American soldier killed by German snipers in Leipzig, 1945

During the final days of the war, a platoon of machine gunners enters a Leipzig building, looking for positions to cover the points of fire that will be followed by another U.S. advancing across the bridge. Will protect infantry infantrymen.

After two members of the platoon found an open balcony, commanding an unobstructed view of the bridge, they set up their guns. For some time one soldier pointed the gun, while the other fed him.

Then one cop went in and another fired a single smoking gun. Absorbed in reloading it, a German sniper bullet from the street pierced his forehead. He fell to the floor, died.

War photographer Robert Capa climbed into the flat through a balcony window to photograph the dead man, lying in the open door, with a looted Luftwaffe sheepskin helmet on his head.

A later series of photographs showed the soldier's blood spilling rapidly across the parquet floor as other GIs followed him and his fellow gunners held their positions on the machine gun.

Capa recalled in a radio interview two years later, "It was a very clean, somehow very beautiful death and I think that's what I remember most from the war."

The soldier was identified as Raymond J Bowman, age 21, born in Rochester, New York. In January 1944, he was sent overseas to the United Kingdom to prepare for Operation Overlord. Bowman served in France, where he was wounded in action on August 3, 1944, and later in Belgium and Germany.

He rose to the rank of private first class during his service. The Life magazine article did not identify the soldiers in the photos by name, although Bowman's family did identify them by the small pin (with their initials on them) that they always wore on their collars.

These photographs were published in the Victory edition of Life magazine on May 14, with the title "The Picture of the Last Man to Die". They would become some of the most memorable images of World War II.

In July 2015, the city of Leipzig, Germany, voted to name the street (formerly known as Jahnli 61) in front of the apartment building where Baumann was killed "Baumannstrae" after him.

The naming took place on April 17, 2016. The apartment building now houses a small monument with Capa's photographs and information about Bowman.