Soldier's Home : War Reporting

From LIFE Photo Archive: Soldiers in Action Through the Decades

David Botti — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 18:41:48 GMT

Recently Google announced it had digitized and uploaded images from the LIFE magazine photo archive, many of which have never been published before. At present Google says only 20 percent of LIFE's archive is online, but the end goal is to have 10 million images available. To do your own searches visit here.

9/11 Marks Deadliest Year for U.S. in Afghanistan

David Botti — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:39:13 GMT

It used to be that the term "forgotten" was often applied to the war in Afghanistan, at least in comparison to the stream of news coming out of Iraq during the past few years. Now, as Iraq quiets, troop shifts to Afghanistan are planned for the near future, and the media once again devotes more column inches to that conflict, word comes of a new milestone: 2008 is the deadliest year for U.S. forces in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion.

The Associated Press reports that two U.S. soldiers were killed today, the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, bringing 2008's death toll to 113, passing the 111 U.S. soldiers killed there last year. At the same time, 33,000 U.S. troops are currently operating in Afghanistan; the most since 2001. As the two latest U.S. deaths are still recent, there are few details available:

The NATO-led force said one soldier was killed when insurgents attacked a compound. The separate U.S.-led coalition said a second service member died in combat. No other details were released, but a Western military official told The Associated Press that both troops were American.

Yesterday the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael G. Mullen, told congress that NATO forces are running out of time in Afghanistan and attention needs to be given to Pakistan's tribal areas along with the border. His testimony came as U.S. forces are openly conducting cross-border raids into Pakistan, which is drawing condemnation from that country's government. From the LA Times:

Mullen said the new strategy for Afghanistan must focus on more than just increasing troop strength. He noted that existing provincial reconstruction teams did not have enough agricultural, educational and judicial experts. The U.S. must focus on boosting foreign investment and improving governance in Afghanistan, he said.

"We can't kill our way to victory," Mullen said.

Mullen said he was not convinced the U.S. and its allies were winning in Afghanistan but said he believed victory was possible.

There's been scant coverage of day-to-day U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, but still there is some quality work out there. The UK Guardian has this interactive piece following U.S. and British soldiers in various regions of the country. The paper also has a striking series of videos riding along with a U.S. Army Medevac helicopter crew. There was also this frightening and candid New York Times Magazine piece following a unit of soldiers operating in the volatile Korengal Valley.

Where Have All the Embeds Gone?

David Botti — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 19:21:30 GMT

Editor and Publisher mentioned in a recent article that the number of journalists embedded with U.S. forces in Iraq is currently around only a dozen.

The article was prompted by the expulsion of photojournalist Zoriah Miller when he took pictures of dead marines after a recent bombing in the Anbar province. While the marines said Miller broke clearly stated rules for what can be photographed by embedded journalists, Miller argued on his blog that because the marines could not be identified in the photos he'd done nothing wrong. Miller has chronicled his side of the story throughout many recent posts to his blog.

Best in War Reporting: "Who's Rumsfeld?"

David Botti — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:43:26 GMT

An occasional series where we take a took at some of the best war reporting to come out of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Today we're taking at look at a New York Times article written by C.J. Chivers around the time Donald Rumsfeld resigned from office. Chivers, a former marine, is able to capture the mood and dialog of a Marine infantry squad in a simple and straight forward manner. He let's the marines do the talking, and in doing so offers an ironic depiction of how some grunts relate to their leaders.

The November 2006 piece occurs as Chivers is embedded with the squad in Zagarit, Iraq. They have been sleeping in the house of a local Iraqi man, Hashim al-Menti, who sees on the television that Rumsfeld has resigned from his position as Secretary of Defense. He informs the squads sergeant:

The sergeant went upstairs to tell his marines, just as he had informed them the day before that the Republican Party had lost control of the House of Representatives and that Congress was in the midst of sweeping change. Mr. Menti had told them that, too.
“Rumsfeld’s out,” he said to five marines sprawled with rifles on the cold floor.
Lance Cpl. James L. Davis Jr. looked up from his cigarette. “Who’s Rumsfeld?” he asked.

Chivers then makes the observation that often it is the grunts in the field with the most to loose, who are often the most apolitical -- the Marine Corps has a job to do. Perhaps in the future these young men will come to find interest in politics, but not right now in Zagarit, Iraq. One marine gave Chivers his opinion on how this all works:

Another marine, Lance Cpl. Patrick S. Maguire, said the decisions that mattered here, inside Company F, Second Battalion, Eighth Marines, were much more important to them than those made in the Pentagon back home.
There are daily, dangerous questions: When to go on patrol, when to come back, which route to take down a road, which weapon to carry, and, at this moment, which watch each marine would stand, crouched up on the roof, in the cold wind, exposed to sniper fire.
His grandfather fought at Iwo Jima, he said, and his father was a marine in Vietnam. This was his second tour in Iraq. “Here’s the deal,” he said. “Someone points a finger at you, and you go.”
“The chain of command?” he added. “You know how high I know? My battalion commander is Lt. Col. DeTreux. That’s how high I know.”

In contrast to the marines, Chivers presents us with Mr. Menti, the owner of the house who discusses the greater consequences of Rumsfeld's resignation on Iraq.

[Mr. Menti] looked at Sergeant McKinnon, who is younger than many of his 14 children. He was trying to draw him out.
“If American Army came here for three months, four months, O.K.” Mr. Menti said. “But now is four years.”
If there were no American military presence in Iraq, he said, there would be no insurgents. One serves as a magnet for the other.
Mr. Menti spoke to the sergeant as if he were an American diplomat, as if he had some influence over the broad sweeps of American foreign policy. The sergeant remained quiet and polite.

It is a surreal experience to live through a major news story, seeing it reported and learning more than you even knew being there. As a grunt, all you know is what your chain of command tells you, and what you see with your own eyes. If Rumsfeld's resignation were to have an affect on Iraq, it surely wouldn't be seen by these young marines. Their reaction to the news offers up an important thing to remember: while American soldiers may be on your television screens every night, they are alone in a strange country where the historical significance of their presence unimportant.

The article's conclusion highlights just that point:

Up on the roof, Lance Corporal Maguire mused about the news. Whatever Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation might eventually mean, it did not matter here yet, and it would not keep them alive tonight.
Another marine, Lance Cpl. Randall D. Webb, was scanning traffic through his rifle scope, worried that they had been spotted and the insurgents would soon know where they were.
“I think they see us,” he said.
“Man, they all see us,” Lance Corporal Maguire said, and lighted another cigarette.

New Looks at Military Blogging

David Botti — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 14:09:09 GMT

Since the start of the Iraq war, the importance and viability of military blogs has stirred up tremendous debate. There have been issues of military censorship, journalistic viability, and ethical dilemmas. Recently, talk of where (and how) military blogs fit into the war's narrative has seemed to intensify to some degree. Here's a look at what's happening:

The Columbia Journalism Review published a lengthy article in its last issue profiling Bill Roggio, a U.S.-based military blogger who's set up his own media operation aimed at reporting on terrorism and "small wars" beyond what the mainstream media can do. Before the piece gets to Roggio, the intro takes a look at the gap military blogs aim to fill:

When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, among the seven-hundred-odd journalists who embedded with combat units were few who were familiar with the military in any intimate way. To many critics, especially those with military experience, this revealed itself in the press’s coverage of the war, which they felt often missed the mark when it came to explaining the hows and the whys of the fight, as well as the mundane realities of military life and culture.

Army veteran Roggio first started blogging about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to put the events in perspective for his family. But, as CJR notes, a transformation took place that's changed the way Roggio operates—and underscores the significance these blogs can have:

It was during the second battle for Fallujah in November 2004, however, that he began to focus his effort. He had been posting detailed battle maps of Iraq’s Anbar province on his site, showing where Marine and Army units were meeting the stiffest resistance from insurgent groups who harassed them with roadside bombs and the occasional ambush. In the spring of 2005, a new group of readers began logging on to Roggio’s site. The Marines in Anbar province were embroiled in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse, and looking for any tactical advantage they could find. Officers with the Regimental Combat Team 2 discovered Roggio’s site and began using it as an information source, calling his site the “Command Chronology of Western Iraq.”

While Roggio continues to build up his Long War Journal, a contributing writer to An Unofficial Coast Guard Blog said he was recently fired from his job working for a USCG contractor after writing posts critical of the branch. Mike McGrath, who comes from a Coast Guard family, wrote of his firing:

Was told that my position would have been downsized anyways within the next few months, my behavior on the blog sites just made it easier to make me the first to go...Did I mention that I just had my performance evals completed within the last 2 weeks, scored perfect all across the board, got a raise (which I will never see) and that there was no indication from anybody that there was anything wrong occurring; no feedback, no counseling, no pointing out of where I might be violating any written policy, nothing - no indication whatsoever.

There's a brand new beginning for British military bloggers detailed by the Guardian. Corporal Lachlan MacNeil will be one of the first British soldiers allowed to blog about his experiences during an upcoming Afghanistan deployment. He'll be blogging directly for the Guardian, but as the paper points out this is quite rare:

Last year, the MoD introduced new guidelines barring military personnel from speaking about their service publicly. Soldiers, sailors and airforce personnel are not able to blog, take part in surveys, speak in public, post on bulletin boards, play multiplayer computer games or send text messages or photographs without the permission of a superior if any information they use concerns matters of defence.

Wired's Danger Room blog wrote of a 2006 U.S. Army report that considered secretly hiring military bloggers to "promote a specific message." The military's comment on the story is that this report was simply an educational exercise intended to be thought-provoking. Here's an excerpt from the Joint Special Operations University report titled "Blogs and Military Information Strategy":

The process of boosting the blog to a position of influence could take some time, however, and depending on the person running the blog, may impose a significant educational burden, in terms of cultural and linguistic training before the blog could be put online to any useful effect. Still, there are people in the military today who like to blog. In some cases, their talents might be redirected toward operating blogs as part of an information campaign. If a military blog offers valuable information that is not available from other sources, it could rise in rank fairly rapidly.

Finally, PBS show Frontline has this "making of" video taking a look at a new documentary following Army soldiers in Iraq. One of the featured soldiers is the founder of milblogging.com. As the website explains:

To record their war, from private reflections to real-time footage of improvised explosive device (IED) attacks on the ground, director Deborah Scranton (The War Tapes) creates a "virtual embed," supplying cameras to the soldiers of the Bad Voodoo Platoon and working with them to shape an intimate portrait that reveals the hard grind of their war.

Interactive Map Showing Hometowns of Casualties

David Botti — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 14:36:36 GMT

A reader recently pointed me to an incredibly detailed interactive map indicating the hometowns of U.S. military casualties from Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. Based on information available from the Department of Defense, the map's creator has allowed viewers to filter the map by branch of service, military operation, sex, and age. Check it out here. It first appears zoomed in on the New York City area, but one can view anywhere in the country.

From the Website's mission statement:

In mid 2007 oobgolf.com launched an advanced golf course finder for our users. We recently made the decision to use that same technology and development resources to map the hometowns of soldiers who have died in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. This was not done as a political statement. We simply felt that this tool provided a unique way for Americans to connect to these fallen soldiers in a new more personal way.

A Roundup of Iraq Anniversary Coverage

David Botti — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:13:34 GMT

The fifth anniversary of the Iraq war is about to come upon us, and so too will an endless amount of media coverage on the issue. Later in the week I'll be writing up some personal reflections on the anniversary, but today I've compiled some of the better anniversary stories that have already popped up. First, take a look at NEWSWEEK's in-depth look at where the Army stands (plus these great video interviews with soldiers now in Iraq), and then see below for how other stories address the past five years.

On Sunday The New York Times gave former Baghdad bureau chief John F. Burns a few column inches to give his take on where the war has taken us. Burns penned this article at the war's outset which I've always considered to be an amazing piece of journalism. For Sunday's article, Burns, who spent five years in Iraq, reflects on his position as a journalist covering the war; and on the larger meaning for both the U.S. and Iraq. As his opening line puts it ("Five years on, it seems positively surreal"), Burns seems in awe of the course the war has taken; and frustrated over miscalculations that occurred. He writes of watching the first U.S. air strikes from a Baghdad roof:

...from that first impact, among many on the roof, the mood was scarcely one of cool detachment, or at least not as cautioned as it might have been by the longer-term implications of what we were seeing. Part of it, no doubt, was the air show — the sheer, astonishing, overwhelming demonstration of power, more like an act of God than man, unleashing in those watching from the roof something approaching awe. But the larger part, the one that seems surreal now in the light of all that has followed, was the sense that, with the beginning of the end of Saddam Hussein’s evil, the suffering of millions of ordinary Iraqis that we had chronicled, and pitied, was ending.

For an international view of the fifth anniversary, take a listen to four top BBC journalists who discuss what arose from the rubble of Saddam's regime, and the wider impact on other Arab states. The introductory text to the radio documentary has this telling observation:

It's been said that, if 11th September 2001 was the day the world changed for America, then 20th March 2003 was the day America changed for the world.

IAVA blogger Ray Kimball, an Army major and Iraq vet, reflects on leading his men through the opening days of the war and how he still thinks about the choices he made:

Five years later, looking back on it, different fears come to the fore. Did the choices that I made during those weeks shape what happened later? What could I have done differently? I remember distinctly driving by groups of looters who were busy dragging all they could grab out of government buildings. At the time, I decided that it was probably appropriate that ordinary Iraqis, who had been under Saddam’s thumb for so long, were finally getting some of theirs back. We now know that some of that looting destroyed critical infrastructure that would be vital in the coming months in trying to get a new Iraqi government on its feet. Hindsight is always 20-20, and yet, there is still the nagging feeling that I could have made different choices that might have helped lead to different outcomes.

The LA Daily News provided this look at a group using the anniversary to protest the war as part of a larger, worldwide series of such events. While the protest was attended by celebrities, as well as Vietnam vet Ron Kovic (of Born On the Fourth of July), the article offered a particularly telling moment: when two Iraq vets were noticed watching the protest, the reporter notes:

-"We have a surplus of hippies and a shortage of hand grenades," [the vet] said. He said the war cost him his marriage, and that he saw some of his friends die.

-The back of his sign read, "My sacrifice was not in vain."

-Several protesters walked up and greeted him, said he looked angry and offered him a hug - he declined - and asked how they could make him happy

-His response: "Go home."

New Jersey's Gloucester County Times took a look at how the war has affected a wide spectrum of people: from veterans, to family, to a VA worker. Marine Richard J. Maxie Jr. told the paper:

Despite the calls to bring the troops home, the constant media attention surrounding the war and the coming election, Maxie is steadfast in believing that the troops have accomplished something good in Iraq.

"They only see the bad things," said Maxie said of the media's portrayal of the war. "They don't really know kids are going to school and the Iraqis can go into the streets and not have to watch over their shoulders all the time.

Angelo Romeo, a local VA director, told the paper his impressions of what the newest vets coming home face:

Romeo says of the ones he has talked to that most of them are holding their experiences inside. He recalled hearing an instance about the friend of a new veteran who was complaining about a stressful day at work.

The soldier had served as an explosives detonation expert.

"I've seen them in social situations with their friends from high school and college. There's a bit of a disconnect."

The Iraq war's fifth anniversary isn't the only Iraq anniversary occurring this week. It was 20 years ago when Saddam Hussein killed at last 5,000 Kurds in chemical bombing attacks.

There's sure to be much more Iraq war anniversary coverage through the week. Stay tuned.

An Iraqi Mourns His Friend's Death

David Botti — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:01:35 GMT

The New York Times Baghdad blog posted a moving account from an Iraq employee of the paper writing of his close friend's death as the victim took an evening stroll with his wife. Even though my blog is about U.S. troops and veterans, I posted this passage because it presents one man's rumination of the situation they all face. Whether you sympathize with him or not, his view is one to take into account. Here is a selection from the piece [via Intel Dump]:

How long should we strive? Who is going to help us here at this critical stage, apart from God? It is too much.

Iraqi security forces all over the country and specifically in Baghdad have done their best to crack down on violence. However, what they are doing is like a tug of war. They tighten their grip some of the time against the militias and Qaeda, but let it go or unleash it most of the time. It is not because they deliberately want this to happen, but they are still new, and they want to protect their own lives.

They are fighting ghosts who set up I.E.D.s and appear from nowhere without warning, and then disappear. The battle is much harder than Mr. Bush expected. His own army, the strongest in the world, could not cope with the situation. The Iraqi government doesn’t tell the real numbers of the dead.

In Baghdad, no one knows when he will die. It is like a line we are standing in. One day a friend dies, another day a relative, and so on.

I have started to ask myself, is this country cursed? I should go back, sink into the history, and look for answers. Some Shiites say it could be so, because it was the people of this country who killed and mutilated Imam Hussein, grandson of Prophet Muhammad. Some Sunnis would say it could be the curse of the monarchy during the 1950s that the people were not satisfied with, and were happy when it was toppled.

God, are we all bad people here? If so, why do you not use your superior power to terminate this country. Or if not, why don’t you help people to stay alive, next to their beloved.

At some moments, a thought comes to my mind, and I become at this moment a disbeliever, when I believe that God does not care for Iraqis anymore. What is true are Oliver Goldsmith’s famous words, that “one half of the world are ignorant how the other half lives.”

Whatever the reasons behind this killing were, this country kills people’s hopes.

Fresh Looks at Reporting the Troops

David Botti — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 19:49:55 GMT

As the war continues it sometimes seems the number of articles chronicling daily troop life in Iraq are far less than in previous years. Recently, however, two articles were published taking extensive looks at specific units -- in some respects a modern day Band of Brothers (in reference to the HBO mini-series). Not only do these articles provide profiles of individual soldiers, but take a broader look at the character of their units.

The first comes from the Boston Globe which took a look at a Marine Reserve infantry battalion as its members readjusted to civilian life. The unit, First Battalion/25th Marine Regiment, served a seven-month deployment in and around Fallujah in 2006 (disclaimer: my own former unit belonged to the same regiment). The article is profound in the way it contrasts moments in Iraq with the repercussions at home. Additionally, we are given vivid narrative descriptions of the Marines' experiences.

For the second time that day, an explosion of shrapnel tore up through the belly of a Weapons Company Humvee. Murray was thrown more than 50 feet from the vehicle, "like a Kung Fu fighter flying around on fire," as he later put it. Goldman was popped from the turret like a champagne cork. Burke remained trapped in the passenger side of the crippled Humvee as it careened to a stop. He was pulled out just before it burst into flames.

Murray remembers trying to crawl to the curb for protection as insurgents opened fire. Sergeant Scott Parish of Andover, Mass., ran out and covered Murray, returning fire. Humvees circled like a wagon train to protect the wounded.

Back at Camp Baharia, Wills was lying on his bunk, writing in a journal about the devastating loss earlier in the day of his friend Valdepeñas.

"Moments ago," he wrote, "we learned Whiskey 3 was hit. My little buddy Val is gone. Hill is in critical. I can't believe this."

Then Wills heard an explosion outside the wire. A desperate voice came over the radio, calling in "mass casualties."

Later we learn of one Marines' reaction to this violent episode. He was a member of the unit already stateside after being wounded earlier in the deployment.

Stubbs heard the squeaking sound of a pen on a white board in the command center. He watched an officer write out the news: "KIA - Shoemacher, Valdepeñas, Walsh. Gravely wounded: Burke, Murray, Hill."

"I read that and it was like getting punched in the gut," Stubbs said. "I went outside and coughed up my breakfast. I couldn't stand up. I was a mess. It's harder to be far away on a day like that and know there is nothing you can do."

The second story comes from the Military Times as it follows the 15-month Iraq deployment of an active duty Army infantry unit. A particularly moving passage describes how one soldiers dealt with the deaths of his comrades.

Some of the guys channeled their emotions into unlikely jobs. For Sgt. Erik Osterman, that meant cleaning out the humvees and Bradleys that came back to Apache after Americans had died in them.

Osterman, a former bartender and concealed-carry weapons permit instructor with an intense gaze, said he made the decision instinctively.

He would do it so his troops would not have to.

Osterman asked the first sergeant to get him every time a truck needed to be cleaned out, and then he’d send the guys off on errands while he hosed out the blood. The cook supplied him with scrubbies and bleach.

He would do it in an attempt to erase any reminder of death when his troops went back outside the wire in the same vehicles.

“They’re not going to roll like that,” Osterman said. “That would be all they see.”

On a side note, the above article is part of a decent multimedia presentation complementing the story which is the first of four parts.

Best in War Reporting: Ernie Pyle on a Soldier's Death

David Botti — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 13:43:20 GMT

An occasional series highlighting some of the most thoughtful and informative combat reporting throughout America's history at war.

Today's Best in War Reporting comes from the legendary combat correspondent Ernie Pyle at the Italian front in WWII. With a simplicity of words and observations, Pyle manages to knock you over as he writes of the moments surrounding a young company commander's death. In his words you can almost hear his own exhaustion as he holds back tears. It begins:

AT THE FRONT LINES IN ITALY, January 10, 1944 - In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas...I was at the foot of the mule trail the night they brought Capt. Waskow's body down. The moon was nearly full at the time, and you could see far up the trail, and even part way across the valley below. Soldiers made shadows in the moonlight as they walked. Dead men had been coming down the mountain all evening, lashed onto the backs of mules. They came lying belly-down across the wooden pack-saddles, their heads hanging down on the left side of the mule, their stiffened legs sticking out awkwardly from the other side, bobbing up and down as the mule walked.

The narrative continues as Pyle evokes an almost bizarre scene as Capt. Waskow's body is removed from the mule and placed with the other bodies of U.S. soldiers. The empathy with which Pyle treats this moment is a grim foreshadowing of his own future in the war. Like Capt. Waskow, Pyle was loved universally by the troops; and like Capt. Waskow, Pyle would not make it home from the war alive. He was killed the following April by sniper fire on one of the Japanese islands.

As Capt. Waskow's men begin to pay their last respects, Pyle manages to convey how even their short remarks are far more emotional than they might seem on the surface.

One soldier came and looked down, and he said out loud, "God damn it." That's all he said, and then he walked away. Another one came. He said, "God damn it to hell anyway." He looked down for a few last moments, and then he turned and left.
Another man came; I think he was an officer. It was hard to tell officers from men in the half light, for all were bearded and grimy dirty. The man looked down into the dead captain's face, and then he spoke directly to him, as though he were alive. He said: "I'm sorry, old man."
Then a soldier came and stood beside the officer, and bent over, and he too spoke to his dead captain, not in a whisper but awfully tenderly, and he said:
"I sure am sorry, sir."

But, of course, the soldiers (and Pyle) must get ready to continue fighting the next day.

After that the rest of us went back into the cowshed, leaving the five dead men lying in a line, end to end, in the shadow of the low stone wall. We lay down on the straw in the cowshed, and pretty soon we were all asleep.

Witnessing the moments he described Pyle showed that at a moment when his own emotions may have dominated his thoughts, his ability to step back, observe, and convey never left his writing.

The "Marlboro Marine" Today

David Botti — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:05:51 GMT

Though we talk a lot about the term "PTSD," rarely is it personified in the way it is in this incredible series of audio slide shows in the Los Angeles Times focusing on Marine James Blaker Miller. Miller's face became an iconic image of the Iraq war when he was photographed during the battle of Fallujah, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Since then, he's struggled deeply with what he experienced during that time, contemplating suicide and going through a divorce.

In a highly personal and moving article the photographer, Luis Sinco, recently wrote of his own efforts to help Miller. I urge you to take the time to watch the slide shows and read Sinco's words.

Interview: Ken Burns on WWII Vets [Part 3]

David Botti — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 14:11:11 GMT

Today's post is the last in a three-part series of interviews with filmmaker Ken Burns. His 15-hour documentary, "The War," looked at life on the battlefield and homefront during WWII. Excerpts:

S.H.: What was it like living with the images of war for six years during the making of the film?

BURNS: It was very very tough. I mean we like to say, and it’s a dishonor to anyone within the sound of my voice who’s actually experienced combat, to say we used to have kind of our own minor versions of PTSD because we had to look at horrible footage. We looked at thousands of hours of footage to get our 15 hours of film. We looked at tens of thousands of still photographs, some of the most gruesome carnage. And while our film is difficult to watch, and shows in an unmitigated, unmediated fashion the horror of war, nonetheless it isn’t the worst we’ve seen.

We didn’t want to gratuitously shock anybody. There are difficult images, but we left the most difficult images of children, of women, of soldiers deeply maimed, guts spilling out on the battlefield, of the worst kind of depravity that takes place in war, out of our film. But we ourselves had to find out what it was like. And we’d often, many of us, recount the stories of in the editing process, the long solitary editing process, of going home at night and dreaming--finding ourselves not just filmmakers in the editing room trying to solve the problems of the Battle of Peleliu, for example, or the Battle of the Bulge, but finding ourselves in that battle. [We were] realizing, ‘wait a second, we’re filmmakers without guns--why are we here?’ And waking up in cold sweats with nightmares, coming in hollow-eyed with sleep and finding out the editor, or producer across the table had felt the same thing, or something similar in a different battle.

It was very difficult, but what kept us going, and I don’t mean to play up any real difficulties--we had the luxury of being at home, none of us were called up to do the actual fighting that takes place--is that we were compelled along, carried along, buoyed by the stories that we had collected. [From] the 40-odd people that we’d gotten to know intimately, people we’d said in our early boiler plate language paid lip service to the notion that these people would be like family members, somebody you might have had Thanksgiving with. By the end I can tell you that they do feel like family members. We lost Earl Burke. We lost Ray Leopold in the last few months. And we all felt a great deal of sadness as if someone really close to us had died. With Ray Leopold, from Waterbury, I actually broke down and cried, as if it had been my own grandfather.

[Part 1] [Part 2]

Interview: Ken Burns on WWII Vets [Part 2]

David Botti — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 14:56:25 GMT

Yesterday Soldier’s Home posted the first in a three-part series of interview excerpts from a discussion with filmmaker Ken Burns. His new seven-part documentary, "The War," follows the WWII generation on the battlefields and on the home front. In the previous post we learned how Burns went about interviewing veterans on the emotional subject of their wartime experiences. Today’s excerpts:

S.H.: One of the veterans said something in the film that really struck me. He said, “you don’t expect death among people your own age.”

BURNS: Yes, that was Sam Hynes who is professor emeritus of literature from Princeton University. Sam got it very very well. What happens is that young men do the fighting because they’re the ones who particularly have a sense of their own immortality, their own invincibility. That’s why most car accidents are teenagers, 17 or 18-years-old, who think they can drive as fast as they want and [then] can’t make that turn. And we read the tragedies almost daily in our newspapers.

We actually enlist young men to do the fighting and the dying, because they have that willingness to do the stuff that we just look back and say I can’t believe he’d do that. I think [Sam] began to understand that moment that other soldiers described of arriving going, ‘I have no fear, but when the fighting started, yikes, what have I gotten into.’

Here is this notion that as the war began to grind on in the first year, and the casualties mounted, that this was a real thing. Only old people, he said, die. But, suddenly people your own age were dying and it wasn’t too far a leap to realize that you too may die. And then all of the sudden that limitlessness that we feel, however myopically, that we’re going to live forever is suddenly very really ripped from you. And war becomes a wholly different thing. ‘Yes I could die. We’re all gonna die. But it’s gonna to happen to grandpa and great-grandpa, it’s not gonna happen to me.'

This is a huge metaphysical calculus that we couldn’t possibly really truly understand, and we hope by approaching war to get a sense, get a glimmer of what it’s like.

S.H.: I’ve heard from some veterans of the current war that sometimes they’re uncomfortable with the fact that it defines them. They are defined as veterans of the Iraq war. Did you find anything similar among WWII vets?

BURNS: Well no, I think that we’re dealing with this unbelievably powerful, healing, and merciless thing called time. That these guys came back from the Second World War, didn’t want to be defined by it, and basically shut up. We’re a non-therapeutic society, nobody really wants to know the answer to the question, ‘what did you do in the war Daddy, or son.’ They just don’t want to really know what happens: ‘well, I just turned around and my best friend, a guy I wish you could know – my very best friend in the world, I just watched his head get blown off.’ You can’t tell your mom you can’t tell your pop. You lock it away and you get on with life.

Towards the end of your life you begin to realize how much you were defined by that. That who you were, good and bad, and otherwise, is defined by an experience of war.

When Quentin Aanenson on the stage of the Lincoln Theater in Washington, D.C. a few weeks ago mentioned that with each “Star-Spangled Banner” [he heard], he went through the list of his close friends who died, he was in the presence of a Vietnam War veteran and an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran. When he finished, nearly in tears, the Iraq veteran turned to him and said, ‘Quentin, I feel like you are an echo of me, or I am an echo of you. That we are the same thing.’ It was as if it were the grandfather, the son, and the grandson that we had there.

[Part 1] [Part 3]

Interview: Ken Burns on WWII Vets [Part 1]

David Botti — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:06:33 GMT

Last month filmmaker Ken Burns debuted his seven-part World War II documentary on PBS, "The War," an epic chronicle of combat and home front experiences. I spoke with him this week at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism about working with veterans during the six years of production on the film. Today’s is the first post in a multi-part series. Excerpts:

S.H.: For The Veterans History Project you gave advice to regular people interviewing veterans in their own families. You talked about establishing a “comfort zone” for the interview. How did you do this with vets you interviewed for The War?

BURNS: What we look for at the essence of an interview is free exchange. We aren’t investigative journalists. We aren’t there with their tax returns for the last ten years grilling them. This dynamic is most critical when you’re interviewing veterans, because quite often you’re dealing with people who have, understandably, locked away horrific things that they’ve seen, and horrific things that they’ve done–and people they’ve had close to them that they’ve lost.

You have to be respectful and mindful of the fact that they may not get there. That they may not reveal that. And there’s no amount of trickery or cajolery worth it to try to do that.

So, what we look for is to film them in a comfortable situation. To do so in places where they feel comfortable, to be non-threatening, but to also pursue questions, and not just have a rigorous set of questions, so that you might miss following up on something that was quite meaningful.

A particular veteran [Quentin Aanenson] in our films said “I loved airplane flying when I was a kid, that’s where I want to go–that’s where I want to be sometime.” But if you watch his eye crinkles you know that’s not where he wanted to be. That what he saw when he eventually became a pilot was so horrible. And so we moved–we just tested him, and he gave up stuff his wife had never heard, his children had never heard before. Maybe I missed lots of stuff he would’ve told me.

I was with him in a public discussion a year after we finished the film, and he told us something he had never said on film: that he’s lived outside of Washington D.C. for the last 50 years, and every time he and his son went to a Washington Redskins football game, as he was singing "The Star-Spangled Banner," he went through all the friends that he lost in the war. He never told his son, never told anyone else, and as he began to tear up in an audience of his sons and all the other people, you began to realize that you were present once again at the very thing you hope to have, not just with veterans but with anybody.

Particularly with veterans because they are getting at the dynamic of combat and a war–the most exaggerated state that human beings get. Not something that’s distant, but something that’s present.

This is a guy who wakes up most every night from nightmares, from the Second World War, done for him for 60 years, with his hands in a palsy, in a shake because he’s remembering the time when he caught some Germans out in the open and was cutting human beings in half with his 50mm machine guns off his Thunderbolt [fighter plane].

He still has this. His wife always reads him as he comes into the kitchen, and will sometimes hand the cup of coffee to the other hand.

Sometimes I found with a veteran [Paul Fussell], a man who’s actually written about war, and is known as kind of a well-spoken and avuncular chronicler of the human experience of war–I found myself saying, 'I’m not interested in that.'

I’m interested in you as a 19-year-old lieutenant on the line whose average life expectancy was 17 days, and you didn’t take a shower, or brush your teeth, or change your clothes in six months. And you outlived those odds until you were severely wounded, and they moved you to the head of the line, and patched you up for the invasion of Japan which fortunately did not happen otherwise you would’ve gone mad.

I just said to him at some point early on “you saw bad things.” And the chin, almost like a little boy, started to quake. The eyes started to crinkle up, and for the next several reels of film he gave us priceless access to that 19-year-old–who is as present in his own memories as he is today at 80-years-old.

That’s what we were after in the film. It required a kind of direct unmediated contact with people and their now recently expressed, or just expressed, memories.

[Part 2] [Part 3]

Best in War Reporting: Baghdad at the Beginning

David Botti — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 16:11:44 GMT

From time-to-time I will be highlighting some great instances of war reportage throughout the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. First up, an article by John F. Burns, long-time Baghdad bureau chief of the New York Times. It's more than four-and-a-half years old.

As I read it I think of the job Burns was tasked with when writing the article: sum up the mood, atmosphere, and minutia throughout Baghdad as "shock and awe" hits the city--as the entire country is thrust almost overnight into war. His verbs are fierce, his sentences long, but packed with enough description to almost make you think you're reading a novel. He begins:

"The American war on Saddam Hussein exploded tonight in a ferocious display of precision bombing and cruise missile strikes that blasted the heart of the Iraqi ruler's power with a spectacular opening bulls-eye on his most forbidding palace and continued with at least 100 more devastating volleys in the first two hours."

From the missile-streaked sky, Burns shoots into the city's empty streets.

"Amid the staccato of the bomb blasts and the metallic whoosh of the cruise missiles as they roared low across the city before striking their targets with a deafening roar, only one ambulance siren could be heard, and then only briefly."

"On the deserted roads, no fire engines could be seen. Any survivors in the buildings appeared to have been left to their fates."

It's important to revisit these moments from time-to-time. It's important remember what 2003 felt like to understand the war's evolution to 2007. Burns's article stands out because it doesn't capture just a moment in time, but a moment in which history is about to change forever. The skies are on fire, and the slow rumble of American tanks and convoys is beginning its northbound race to the waiting capital.

The article ends:

"At 9 p.m. precisely, with the city's streets almost deserted and an ominous silence reaching to the horizon, the attack began. In an instant, the Republican Palace was a sea of fire and rising pillars of smoke lit with a spangling of brightly burning debris."

"Viewed from across the river, successive strikes turned the hundreds of acres of palace grounds and their carefully manicured palm trees into a stadium of light, as though war had finally begun to reveal some of the secrets of one of the most forbidden places in Iraq."

And so the war began.