George Silk (1916 – 2004) was born in New Zealand. He was a photojournalist who served in that capacity for 30 years. He was a combat cameraman for the Australian government. His career as a war photographer began in 1939 when he was posted to cover action in Greece, North Africa and the Middle East. At Tobruk in Libya he was trapped with the notorious Desert Rats, and German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's forces captured him, but escaped ten days later. In 1943, he began working for Life magazine. Silk photographed many events from the Second World War, covering the war on the Pacific, the Allied invasions of France and the Italian front. Silk walked 300 miles with Allied forces in New Guinea, an ordeal that was later described in the book War in New Guinea. In 1944, when Silk was with the United States forces in the Battle of the Bulge, he got seriously wounded by a grenade during a river crossing in Germany.
This made him not to be able to report on the Battle of the Bulge and the river crossing and his co-worker did it on his behalf. After the atomic bomb was dropped in Nagasaki, Japan, Silk shot the first pictures. He also captured the Japanese war criminals who were awaiting trial in Tokyo after the war. He became a U.S. citizen in 1947. The December of 1972 found him in Nepal and he was shooting an assignment on Himalayan game parks for Life magazine. This is where he received news that the magazine had folded. Later, the National Press Photographers Association named him the magazine photographer of the year four times.
