A book of First Class stamps toplist beauties What it represented to the world at large, however, was the life of a 24-year-old man annihilated by a bullet in a split moment. After the Second World War the Falling Soldier stood in for the many thousands of young men like him the world over; and then, after the 1975 publication of Phllip Knightley’s book The First Casualty, he began to represent something more complicated. Knightley was the first to question the authenticity of the Falling Soldier image, claiming that the shot was staged. His book marked the beginning of the public’s less trusting relationship with photo-reportage, a problem that has only intensified in the digital age. What you will now find on the Falling Soldier’s Wikipedia page is a short history of the photograph and a far longer history of the “authenticity” debate. What a tricky thing the legacy of a great photograph is.