Guernsey is an island in the English Channel, not far from the French Coast. St.Peters Port is its capital city. During World War II, Guernsey was the only part of England occupied by the German army. German field guns still stand on display in a plaza atop a St. Peters Port hill. Long silent, they speak of war, occupation, and the ultimate British victory. I used a portion of one of those guns to express the cruel and unforgiving nature of war. I abstract the subject by moving in on it, including only a portion of the gun barrel and the mechanism hanging below it. By exposing with my spot meter on the brightest part of the picture, the background gets much darker – the flavor of war itself. The Leica Digilux 2 camera I used for this shot resolves detail brilliantly, revealing the ravages of weather and time on the gun. There is a silent beauty to this image. It is hard, in fact, to believe we are looking at a killing machine. This gun is an eloquent reminder of the nature of war itself -- deceptive, brutal, and uncompromising. It speaks more profoundly, in fact, than a war memorial or statue, because this gun is real.