Dawn Patrol: A Morning March in Photos

Marches start in the dark because roads are quiet then. By the time the sky turns, the column is already strung out along the ridge, and the fog has done the work of a hundred camouflage nets.

There's a reason so much military photography happens at dawn. The light is directional and low, the shapes are silhouettes, and everything human in the frame — packs, helmets, the angle of a rifle sling — reads as one long line of motion.

Fog is the great equalizer: it makes a platoon and a patrol look exactly the same size.

Look closely and the photo organizes itself into rhythm: spacing between the men, the swing of the stride, the even line of the horizon. Discipline, in a picture, looks a lot like rhythm.

An hour later the sun is up, the fog has burned off, and the same ground looks like nothing at all. Which is, of course, the point.