He was nineteen years old, and the war ended less than five months after his death.

Private First Class Rene Gagnon was from Manchester, New Hampshire.

He was seventeen when he enlisted — his mother had to sign his enlistment papers — and eighteen at the time of the flag raising.

Gagnon survived the war and went home to New Hampshire, but his post-war life was in many ways as difficult as Hayes’s, though less publicly documented.

He struggled to find work and to build a stable life in the shadow of the photograph.

He died in 1979 at the age of fifty-four.