KELSO HORNE - THE FACE OF FREEDOM

THE FACE OF FREEDOM
By: Scott B. Thompson,  Sr.
Dublin Courier Herald 

Some faces smile.  Some faces frown.  But it is this face, the face of Dublin Lt. Kelso C. Horne, of Dublin, Georgia,  which totally captures the determination of an entire nation to complete its mission of ridding the world of despotic dictators and restoring freedom to the entire planet.

Much has been written about Lt. Horne, his photograph on Life magazine’s story of D-Day, his simple life, and his reverence by those Frenchmen  who worship him as the Savior of St. Mere Eglise.  Horne’s careworn, unshaven face has appeared on the covers of at least five national magazines.  While some focus on the M-1 Garand rifle in his hands, others look directly into the steely dark eyes of a man on a mission.  Horne has appeared on two Life magazine covers, the millennium collage cover of Time Magazine, and the June 2019 issue of American Rifleman.  

The picture itself was not part of any planned photo shoot.  About a week after the invasion of Normandy, Horne was walking down a road leading his platoon toward a small town in under the control of the German army when a general’s jeep pulled up. VII Corps Commander,  General Lawton Collins asked Horne where he was headed. Then a photographer stepped out as Horne’s column came to a halt. 

Horne stepped off the side of the road and kneeled on the ground and held his rifle to the front to the “inspection arms” position.  

“While the car had stopped a guy got out and says to me, ‘I want to take your picture.”  I said, ‘well go ahead, and take it then.’  I looked into the camera and he said to look away, and when I did he took it. He asked my name and the town where I came from and then they left. I didn't think much of it,” Horne recalled some fifty years later to a writer for the Atlanta Constitution.

The photographer, who was was no ordinary Army posed picture taker, took a few shots, packed his gear and got back in the jeep to take the next photograph of the fight for freedom.  The man who took “the photograph” was none other than one of Life magazine’s top photographers, Bob Landry.  Landry became famous when he just happened to be in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on the morning of December 7, 1941.  In the right place at the right time, Landry started shooting the horror and the carnage of the “Day Which Will Live in Infamy.”   

"I took a lot of stuff from guys in my unit about being a cover boy, I still get it occasionally," remembered Horne, who stopped the march and had his picture taken right in the middle of a war.  

When Landry developed the film and sent it back to the states for consideration of which photograph to use for the cover story, he had no idea of what was about to happen.  The photo editors began to crop away the hedge rows in the back ground, then Horne’s unclean uniform, and then began to zoom in on Horne’s face.  The dramatic effect of the photo leaped off the paper.  The result of their work became the best known photo of a World War II paratrooper.  

Four weeks after D-Day, Horne was wounded by shell fire on July 4th, 1944 near Hill 95 in Normandy.  While he was in an English hospital recovering, another patient shared with him that he had a son.  The pain seemed to go away as Horne began to read the story of his wife and the birth of their son in the Army newspaper, “Stars and Stripes.”

The Dublin Post Office called the Horne family home, when the magazine finally arrived in town. Those persons living on the Highway 80 west remembered the day when the rural postman was blowing his horn as he approached the Horne home with copies of the eagerly awaited magazine. Militaria collectors around the world still pay a premium for a near mint copy of the August 14, 1944 edition of life magazine, some paying as much as $2000.00 for what was originally a 10-cent magazine. 

People all over town and out in the countryside began looking for a copy of the magazine just to get a look at the picture of the man they knew.  It was a big deal for it was the first time than anyone from Laurens County had their picture on the cover of the most famous magazine in the world. 

When his wife Doris saw the picture, she exclaimed “her husband was the best one in the business, reported Scott Thurston of the Atlanta Constitution on the 50th anniversary of D-Day in 1994. 

Horne never took too much credit for doing anything heroic.  He was just doing his job.  By most accounts, he was the oldest or second oldest paratrooper of the 82nd Airborne Division, which organized in Georgia in 1917.   Nevertheless, Horne did jump from a plane traveling more than 200 miles per hour about 2:00 o’clock a.m, on a dark night down into the mires of swollen rivers and the tentacles of French forests with 60 plus pounds of gear on.  And, if that wasn’t enough, the floating paratroopers were easy targets for German riflemen as Horne and his fellow paratroopers drifted out of the night sky.  

For more than a half century, Kelso Horne remained a celebrity here in town.  It was long before many newcomers knew his face and his role in the invasion.  As for me, I had standing orders to seek out and acquire as many copies as I could in antique shops, flea markets, and yard sales around the state .  I accumulated five or six copies, but forgot to get him to sign one.  I do possess a unique version of the photograph, one painted in green and black water colors by local artist Juan Lleras.  It is one of my most precious possessions, one which I will always treasure and see almost every work day of my life.  

Horne, if he was still alive, would be the first to tell you that he was not alone.  He would point to more than a dozen other men from Laurens County that day who participated in the invasion.  He would point to the thousands of Laurens County men and women who served overseas and in the country.  He would point to the women of the country who held everything together. 

Why is Horne’s face so important.   For those Americans who have never heard of D-Day, they can gaze into the Horne’s face.  It was a day when the history of the world changed for several millenia in the future.  It was a day that we as a country and a world  can not and must not forget.  It is the day when one of us symbolized the fight for freedom.