Evil Reporter Chick

Their children came home in flag-draped coffins that photographers are not allowed to shoot.

I had breakfast with one of them this morning. Jeff Brunson copes as best he can but you can see the sorrow in his eyes. Gus is always in his heart. 

Gus died with three other 48th Infantry Brigade soldiers the day before I landed in Baghdad in 2005. Jeff and I have known each other for a while. I’ve written a couple of stories about him. He invited me to go with him and his wife to see a fallen soldiers portraits exhibition in September. It was difficult enough for me to watch him as he came upon his son’s likeness. I can’t imagine how he felt that day.

We talked about that this morning at an IHop in Lawrenceville. Jeff bit into his country omelette and aired a truth that cannot be disputed: I can never know the loss of losing a child. I don’t have any children. But if there is such a thing as coming close, I am in that uncomfortable space. 

I am sure I will see the faces of the dead tonight as I fall asleep. Next week, my feet will touch that bloody sand again.

A platoon sergeant wrote that on my helmet band when I was with his unit in Baghdad in 2006.

It stuck.

He wrote it most affectionately, of course, but it correctly represents the underlying tension between the media and the military. Soldiers laugh when they see it. And it has even helped me get a story or two.

This photo of me in Tal Afar that you see next to this post — well, a young lieutenant in the Florida National Guard saw my helmet band and asked if I wanted to go see the nine city blocks razed in a horrific bombing last year.  He would have never thought to ask had he not seen the helmet band.

I am sitting at my kitchen table waiting for my chicken biryani to finish cooking. The smells remind me of the Mughlai take-out place near my house in Calcutta. I used to walk down the street just to get a whiff of the intense smells of cardomom and cumin mingling with onions fried in pans of ghee.