FRIDAY FOTO (January 6, 2012)

A Terrible Beauty

U.S. Army photo by Spc. Ken Scar

U.S. Army Spc. Devon Boxa observes the Afghan landscape out the back door of her CH-47D Chinook helicopter as another Chinook follows over Nangarhar province, Afghanistan. Boxa is a crew chief assigned to Company B, 7th Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment. The helicopters were flying from Kabul to Jalalabad.

The headline is drawn from “Easter, 1916″ a poem by William Butler Yeats about the leaders of the failed Irish revolt against British rule during World War I. The fourth stanza begins: “Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. Oh when may it suffice?” The poem ends with the line “A terrible beauty is born.”