Witnessing death drives home cost of Iraq war

In my nightmares, I can still see the burgeoning, hellish ball of smoke filling the color TV monitor inside our vehicle.

The back hatch opens, and I am trailing soldiers through a tunnel of blurred vision and dust as yellow and red smoke grenades cast bizarre shadows.

I see a dead Iraqi man lying beside his mangled bicycle, crumpled against a wall from the pressure of the blast.

I see the Stryker's wreckage belching jet-black smoke as sparks rain down from the sky. Flaming hunks of debris are scattered among body parts and charred ammunition. A surreal mist is blanketing the ground.

The blackened, flesh-strewn hulk of twisted steel is barely recognizable, upside down. A severed leg is dangling off the back.

'You OK?'
Soldiers rush forward with stretchers, looking for survivors. Only the driver is alive, pinned inside a front compartment, his hand crushed.

I can hear things sizzling, and I feel something is about to explode.

Then, we are ambushed again.

Insurgents fire and bullets ping off the Stryker's carcass. Soldiers crouching inside it and on surrounding rooftops fire back.

When the gunshots ease, I survey the scene nervously.

I circle around one body in particular: a man in a maroon shirt, lying face up. Carefully, deliberately, I take photo after photo, capturing it at different angles. The Stryker is just behind, shadowed by a large golden-domed mosque across the street. I think this is an Iraqi civilian in a dishdasha gown, perhaps one of the attackers.

I am expecting Dmitry to come running with his camera, but he does not appear. I think soldiers are keeping him back — photographing American casualties is often taboo.

Inside an abandoned house where we seek shelter, I ask where he is.

"Out front," a soldier says. "You OK?"

I am relieved, thankful.

Dangerous times
I know we will share these stories later: a dangerous time, a brush with death, but we escaped unharmed.

Desperate to talk to Dmitry, I wander outside again. I still can't find him, and ask somebody else where he is.

Inside the house, a dozen red-eyed, mourning soldiers are sitting against the walls, staring angrily toward the harsh light outside.

Until this moment, I am an observer.

When a soldier answers, I become one of them.

I am numb.

Dmitry is outside on the ground near the door — the one wearing the maroon shirt. His blue flak jacket, helmet and sunglasses are gone. His smashed camera is on the ground beside him. His face is covered in dust.

When I gain the strength to go out and look, he is gone. Soldiers have carried him away.

Now I want to ask him: Can you forgive me taking your picture?

And I ask myself: Why was I taking his picture, any of these pictures, at all?

War's new face
For a journalist, the world unfolds as an infinite stream of events. Your job is to witness them, capture them, explain them.

But they build up inside you.

I traveled to Iraq half a dozen times for the Associated Press over the years. I saw families crouching in their homes while Americans fought on their rooftops. I heard the screams of a dying Iraqi soldier as we crawled on a roof under a boiling midday sun. I watched helicopter gunships fire rockets across a twilit sky at insurgents holed up in palm groves below.

Unlike everybody else, I was always able to hop on a plane and leave it all behind, returning to a world where you did not cringe, where you could walk — not run — down the street, without worrying about trip wires or bombs or snipers.

I was always able to leave it all behind — until Dmitry was killed.

That day, I crossed through a kind of looking glass, and saw the war in Iraq from another side.

To the daily churn of news, it was just one more tragic story.

To me, it was far more profound. It reverberated through lives thousands of miles away, changing them forever.

I think about all the stories we have written — all the headlines and statistics that comprise the daily death tolls.

I do not look at them so casually anymore.

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