficult fighting in France’s bocage and the freezing Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944, to the hot and brutal fighting in Vietnam in the 1960s, and Somalia in 1993, to more recent conflicts in Syria and Afghanistan.

Our country has lost some 664,440 soldiers in combat since the Revolutionary War and we’ve suffered more than 2,852,901 dead and wounded, including non-combat deaths, in that time. Additionally, more than 40,917 soldiers remain missing, and thousands more suffer daily with PTSD, unable to get over the trauma of war.

Remember to honor our fallen warriors and the ones who made it home on this Veteran’s Day.

See more of Oliver Peterson’s photographs on his Instagram account, @oliversees, or on Tumblr at oliversees.tumblr.com.