This Photograph appeared in the January 10, 1938 issue of Life Magazine. The caption in Chang's book reads as follows: "The head of a Chinese soldier placed on a barbed-wire barricade outside Nanking, with a cigarette butt inserted between his lips as a joke ( Alliance for Preserving the Truth of Sino-Japanese War )."

A close look at this photograph reveals that there is grass or straw clinging to the left side of the man's face. We assume that someone picked up the severed head from the ground, placed it on top of a log, and stuck a cigarette into its mouth. This is the sort of thing a macabre photographer would do as a joke. We must also point out that beheading was a common form of execution historically in China even into the twentieth century, and we have, therefore, no way of knowing who decapitated this man, or why.