Witnessing death drives home cost of Iraq war

By TODD PITMAN

updated 8:23 a.m. ET March 16, 2008

EDITOR'S NOTE: AP West Africa Bureau Chief Todd Pitman spent nearly two months in Iraq last year. He was in a vehicle behind Dmitry Chebotayev's when the Russian photojournalist was killed along with six American soldiers May 6, 2007.

In my nightmares, the helicopters still come out of a dark sky, two black spots barely visible against the backdrop of night.

Their swirling blades grow louder until they finally touch down on earth and fall silent. They look like giant steel bugs from another planet, bulbous robots with eyes of glass coming to take away their prey: seven human beings who woke one day in Iraq not knowing they would be dead by noon.

Six American soldiers. One Russian photographer.

"Ever been a pall bearer before?" a soldier asks in the darkness.

"No," I say. "What do I need to do?"

"Just carry him."

There are no lights on this American base because of the threat of attack. And so it is dark, and quiet: a heavy, physical quiet with a body and a shape, one that bears down on my shoulders and makes it hard to breathe.

The soldiers are carrying stretchers to the aircraft. I help carry the last — on it is a large black pouch containing the body of my friend.

It is much heavier than I thought.

We push the stretcher through the open door of a Black Hawk, and I lean forward to rest my palm on the bag one last time.

I close my eyes, picturing my friend's eyes closed inside. A soldier reads the 23rd Psalm.

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death ..."

I step back, sobbing, and the helicopter blades start up again, slowly at first, spinning faster, growing louder, irreversible clocks forcing this moment to evaporate.

As they lift off I remain behind, sitting alone on a pile of sandbags, watching them vanish into the fluorescent, speckled backdrop of eternity overhead.

Death count
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, 3,987 American soldiers and at least 128 journalists have died in Iraq since the U.S.-led war began. But to me, they were all just numbers until last year.

I first met Dmitry Chebotayev in April 2007. Just 29, he was on assignment for the Russian edition of Newsweek and several photo agencies.

At the U.S. military press center in Baghdad, I saw him poring over an online magazine spread of soldiers patrolling a grassy palm grove outside Baqouba. I was going there, and said he should, too.

As a teenager, I had gazed for hours at history books filled with similar images from Vietnam. I had always wondered what it was like.

Dmitry, I think, was afflicted by a similar curiosity — a profound hunger for experience. The lure of a war is illogical, impossible to explain. When you feel it, going is rarely a choice.

A week later, Dmitry joined me in Baqouba. We quickly became friends.

Like him, I had a woman in my life for more than six years whom I loved but had not married. Like him, I was using the lens of journalism to explore the world.

We shared meals, drank coffee late into the night and slept on cots in a tent full of soldiers. Especially, though, we searched for stories, and in Baqouba that meant searching for the war.

One of those days, May 6, 2007, began like many others.

We got up before dawn. We moved out with a platoon of four 70,000-pound armored vehicles known as Strykers. And we spent the morning at a police station mostly bored — until Army helicopters spotted a group of men apparently planting a bomb on a street corner.

We rushed to the Strykers and drove deeper into the city.

We paused on a broad dirt road Americans called "Trash Alley."

Everything was fine, until one of the Strykers began turning left — and somebody, somewhere, set off a massive bomb buried in the sewage system underground.

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