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SHOOTING THE TRUTH

BY
MICHAEL KAMBER
My father left in 1969, when I was six and he was forty-five. himself with guns, occasionally threatened other men—
He got a VW microbus, a nineteen-year-old blonde, and “I’m an ex-Marine, you know.” It was only later, after I’d
started making up for time lost on the three kids and the been to war, that I began to wonder, Did he live with things
drunkard wife back in Maine. He was chasing hard after he’d seen that never went away?
the tail end of the ’60s. I always supposed it must have
been a tough time for a man to be tied down—watching all My daughter was born when I was nineteen. I was building
that chaos out there, while having to stay home and diaper transmissions in a small shop in Asbury Park, New Jersey,
the kids and pay the bills. during the day and working in a restaurant at night. There
was a waitress there with blonde hair and a tight uniform.
He left a few things behind: some tools, a handful of war I got her pregnant one night in the backseat of my ’67
medals, and a fantastically detailed lithograph he’d bought Mustang. A few months after my daughter was born, I was
at a yard sale. It was dated 1918 and called Over the Top. in the supermarket buying Pampers and formula when I
It showed a company of steely-eyed doughboys storming ran into my boys. They were buying beer for a night on the
a trench, their bayonets fixed and the flag waving above town.
them. The Germans looked scared and slightly evil in their
pointy helmets. One American was falling, looking skyward I was ashamed I wasn’t out chasing women and getting
as his comrades killed the Huns around him. drunk. I felt I’d failed a vision of manhood that I’d inherited,
both as my father’s son and simply as an American male.
I used to stare at the print for hours, studying it as if it were I’d lost my independence to roam, to seduce women, and,
a religious talisman, searching the images—the smoke most important, to inflict or endure violence.
from the cannons, the charging soldiers, the blood dripping
from men’s bodies—for some clue I’d missed. These men I contemplated going to Mexico, like I’d seen guys in the
had the answer to a question I wanted to ask. I just wasn’t movies do, just running someplace where no one knew me
sure what the question was. I wanted to know why men and I could get a clean start. But I’d never been farther
go to distant places to slaughter one another, and how west than Ohio, so I stuck it out in New Jersey and slept
that becomes something noble. But there was a deeper on my girlfriend’s mom’s couch, until the mother, seeing I
question beyond that. wasn’t going to marry her daughter, threw me out.
I did raise my daughter, after a
Some of the medals my father left fashion. She stayed with me on
behind were from the First World The most beautiful of his weekends and for a month or two
War. They had belonged to his medals was a rainbow-colored in the summer, and got my phone
father, my grandfather, Bob Kamber. calls from the road. I put her through
The most beautiful of his medals campaign ribbon with brass college and grad school. I learned
was a rainbow-colored campaign from my grandfather that you work
ribbon with brass bars inscribed with
bars inscribed with the names hard and you take a certain amount
the names of the battles he’d fought of the battles he’d fought in: of responsibility.
in: St. Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne, Aisne
Marne, Belleau Wood. I used to run St. Mihiel, Meuse-Argonne, In all fairness to my father, he tried
my fingers over the names like a to keep in touch when I was young.
Aisne Marne, Belleau Wood. It didn’t help that my mother had a
blind man reading Braille.
warrant out for him. In my teens I
My father also fought, in the Second lived with him for a time, but he was
World War, with the 5th Marines. He celebrated his a violent, bitter man, and we fought constantly. The day
twentieth birthday in the volcanic ash of Iwo Jima. I had after graduating from high school, I was gone.
his medals, too, and a tattered fatigue jacket with a front I never set out to cover wars. I saved some money at the
pocket bearing the Marine Corps logo—the globe nestled transmission shop and went to art school in New York to be
on a rope and an anchor. a fine art photographer. My daughter and her mom stayed
behind in New Jersey; my daughter’s mom still waitresses
My grandfather hung out at the VFW and was a proud in the same restaurant where I met her twenty-five years
member of the Disabled American Veterans. But he never ago. I dropped out of school when the money ran out,
talked about the combat, and neither did my father. If I and I started trying to make it as a photojournalist—a job
asked, they gave vague responses. where I could combine my love for photography with my
fascination with history. I worked construction during the
My father never really fit in anywhere. He fought his way week, then shot on the streets of New York at night and
through life, never held a job for long, ran through four on weekends, peddling pictures to the wire services for
marriages (one before my mother and two after), surrounded twenty-five dollars apiece.
In 1987, when I was twenty-four, a friend was going to profiles of people who’ve never done anything except be
Haiti to cover the first election after the fall of “Baby Doc” famous, of politicians mouthing platitudes, of hundreds of
Duvalier and invited me along. A community newspaper TV channels showing nothing. And sometimes I can take
in New York gave me credentials and a promise to give one picture that lets me grab onto something real in this
my work a look when I returned. I went with my friend world.
and accidentally made it to war, but it didn’t look like the
picture on the wall in Maine. There were no battle lines, no Not long ago in Iraq, I walked into the countryside in the
armies in uniforms. On a steaming November morning, I dawn light with a platoon of U.S. soldiers. Most were in
found myself in a room full of women and girls who’d been their early twenties; a few were only eighteen or nineteen
hacked to death with machetes by Duvalier’s thugs. years old. They had joined the army for many reasons,
some out of patriotism, some—the ones from military
Later that morning, those thugs, the Tonton Macoutes, families—because that’s just what you did at eighteen,
caught me out in the street, photographing a fresh corpse some because they wanted to prove themselves and loved
like it was some sort of anthropological experiment. I knew the action and camaraderie. They were a cocky, cheerful
what that deeper question was now: A few minutes ago, bunch. They told fag jokes and stories about getting pissed
this man was alive, breathing, going home to his family, together, about bar fights and getting so drunk they ate
working on his dreams for tomorrow. Now he lay dead on one another’s puke.
the pavement. I wanted to know why. I thought my camera
might reveal an answer, but I had lingered too long. The On patrol that morning, the commander paused for a long
killers trained their guns on me, talked for a moment, and moment to get map coordinates and do radio checks.
then drove away. Then we set off along
Other journalists a sandy trail that
were killed that day. I wended through a
was spared. For days handful of bombed-
afterward I shook so out houses. The air
badly I couldn’t pick was still, and in the
up a glass of water; palm groves beyond
sleep eluded me for the trail there was an
months. early-morning beauty
that I’d never seen
I’ve covered a dozen before in Iraq, a place
wars since then. I
manage it better I would rate as the
now, but that feeling most unlovely of the
of absolute, heart- fifty or so countries
pounding terror I’ve worked in. Still,
never goes away. I felt uneasy on the
In Iraq, near An trail. The sand was
Nāsirīyah or Mosul, good cover for an
we would drive down IED or a command-
a dirt road where, a detonated mine,
day or two before, a and the palm groves
Humvee had blown up; we would see bodies being carried offered excellent cover for snipers.
out in small pieces. You knew the insurgents had been out
at night setting new IEDs—improvised explosive devices— I stepped inside an abandoned building to photograph the
and so you’d sweat and clench and swear you’ll never do patrol through a shattered window. Birds chirped in the
this again. If you can just make it through this time, you distance as I studied the rubble for trip wires. And then
promise, you’ll never come back. Then you turn around whoomph! The air filled with smoke. Shrapnel rained down
and do it again the next day or the next week, and you around me. A soldier screamed. I checked my legs and
can’t explain why. the rest of my body for wounds. Had I tripped an IED?
Some men think its bravery. John Burns, the Baghdad Was I dead and didn’t know it? There was no blood. A
bureau chief for the New York Times, once told me that feeling of nausea settled over me. I’d heard the sound of
much of what is termed bravery is simply men being too an explosion often enough before. It comes at the moment
obstinate, or too dumb, to understand their own mortality. of a man’s death. I knew I had to go out there and start
I don’t know what it is for me, but I sometimes feel as if shooting.
I’m standing on a beach and there are waves smothering I ran through the smoke, listening for gunfire—a sign of
me—waves of advertisements for shit I don’t need, of an ongoing attack—but there was none. A call went out
alerting us that we might be in a minefield. No one moved I had a plan when I was in Iraq. I was going to come back
except me and the medic. to the States and live on a tree-lined street with this smart,
sexy woman I loved. She had an apartment full of sunlight.
Through the haze I saw an eight-foot-wide crater, and behind Our friends and family would be there with us, eating and
it, a soldier’s upper torso. He’d been cut in half above the laughing.
waist. His legs were gone and his eyes were open, staring
at the sky. His blood pooled slowly in the sand. Behind him But when I returned to Brooklyn, something had changed, in
the medic was already at work on another bloody soldier. I me and in the city. In my formerly industrial neighborhood,
raised my camera and started to shoot. black nannies now pushed fat white babies in $400 strollers;
my neighbor’s new car had separate air-conditioning zones
“No fucking pictures!” the captain screamed. Soldiers for each occupant; a friend obsessed over his iPod remote
have gotten violent with me when their comrades have control. No one was the least concerned with the Iraq war.
been killed. I took a few frames then put the camera down My neighbors’ programs did not include getting their legs
and started helping to bandage the most badly wounded or testicles blown off by someone wiring 155-millimeter
soldier. He had taken a lot of shrapnel, and his face looked shells together and pressing a garage door opener. They
like hamburger. We checked his torso for wounds, but didn’t worry about having to shit into a colostomy bag, or
there were none. He was pleading, “Doc, you got to give about being spoon-fed because they had gotten their arms
me something. I can’t take this pain. I can’t take it.” His blown off. And why should they?
friend was lying dead against his legs, but he didn’t know
it. He couldn’t see through the blood in his eyes, and he feltSo I got back to the world and I felt a certain arrogance
nothing but the stabbing pain. washing over me, and a certain anger. I couldn’t think about
much except getting out again. My
The scene was eerily quiet, save for woman wanted me to go into therapy,
a radioman calling for a medevac. but I didn’t feel the need to pay an
A minute later, the soldier’s sobbing I slowly walked over to the expert to facilitate this intersection—
began to mix with the birdcalls in the captain and told him that I the intersection between the violence
stifling, still air. I saw every day in Iraq and people
was going to do my job and going blithely about their lives at
I slowly walked over to the captain home. And I wasn’t going to cop to
and told him that I was going to that he could take my cameras this war junkie stuff.
do my job and that he could take
my cameras later if he wanted. He
later if he wanted. I’d found a useful role in this world,
nodded to me, maybe knowing that a way to give evidence that has
no one was going to move through a value. I had nothing to apologize for,
minefield to stop me anyway. I walked among the wounded nothing I needed to be diagnosed for. Some things in this
men, shooting as I went and trying to lend a hand where world just are, and that’s all right. They don’t need to be
I could. Platoon members carefully put the wounded onto satisfactorily resolved.
litters and carried them to a landing zone for the helos.
Then four young men lifted the dead soldier’s torso gently I put my things in storage and took the first assignment
into a body bag. One bent down and began to rip the gear that got me far from New York.
off his comrade’s flak vest. Then he thought better of it, I leave for the Congo next week, then for Iraq again in a
reached up, and quietly zipped the bag closed. couple of months—it will be the fifth calendar year in which
Another platoon, working a few hundred meters to the I’ve worked there. I have no home really, just the road, a
south of us, had a soldier sniped through the brain a few room in Baghdad, a few friends’ places in Dakar where I
minutes later. They evac’d him with his helmet still on, to sometimes crash.
keep his head from falling apart. He died an hour or so I’m forty-five now, the same age my father was when he
later. split, and maybe I’m not that different from him. I know my
No one saw the enemy in either attack. The war in Iraq is limitations better. Unlike him, I got out before I got in. But
bad that way. Mostly, you ride around as IED bait instead his fascination with violence, his need to stay in motion,
of engaging the enemy. But I bet the boys in the trenches and his desire to be irresponsible have all filtered down into
thought World War I was a shitty war, too. I wonder what me. And I’m OK with that.
the lithograph from this war will look like. It’s hard to make
a heroic picture of guys slogging through the fields, fearing,
expecting, waiting for an ambush.
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Michael Kamber
Michael Kamber, born in 1963, has worked as a
freelance photographer and journalist since 1986. In
recent years, Kamber has worked primarily for The
New York Times, covering conflicts in Iraq, Israel,
Haiti and throughout the African continent. He has
also worked as a writer for The New York Times,
contributing articles from Haiti, Iraq and West Africa.
His award-winning photos have been published in
virtually every major news magazine in the United
States and Europe, as well as in many newspapers.
Kamber is a former Revson Fellow at Columbia
University, and is a member of the New York Times
team that won an Overseas Press Club Citation of
Excellence for coverage of Iraq in 2003. He has been
nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in both photography
and reporting.

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