South American Journal

This is my great, great grandfather Abel Carbajal, who fought in what's known as the Great War of the Pacific. It was a conflict waged between Chile and Peru, over the guano trade. Bolivia was also somehow involved, because they lost their access to the sea as a result. Anyway, the story I've been told is that Abel was a prisoner of war and scheduled to be executed. (that part doesn't sound likely -- was it typical in that time to execute rank-and-file ordinary soldiers?) The day of or the day before he would've been shot, the war ended and he was ultimately freed. The metals on his chest are aparently from the war. The photo is from the early 1920s.