Lance Corporal Hunter Sorrells of Tennessee cheers fellow Marines during a talent show at Camp Coyote, the northern-most camp in Kuwait, as they wait for the U.S.-led strike against Iraq, March 14, 2003.
Dear Family and Friends,
Whistles, cheers and thunderous clapping roar in my ears. Forty-five seconds. An eternity of applause. It’s as close to Marilyn Monroe as I’m ever going to get. I smile but try to ignore the deep embarrassment that is welling inside me for this attention I do not deserve and did not earn. In truth, they are cheering not for me, but for their womenfolk—their wives, their mothers, their sisters, their daughters—and I represent all of those people to them. I am the woman they have missed for weeks and months. I am the woman for whom they long. I am the woman for whom they will survive this war.
Before me is a crowd of some 2000 U.S. Marines. Sweat and dust cover their tanned faces and has become woven into the threads of their khaki uniforms. They stand in the cool evening of a Kuwaiti desert in the barracks called Camp Coyote, home of the Second Tank Battalion, where I have been embedded with my writer, Jim Landers.
Lt. Col. Oehl has announced a talent show to keep spirits up and the Marines take this opportunity to strut their stuff—the good, the bad, and indeed, the ugly. It’s a numbing show, like something out of a movie. It’s not quite real, and yet the clapping reverberates in my heart and reminds me that the dust and grit is very real. And each person there knows that with every hearty laugh and every good-humored joke that we will go to war, and it is highly likely that some of us will not return.
I have taken a liking to our colonel. He’s a genuine, no-nonsense, low-key man who passes on a quiet confidence to his men. I have been living with 6,000 men in a camp where only a handful of women have stepped. One other female journalist has been embedded with another unit about a half mile away, and there were some female engineers who were temporarily in the area, but I was told they had left. I have seen none of them for the first week, until a meeting was held and the other female journalist appeared with cornrolls braided to her scalp. She claims to have lived with other women for some days and credited them for her sculpted hairdo.
During my short time in the camp, I have come to know many friendly faces who have treated me with respect, generosity and kindness. I have grown to be so fond of a group of men who come from all over the United States to serve their country and endure tremendous obstacles to see that our government’s wishes are fulfilled. I have been adopted; and I have inherited a thousand big brothers.
On the morning that President Bush was scheduled to make his speech declaring war, we were awoken with a start at 3 am and told to pack: we were leaving in three hours for war. In the dark, I made quick decisions about what to bring and what to leave in my secondary bag, the one that follows in the field train some eight hours behind.
After hearing President George Bush’s speech on the radio announcing the launch of the war with Iraq, Marines from the Second Tank Battalion camped in Kuwait prepare before sunrise to move north to the southern border of Iraq in anticipation of the invasion on March 18, 2003.
We were supposed to have two days notice to prepare, to let loved ones know that they would not hear from us for a few days until we entered Iraq. Instead we woke up to the shock of war, the tanks rumbling the earth beneath us and no way for us to call about the information black out. The goal was to surprise the Iraqis with our stealth. We proceeded to the DA, that’s short for dispersal area. The Lieutenant Colonel decided to not move us temporarily to a TAA, a tactical assembly area, whereupon the troops then move to the DA, and then on to cross the LA, the line of departure or, in other words, the border.
And so we loaded into our AAV, an amphibious assault vehicle, that was to take us into Saddam Hussein’s never never land. We traveled for several hours, being bounced around in the back of our metal box. We set up camp at the DA, only to be told hours later to tear down our tents immediately. We had to move closer yet to the border. At that site, we intended to stay a couple of days until news trickled in that the GOSPs were being set on fire, gas oil separation plants, in the south of the country. Several times that day we were thrown into high alert when artillery was fired on another group of Marines several miles away, and we suited up in our full NBC suits, nuclear biological chemical suits, sweating our brains out in over 100-degree desert temperatures. So once again, we hurriedly tore down tents and threw our belongings together to cross the DA asap so we could save the GOSPs. It seemed that this whole military embed thing was really a tactical maneuver to give all of us journos the workout of our lives, and a heart attack to boot.
Our trip into Iraq was mostly exciting because a couple of ABC television reporters joined us and they, along with my reporter and a CBS radio fellow stomped around the inside of our AAV trying to get a good angle on the few mortars and artillery that hit several miles away. Of course all of that action was aimed at us and we were really under direct attack according to their breathless reports. I could not reach the hatch to see much and with my bullet-proof vest and Kevlar helmet I could barely hold myself vertical. So I huddled in the corner with my two cameras hugged to my body, dodging boots, not bullets, that came a little too close, and feet that I feared might have snapped me in two as bodies came landing alongside me just missing my vitals.
It’s been a few days since that momentous night, March 20, 2003. We were some of the first to enter Iraq, but have seen little action as we progress north. Being that we are a tank battalion, it is not good strategy to enter smaller towns where we cannot maneuver the streets and may damage sewage lines, etc. So we work our way west and let the infantry take the towns and cities of Al Basrah and An Nasiriyah. I am frustrated to not be exposed to any action, continuing to make pictures of Marines sleeping, convoying, surviving dust storms and forever getting ready for battles that never materialize. I came to cover a war, but covering it independently has become so dangerous that my bosses won’t permit me to consider anything but traveling with the military.
Marines of the Second Tank Battalion wait for fuel, right, as Army supply tanks pass just west of An Nasiriya, Iraq, on March 23, 2003. The move north has been the longest and most aggressive tank road march in Marine history.
Marine Sergeant Louis DeMarco of New York’s Delta Company of the Second Tank Battalion, fuels a tank as a dust storm rages in preparation for an advance on Baghdad, Iraq, on March 23, 2003. The move north has been one of the longest and most aggressive tank road marches in Marine history.
Stories trickle in of ambushes, deaths and hostages being taken to Baghdad. We have heard of reporters being killed by friendly fire and of Iraqis posing as journalists. The Marines of the Second Tank Battalion are weary of hours of dusty roads but stay on guard for possible attacks by smiling, white banner-toting Iraqis.
At this point we are headed north to take on one of the last Iraqi army divisions in the north. The Marines are not set up to travel more than 60 miles away from port, yet we are some 300 miles away from the nearest one and our supply trains can hardly keep up with us. We wait for days for the fuel trucks to arrive, only to have enough fuel to travel 30 miles.
Last night we survived a nasty dust storm in our military hummer. The wind whipped around at 60 mph tossing our vehicle to and fro. We gasped and coughed for breath, covering our faces and using scarves and t-shirts to filter the air. We had one casualty, a pigeon that the chem/bio guys have been keeping to help detect a gas attack. At 4 p.m., it was completely dark and we could not see five feet ahead of us. Being outside was like having one’s face sandblasted.
One of our Marines had a large piece of metal fall on his legs as he worked furiously to patch together a tank to make another death-defying trek north. We thought he may be paralyzed. So in the middle of the storm, several others dared the wind and dust to get help for him. We worried that people would start getting lost as they tried to walk from one vehicle to another.
And just when we thought things couldn’t get any worse, news filtered in that three unrecognizable tanks were cruising by not far from our encampment. So we donned our body armor and helmets and waited to see what they would do. We feared that their thermal tank sights might detect us through the dust and fire a few rounds at us. Even though they may be hugely underpowered compared to our M1 Abrams tanks, they could do some damage if they hit a vehicle like our little hummer.
I haven’t had a wash in six days and am as dirty as I can recall ever being in my entire life. We are living in some of the dirtiest conditions imaginable with dust, dust and more dust everywhere. It’s not even a surprise to feel the dust grinding between my teeth. All of that, and still no bath in sight. We live in extreme heat during the day and wet chilled temperatures at night. All my companions are sick with respiratory infections. I, too, have developed a cold and appease myself from the complete misery of the situation with little bits of chocolate I bought before leaving Kuwait. There are no more tents, no more sleeping bags, just body armor to keep one’s neck propped up at night, but that also pushes one’s bottom deeper into the meager cushion of the hummer seat. There is no comfortable position. We must be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.
A couple of nights ago, we arrived to our new camp after traveling some ungodly amount of miles with the tanks. Exhausted and cranky, I prepared to fight with my satellite phone to try and transmit some images from the field. Five minutes later, a 50-caliber machine gun blasted several rounds just yards from me. I was grabbed by a quick-thinking young infantryman and thrown to the ground, his body covering mine. Anthony José Nuñez, Jr., dragged me to a Hummer and then pushed me up into the back. Eyes wide and fearful, I breathed hard and painfully as we waited for another round to fire. It was so close that our chances for escape were low. Moments later, screams of “A positive!” filtered through the dark night and we realized that someone had been hurt. It was 26-year-old Lance Corporal Eric Orlowski from New York, and he was dead immediately. A fellow tanker had accidentally pressed the safety switch on his gun while getting out of his tank and it set the machine off, killing the lance corporal in the neighboring tank. Although I am permitted by the rules of our embed to photograph such situations, the Marines in charge were too freaked and would not permit me to make photographs. I can understand their sentiments. But as I explained to them, I am not traveling with them to do a public relations campaign—I am with them to document their experiences, in all that entails. And war sometimes entails death.
It’s really difficult to imagine what our military personnel go through to conduct a war. It is truly the most wretched of circumstances. Even before I met up with the Marines at Camp Coyote, some hadn’t had a shower in weeks. Many suffer from trenchfoot and other unsavory conditions. Yet they continue to work as hard as they can to do their jobs right and with pride.
A little footnote…it struck me immediately when I entered the sphere of the Americans in Kuwait. Whereas in my five-star hotel in Kuwait I never knew if a man would walk ahead of me or behind me through a door, I always knew among the Marines that I would be given the right of first entry. Chivalry is still alive.
As a photographer, I spend my days frustrated and angry. I have been in the Middle East for nearly two months and haven’t made a picture to save my life. I am with a group of guys, who charming as can be, have not been in the middle of any action. We bypass all of it, and essentially we act as a support for the Army, who is barreling into towns and seeing the real conflict. My husband reports that the paper has been using a lot of images from other organizations. So I bust my butt every day, trying to make something out of nothing, but it ain’t sexy enough to make it into our newspaper. I have talked to my boss who says the country is still too unsafe for me to be traveling on my own or with other journalists. I see no changes coming in our agenda any time soon. So I bide my time, live with the hellishness of our conditions, but for little reward. I am not in a position to make the kind of pictures I would like to be making.
Love,
Cheryl