Disco Night Sept. 11 9780984195428

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DISCO NIGHT SEPT 11

B Y P E T E R VA N AG T M A E L

I was scared of war but also comfortable in it. I had felt it in me from the beginning of my

There was a table of teenagers next to us. We were doing a lot of drunken hollering and they’d

consciousness. I didn’t know what form it would take, but I always knew I would go.

periodically glance over with looks of disgust. One soldier caught their stares, and started talking

When I was in fifth grade the first Gulf War started. I followed it obsessively. I was already fascinated by the history of war, and suddenly my country was involved in one. A real fight against good and evil, we were told. I had cut out a diagram from the New York Times that

to chill out but saw the other soldiers watching him, silently egging him on. After a few minutes, the teenagers got up and left, and the soldier quieted, talked about sports.

described the equipment and weaponry that the soldiers carried. It got so worn out I had to

One night I found myself trying to count up the number of dead and injured I’d seen from the wars.

laminate it, cutting carefully around the edges. At lunch one day my friend Omid asked if I

I realized I’d lost count. A few deaths had been scorched into the top layers of my consciousness.

thought the war was going to last a long time. I told him that Vietnam had gone on for more than

They were never far from my thoughts, and would claw to the forefront when least expected and

ten years, and it was possible he and I would end up in Iraq one day too. When the war ended a

desired. But most of the others were hazy. I spent time looking at an edit of my pictures and found

few weeks later, I was secretly disappointed.

dozens of moments that I’d forgotten. The memories existed only as photographs. The sounds and

The night before going to Iraq for the first time I was staying in a hotel room in Kuwait. I walked around in my underwear in front of a mirror wearing my new body armor and helmet and felt

smells and words of the experience were gone. I’m not sure what that means. When a photo flashes on TV of the latest casualty, even the ghost of them that remains in the picture already looks dead.

like a real badass.

I told myself I’d remained healthy and stable despite the death and violence I’d seen. I didn’t

I went to a party in Washington shortly after returning from a trip to Iraq. I’d spent five of the

YouTube videos of firefights. When I went back to war I felt at home. Stepping outside the wire

previous seven months in the country during the height of the insurgency and sectarian conflict.

on my first patrol after a year away from Afghanistan, I felt a surge of contentment. At that

One of the hosts was a speechwriter for President George W. Bush and an acquaintance from

moment it was the only place in the world I wanted to be. One of my best friends got married

college. I got drunk and angry, and after brooding and swaying over a beer in the corner of the

that day in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. My mom’s birthday was a few days later and I spent

party, watching across the black space of the deck at people laughing in that warm summer

it trapped in a cornfield as bullets cracked overhead. When I came home I did everything to

night, I began reenacting the convulsive death of a soldier as he succumbed to grievous burns.

excess, enjoying it but with a hardness.

I had watched him die and the scene still coated my eyelids when I tried to sleep. My friends, looking at me with fear and pity and confusion, ushered me quickly from the party before many people noticed.

really question that I was no longer sleeping through the night and staying up late watching

The path I was on meant death. If not of my body, then of a part of myself more essential than the identity I had desired and created. The calling I felt could easily have been a false seduction. Yet I’ve been lucky. These days, for the first time in my life, I have little desire to be

After my second trip to Iraq I was listless. The detachment briefly faded when I found out James

at war. I wonder if that ever-present urge will return. I miss it but hope it lies dormant. I have

died. I was sitting at home with my folks. I excused myself and drove to 7-Eleven. I bought a

few regrets. It feels like I should have more.

pack of Marlboros and a pack of Newports and sat on the curb in the parking lot, smoking one after another. When Finken was killed a few months later I was too drained to feel much of anything at all. I knew I’d be going back to Iraq, and was reluctant to confront my experiences. To do so would acknowledge my fears, and I wanted to go back.

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loudly at them about all the kids he’d killed, and how much he’d enjoyed it. I started to ask him

Despite all the death and confusion and isolation and impotence these pictures represent, I know they can only be a slender document. There are so many simultaneous existences and we can only be present in one. For every story that is recorded there are nearly infinite ones we’ll never know. The real weight of destruction is still happening constantly in anonymity across Iraq

Shortly after, I went with Raymond and a few other amputees to a bar near Walter Reed. One of

and Afghanistan and America, in endless repetition of all that has come before. If I found any

them was drunk, and kept popping downers he’d been prescribed, chasing them with whiskey.

truth in war, I found that in the end everyone has their own truth.

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American Marines of Echo Company at Combat Outpost Sharp, named after Lance Corporal Seth Sharp. He was the first member of his unit to be killed during the deployment. The outpost housed the southernmost company of the Second Battalion, Eighth Marine Regiment. Resupply was dangerous. The roads to the headquarters in Garmsir were heavily mined and nearly twothirds of all resupply convoys were hit by improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Helicopters were safer but in short supply. The base had plenty of ammunition and water but little else: no fresh food, showers or working toilets. At the end of August several reporters embedded at the base. The Marine commander, General Lawrence Nicholson, made sure that the outpost received its first batch of fresh food in two months. The cooks grilled up steak, kielbasa, hot dogs and chicken. The long line of excited, hungry, joking Marines went completely silent when they saw the striking journalist Lara Logan. They had been fighting nearly every day for two months. She walked by the line of Marines wearing a tank top, glancing occasionally at the row of silent, staring faces. MIAN POSHTEH, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

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A mock courtroom for soldiers deploying to Iraq. This training exercise simulated an Iraqi criminal trial. An American Army lawyer set forth evidence to prosecute an “insurgent” for ties to resistance groups. After hearing arguments from both sides and reviewing evidence, the Iraqi “judge” dismissed the case. During the war, American lawyers were rarely obliged to engage with the Iraqi criminal justice system. Many detainees were held for long stretches without trials. No American soldiers were prosecuted by Iraqi courts. In October 2011, President Obama announced that all U.S. troops would withdraw from Iraq by the end of the year. Although the American and Iraqi governments hoped to keep five thousand American soldiers to assist in training the fledgling Iraqi security forces, negotiations broke down after the Pentagon insisted that American soldiers retain full immunity under Iraqi law. The Iraqi government refused, the deal collapsed, and the last American soldiers left Iraq in December 2011. FORT IRWIN, CALIFORNIA. USA. 2011

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Blast walls surrounding living quarters at Camp Liberty, part of a network of American bases around Baghdad International Airport. At its peak, the complex housed about a quarter of the total force in Iraq: forty-two thousand soldiers and twenty thousand support staff. On most large U.S. bases enlisted soldiers lived two to a room in a network of trailers surrounded by high concrete blast barriers and sandbags. Army deployments typically lasted twelve to fifteen months, and soldiers tried to make their quarters as comfortable as possible. Posters of women were torn from FHM and Maxim and pasted on the walls. Pornography was officially forbidden but readily available. One Kurdish translator spent his off-hours trying to get Korean girls he’d met online to strip for him over webcam. The large bases had PXs selling TVs, video-game consoles, CDs and DVDs. The dining facilities offered dozens—sometimes hundreds—of food options. Crab legs, fried shrimp and steak were served every week at all but the most remote outposts. There were small stores run by Turkish contractors selling bootleg DVDs, cheap furniture, rugs and local kitsch: elaborately jeweled knives, supposedly antique muskets and anything with Saddam Hussein’s face on it. There was a Harley-Davidson outlet, offering reasonable financing rates and promising delivery upon return from the war. BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2010

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A helicopter medic waits in his hut for a call on the nine-line, the radio channel dedicated to casualty reports. His girlfriend had sent him the teddy bear for good luck, and he had another one hanging next to his carbine on the chopper. BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2006

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Discarded blast walls outside Forward Operating Base (FOB) Falcon, a large American base south of Baghdad. For years, the area around Falcon, dubbed the “Triangle of Death,” was one of the most violent in Iraq. Small units from the base were assigned to outposts on narrow dirt roads that crossed the farmland. The posts were frequently attacked, the soldiers on edge. I visited an outpost in late summer 2006. The soldiers had just shot up a car full of civilians that was too slow to stop at their checkpoint. They thought the car might be a suicide bomb and had killed a teenage boy. When I arrived with a medevac crew, a small crowd was gathered around the body lying on a stretcher. The blanket was too small to cover the boy, and his bare feet and thin legs stuck out. The medic lifted the blanket at the head and quickly lowered it. The soldiers stood listlessly over the huddled family and covered body. The temperature was 120 degrees and the sun so bright the sky was nearly white. As I began photographing, the soldiers took off their identifying unit patches. BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2010

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Al-A’amiriya during a large operation to clear the neighborhood of insurgents. These operations were well publicized, and the insurgents would leave to wait them out. A few fruitless days would be spent searching for arms and insurgents while the residents took the opportunity to leave their homes. After the mosque bombing in Sammara launched a sectarian war, there were daily insurgent attacks and the streets of AlA’amiriya were nearly empty. Decapitated bodies half-eaten by dogs regularly appeared: the victims of Shiite death squads. After the clearing operations, American and Iraqi forces reduced to normal strength, and violence increased to previous levels.

A car bomb on the streets of Al-A’amiriya—the fourteenth that week. We heard the explosion a few hundred yards away. Escorted by unarmored gun trucks, an Iraqi Army ambulance gathered the injured. The first casualty brought to the base was little more than a flattened torso, his bones and organs crushed by the concussion. An American medic pumped him full of painkillers and waited for a medevac helicopter. I accompanied the patrol to the site. The rusting hulk of a previous car bomb was shoved off to the side. We ran from wall to wall to avoid snipers, rarely stopping for more than a few seconds. BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2006

BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2006

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A man sells inflatable “Tweety Birds.” Vendors often lingered near checkpoints as the long waits for clearance provided a great business opportunity. Cars were checked for explosives by a wand-like device that cost upwards of $10,000 each. The device was an elaborate hoax and the inventor was later convicted of fraud.

A sculpture in Al-A’amiriya commemorates the bombing of an air raid shelter by American forces in the First Gulf War. More than four hundred people were killed, mostly women and children. The flaming head represents a woman running from the bombed shelter, her hair on fire.

BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2010

BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2006

A mannequin used in an Army combat lifesaving course. The military constantly improves the realism of its medical training to ensure more instinctual reactions in combat. The mannequin pumps fake blood which only stops when enough pressure is applied from a tourniquet. Realistic training has also changed the act of fighting. In World War II, an estimated 25 percent of soldiers fired their weapons at the enemy. The remainder felt an insurmountable resistance toward killing. More vivid and true-to-combat training has now brought the number close to 90 percent. FORT JACKSON, SOUTH CAROLINA. USA. 2011

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The National Mall in Washington, D.C., after Barack Obama’s inauguration on January 20, 2009. An estimated 1.8 million people attended and it was one of the most watched events in the history of television. The day was frigid but sunny. As the crowd started leaving, a strong wind whipped up, blowing dust and garbage around the Mall. Several months later President Obama announced an escalation of the war in Afghanistan. In a speech to cadets at West Point he laid out his reasoning and his concerns. “Al Qaeda and the violent extremists who you’re fighting against want to destroy. But all of you want to build, and that is something essential about America. They’ve got no respect for human life. You see dignity in every human being. They want to drive races and regions and religions apart. You want to bring people together and see the world move forward together. They offer fear. You offer hope. “We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations—acting individually or in concert—will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified. “I make this statement mindful of the creed and lives of Gandhi and King. But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms.” WASHINGTON, D.C. USA. 2009

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Marines on patrol minutes before an IED was triggered. Although the patrol had cautiously swept the road with metal detectors, they’d failed to find the device. Many of the improvised bombs in Afghanistan contained no metal. They were made of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, both impossible to detect. Sometimes insurgents would bury screws and other small pieces of metal to confuse and exhaust the advancing Marines, while masking the true location of the bombs. MIAN POSHTEH, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

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Local Sheikhs arrive at the handover of a neighborhood from the Americans to the Iraqi Army. The ceremony included the presentation of captured weaponry and a hand-to-hand combat demonstration by Iraqi soldiers. The event was one of several marking the end of the American combat mission in Iraq, and the transition from “Operation Iraqi Freedom” to “Operation New Dawn.” The fifty thousand remaining soldiers were to advise the Iraqi Army. Although the combat role was officially ending, day-to-day operations by American soldiers remained largely unchanged. Still, their role had diminished substantially as violence decreased and the Iraqi government exercised its sovereignty. The American government made little mention of the transition, but American TV news briefly heralded it as the end of the war. In December 2011, all American soldiers were withdrawn from Iraq after the Obama administration failed to make a security agreement with the Iraqi government. BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2010

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Media rush to photograph General Ray Odierno, commander of American forces in Iraq. BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2010

A McDonald’s at Ali Al Salem Air Force base in Kuwait. The camp, a vast, sun beaten collection of tents in the middle of the desert, was a major transit point for soldiers and contractors entering and leaving Iraq. ALI AL SALEM. KUWAIT. 2010

Bangladeshi contractors take out the garbage at a U.S. base. To cut costs, the military hired workers from South Asia and Africa for labor previously assigned to soldiers. These contractors were tasked with cleaning the base, staffing the cafeteria and stocking the PX. They worked in the food court at Popeyes, Taco Bell, Burger King, and Cinnabon. Many contractors were exploited by the government sub-contractors who hired them. Wages were often far less than promised, living conditions abysmal, workers’ compensation almost nonexistent and sexual assault not uncommon, with minimal accountability. Many workers didn’t even know they would be going to Iraq and Afghanistan. Local recruiters would promise Dubai, Kuwait or Jordan.

Soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division wait for a flight at the end of a sixteen-month tour of duty. As they arrived at the airfield from their outpost, a sagging black body bag was carried past them to a waiting helicopter, the body of a soldier killed from their replacement unit.

BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2010

JALALABAD. AFGHANISTAN. 2007

Soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division arrive home from Iraq. FORT HOOD, TEXAS. USA. 2011

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A Veterans Day parade. A massive retrospective of war photography had just opened at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. Photographers Don McCullin and James Nachtwey, recognized for documenting decades of war and suffering, talked about their work and their divergent ideologies of its impact. McCullin has said, “You can’t go around kidding yourself that your photographs in a few papers will change the world. They can’t and they haven’t. I despair about the human race.” Nachtwey has been more optimistic, “In many ways, mankind is very advanced. But in other ways, we’re still at a very early stage of evolution where it’s necessary to use violence as a tool. I don’t know when we’ll evolve out of that—if ever.” Despite this acknowledgment, he has noted, “The people who live through those situations still have hope. If they still have hope, then why shouldn’t I?” HOUSTON, TEXAS. USA. 2012

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A Marine with a village elder from Mian Poshteh, a rural village in southern Helmand Province. The Marines were trying to build the Afghan Army. There were 240 Americans in the outpost, but only a few dozen Afghan soldiers. The local language was Pashto, but only a few of the Afghan soldiers spoke it; they were from other parts of the country. Relations with the local elders were tense. The Afghan soldiers were often accused of stealing when doing house searches in the village. Although Mian Poshteh was only one kilometer from the base, the Marines and Afghan Army were often attacked nearby. The Marines asked the elders if they would vote in the upcoming elections. “The Taliban will chop off our fingers,” was the reply (the index finger is stained purple after voting to make sure there are no repeats). The Marines asked why they wouldn’t reveal the location of the Taliban. The elders replied, “You go back to your base at night, while the Taliban are all around us. If we cooperate, they will kill us.” They went on to say that there was no fighting before the Marines came, and that they should just go away. MIAN POSHTEH, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

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Soldiers and a reporter wait for American soldiers of the 1st Cavalry Division to return on one of the last planeloads from the Iraq War. FORT HOOD, TEXAS. USA. 2011

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Soldiers raided a hamlet on the outskirts of Mosul after midnight on a winter weekend. Iraqi soldiers guarded the perimeter while a line of American soldiers moved up silently outside each house. A soldier kicked in the door and stood aside. The others entered with weapons raised, scanning the room rapidly with their flashlights and yelling commands in English and broken Arabic. A young family had been sleeping, and the dirt floor was a tangle of blankets and thin mattresses. A soldier grabbed the Iraqi closest to the door and shoved him against the wall, forcing his arms behind his back. As he held his prisoner there, the soldier complained that the scene was bound to be misrepresented by a photograph taken out of context. A second Iraqi awoke with a start and fumbled for something under the blanket. Hawk, the unit’s Kurdish interpreter, took several long steps and punched him sharply in the face, dazing him. Another soldier slammed him to the ground. A search of the compound turned up a cache of weapons and explosive materials. Three men were detained. OUTSIDE MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006

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Marines swim in an irrigation canal at their outpost in Helmand Province. Moments of leisure were a welcome break for the embattled troops operating in one of the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan. Taliban-controlled territory was all around them. The day this picture was taken, a patrol from another base a few kilometers down the road encountered an IED. One of the soldiers was blown into a canal and disappeared. The rest of the platoon found parts of his body but not his torso. They searched until well after midnight, and began again at dawn to find the rest of the pieces. SOUTH OF GARMSIR, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

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Marines listen to their patrol objectives. GARMSIR, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

An Afghan soldier on a joint patrol with American forces. He wore eye liner and carried a flower over his ear. In Afghanistan there is a tradition of men wearing makeup. MIAN POSHTEH, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

A Marine on patrol. The patrol was accompanied by an intelligence officer who went by the name “Broadway.” When the troops entered Mian Poshteh he began to question the residents. First he stopped a group of young boys who were playing. He asked them if they liked the Taliban. They replied that they hated them. “Well you should fight them,” said Broadway. They looked at him quizzically and said that it was impossible, they were just children and couldn’t carry a rifle.

The patrol continued until Broadway (right) came across this boy. “His father is a Taliban,” he claimed. The boy flattened against the wall as Broadway and Rocky, the Afghan-American interpreter, questioned him. “Does your father go by any other names?” Broadway asked. Rocky paused before translating and told Broadway, “He’s just a kid, he probably just knows him as Dad.” Irritated, Broadway stopped the questioning and continued walking. He came across some village elders further down the road. It was a brief, uneventful conversation in which the elders pleaded ignorance and divulged little useful intelligence. Frustrated, Broadway spat to the Afghans, “You’re just as guilty as the people you support.” Rocky refused to translate.

MIAN POSHTEH, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

MIAN POSHTEH, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

A drill sergeant watches recruits performing combat lifesaving techniques. Several soldiers mimic brutal injuries, screaming and writhing, a few faintly smirking. The recruits bandage the injured and get them out of the “kill zone” while others provide cover. Their movements are slow and clumsy. A man in a black-billed hat films the action for later review. The instructors shake their heads and frown but say the exercise will run smoothly with more practice. Ultimately, most soldiers injured on the battlefield survive even the most grievous wounds. FORT JACKSON, SOUTH CAROLINA. USA. 2011

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A child sleeps during an Afghan wedding party. His cousin joins the women cooking a midnight meal. The wedding of Dost Mohammed Khairy was held in the courtyard of his uncle’s small home in Mazar-e Sharif. Dost sang in a lilting baritone as family and friends danced, spinning slowly to the fervent organ music played by Dost’s brother, Farshad. MAZAR-E SHARIF. AFGHANISTAN. 2008

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The Marine on the left, Corporal Matt Kaiser, had nearly been killed by an IED earlier that day. He was sweeping the road with a mine detector when the dirt exploded in front of him. He staggered back saying, “God, I’m still here,” and clutching his ears. He laughed and for the rest of the day couldn’t hear much and talked way too loud. It was the second time in just a few weeks he’d nearly been killed by a bomb. MIAN POSHTEH, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

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Raymond Hubbard was injured in Baghdad on July 4, 2006, when a Russian-made 122mm rocket crashed twenty feet from the guard post where he was stationed. Shrapnel tore into his body. One fragment entered below his left knee, severing the leg. Another cartwheeled through his neck, cutting through the carotid artery. He was still conscious as he hit the ground. He remembers staring in confusion at the horrified faces of his comrades gathering above him. A medic arrived on the scene moments after the blast. He plunged his hands into Raymond’s neck and clamped the artery hard to stop the hemorrhage. His intervention saved Raymond’s life, but he had already lost fourteen pints of blood, and suffered a massive stroke. He was evacuated to Landstuhl, a huge American military hospital in Germany. “After I was hit, I was in a coma for almost a month. I was having a series of massive hallucinations. One was of an older gentlemen with long white hair. His left leg was gone and was replaced with a wagon wheel. On the wagon wheel was a small cabinet where he carried his huge pistol and his whiskey. He was an old person from out West and he intimidated me. He played tricks on me during the day. One time he was smoking a cigarette in my room and I was convinced the room was full of gas and that we were going to blow up. Now I think that old man could have been one of three people. My father, myself in the future, or God. “Another time I was in my coffin back home. It was my wake and I could hear my two sons, my wife, my mom, and my father all standing outside my coffin. They were all trying to grieve. It was a huge wake. The line went out the door and into the streets. At the end of the wake there was a disturbance. My brother Billy said that he could bring me back. My oldest son’s mother, Fran, whom I never married, said, ‘You can’t bring him back.’ They argued over this and the sky was a violent torrent. My brother won the battle and brought me back to life. Resurrected me. All these things I thought were real. I had been at Walter Reed three weeks before I woke up.” DARIEN, WISCONSIN. USA. 2007

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Iraqi policemen and American soldiers wait while their commanders plan a joint patrol of southern Baghdad. In mid-2009, American forces ceased regular patrols in Iraqi cities and the Iraqi Army and police took over their remaining duties. Patrols were still commonplace, but first had to be approved and coordinated with Iraqi forces. While we were waiting, a nineteen-yearold American asked me if the U.S. had attacked Iraq and Afghanistan simultaneously. He had been a child in the early days of the war. BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2010

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Children were unpredictable. Usually they’d play games with the soldiers or chase after them in a pack, shouting for soccer balls and candy. Other times they’d hurl rocks. One gunner in the turret of a Humvee was hit by a rock at a checkpoint and shot the kid in the face with a slingshot. Onlookers gathered in a fury, and the checkpoint was abandoned after a rushed apology.

Most patrols I went on were uneventful. We would walk around the city and be ignored. When violence came it was always sudden and brief. MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006

MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006

An Iraqi checkpoint in the Adhamiyah neighborhood of West Baghdad. The lightly manned checkpoints were vulnerable to insurgent attack and frequently assaulted, causing heavy casualties among the Iraqi security forces.

The intersection below was frequently mined so the Americans had set up a fake camera. They wanted the insurgents to destroy it under the eyes of the watching snipers, who late one night had taken over a nearby building. Half the men watched the intersection while the other half slept. It was soon clear that the Iraqis knew the Americans were there. Cars would drive by occasionally, the passengers making lewd gestures at the windows where the Americans watched.

BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2006

MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006

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The Ranch House, a rudimentary outpost built at seven thousand feet, deep in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. ARANAS, NURISTAN. AFGHANISTAN. 2007

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Local policemen in Mazar-E Sharif. The city was the first major population center to fall to the Afghan Northern Alliance after the September 11 attacks. It is alleged that approximately two thousand captured Taliban were massacred after the city was taken. MAZAR-E SHARIF. AFGHANISTAN. 2008

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A commercial for a commemorative coin marking the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. When I returned home from war zones I had trouble sleeping and often watched TV late at night. The ad was shown regularly and advertised a price of $29.95, cut from the original price of $49.00, for “0.999 Pure Silver” recovered from Ground Zero. NEW YORK, NEW YORK. USA. 2006

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An Army couple watches the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s “Fight for the Troops.” The event was reserved for soldiers and their families stationed at nearby Fort Bragg but was broadcast nationwide. The bout raised money for a new research center on traumatic brain injury. The headline fight was decided by a knockout. The winner strutted around the caged ring as the fans roared. One soldier waved his prosthetic leg in celebration. The loser lay unconscious for fifteen minutes, attended frantically by medical staff. Over two million people watched around the country. FAYETTEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA. USA. 2008

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Daily life continued in Mosul amid the brooding underlying threat of insurgent action or American excess. One evening a red Opel rounded a corner. The Iraqis and some of the Americans started shooting long bursts. Someone yelled cease-fire, and the soldiers ran up to the smoking car. A quivering Iraqi man emerged without a scratch, his hands raised. He was quickly searched and questioned. He said he was leaving work late and that’s why he was out past curfew. The Iraqis tried to give him money to pay for the damages, but he just gripped his face in his hands. He was put into the back of a Stryker armored fighting vehicle and driven home. His family was waiting at the door. As the vehicle drove away he crushed his young daughter in an embrace and waved wildly. MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006

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Afghan children watch a patrol of passing American Marines in Helmand. The province is largely made up of small villages of family compounds surrounded by high mud walls. Helmand is the heart of the Taliban’s poppy industry. The poppies are cultivated and processed into heroin and opium. In 2007, 93 percent of the world’s opiates originated in Afghanistan—at an export value of about $64 billion. Opiates are a major source of funding for the Taliban. Farmers cite poverty and Taliban intimidation as the most common reasons for growing poppy. Many farmers who have had their crops destroyed by Coalition and Afghan poppy-clearing operations have joined the Taliban out of frustration or desperation. An effort in 2010 by officials, local entrepreneurs and Marines to promote cotton, a crop with a high profit margin and the most tempting alternative to poppy, was stonewalled by officials from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In their rejection of the proposal they cited the Bumpers Amendment, which bans the use of American cash to invest in foreign crops that could compete with American exports. GARMSIR, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

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Recruits take a physical training test under the halogen lights illuminating the otherwise predawn darkness. FORT JACKSON, SOUTH CAROLINA. USA. 2011

Soldiers sign off after being exposed to CS, a largely nonlethal gas usually used for riot control. They were enclosed in a small building full of gas and told to remove their masks. Moments later they burst out gasping and choking. Snot poured out their noses and a few collapsed. The drill sergeants were on them immediately, barking at them to get up and keep moving. Stumbling to their feet, they flapped their arms to dissipate the gas and ran weaving down the hill. FORT JACKSON, SOUTH CAROLINA. USA. 2011

A soldier who sprained her leg is assigned to guard rifles while the rest of her platoon trains outside.

Two American soldiers wrestle on FOB Falcon, an American base south of Baghdad. Wrestling and basic hand-to-hand combat drills were standard evening activities for bored soldiers.

FORT JACKSON, SOUTH CAROLINA. USA. 2011

BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2010

FLYING OVER AMERICA. 2010

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Afghan children watch a patrol of passing American Marines in Helmand. The province is largely made up of small villages of family compounds surrounded by high mud walls. Helmand is the heart of the Taliban’s poppy industry. The poppies are cultivated and processed into heroin and opium. In 2007, 93 percent of the world’s opiates originated in Afghanistan—at an export value of about $64 billion. Opiates are a major source of funding for the Taliban. Farmers cite poverty and Taliban intimidation as the most common reasons for growing poppy. Many farmers who have had their crops destroyed by Coalition and Afghan poppy-clearing operations have joined the Taliban out of frustration or desperation. An effort in 2010 by officials, local entrepreneurs and Marines to promote cotton, a crop with a high profit margin and the most tempting alternative to poppy, was stonewalled by officials from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In their rejection of the proposal they cited the Bumpers Amendment, which bans the use of American cash to invest in foreign crops that could compete with American exports. GARMSIR, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

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A soldier visits Section 60, the burial site of the dead from Iraq and Afghanistan at Arlington National Cemetery. ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA. USA. 2010

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A soldier checks on a comrade feigning injury during a mock attack on a base. Elements of the 1st Armored Division were going through training at Fort Irwin, California, to prepare for a deployment to Iraq. Fort Irwin, a remote desert base, has a number of fabricated Iraqi and Afghan villages and a core team of trainers masquerading as townspeople and insurgents. Real Afghans and Iraqis, some of them soldiers before the American invasion, role-play with the military in order to educate and sensitize them to local cultural practices. One former Iraqi General played his role so convincingly that he threw me out of a meeting, yelling at the American Colonel that it was disrespectful to bring media without approving it with him first. FORT IRWIN, CALIFORNIA. USA. 2011

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Marines advance on a small compound of houses during a firefight with the Taliban. The Marines had been patrolling, and as they moved west of their outpost, a farmer warned them not to continue; there were Taliban lying in wait in the tree line ahead. The commander acknowledged the warning but kept moving forward. They entered a newly irrigated cornfield, and stepped clumsily to escape the mud sucking at their boots. The air steamed with water evaporating in the 120-degree heat. All at once the air was ripped by heavy gunfire and exploding rocket-propelled grenades. The Marines crawled to a ditch and returned fire. A villager caught in the crossfire huddled with them, his teeth bared in a grimace. The troops couldn’t see the enemy, so they just shot in the general direction of the incoming fire. Two Cobra attack helicopters were called in, firing rockets at the suspected Taliban position as the Americans whooped. They advanced and kept firing, though the incoming rounds had stopped more than a half hour earlier. The Taliban usually hit and run, rarely opting for sustained battles against the overwhelming firepower of the Coalition forces. Eventually the lieutenant shouted to cease fire. A local man slowly walked out of a hamlet of houses and told the Marines he wanted to check on his sheep. He walked up the road with the Marines and found their corpses scattered across the road. The commander told him to file a claim at the base the next day. MIAN POSHTEH, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

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Transcript of a conversation with Marines stationed at Combat Outpost Sharp. Marine 1: If you came up to me and told me you fucked my mom, I’d laugh at you. I wouldn’t even give a shit. You call anyone around here a nigger, a spic, a wop, a fucking Jew. No one would care. If you said shit like that out in the civilian world people would be looking at you. Marine 2: I can’t joke around with my fucking friends at home anymore, they think I’m too fucking serious. They think I’m horrible. Marine 1: And then we joke around like, “This one time, we almost got blown up.” Marine 2: My friends say, “That’s fucking horrible.” Marine 3: No, it’s fucking awesome! Marine 1: When people die in fucked-up ways we laugh. Marine 2: We were just talking about the first three days. They were calling in those mortar missions when we were up on the hill. Marine 3: Remember when that body flew up in the air? Laughter Marine 2: This mortar hit this fucking house and I shit you not, this body flew through the air like a rag doll. It was like something out of Hollywood. All these reporters were staring at us and we just started laughing our asses off. Me: That’s pretty depraved actually. That’s pretty bad. Marine 2: Fucking Kraft shot that building with the machine gun and set it on fire. I walked out there and he was like, “Dude, Dude, I just set that building on fire and there was someone in it!” Marine 1: Kraft is a machine gunner. He got hit a few days ago but the first few days out here he starts lighting up this building and someone yells, “Cease fire! We think the building’s on fire!” Next thing there is smoke and flames and a guy drops out the window and falls like fifty feet yelling, “Aaaaahhhhh!” While he’s half on fire and shit—“aaaaahhhh”—everyone’s like, “Dude, you should have seen it! That was the fucking sweetest thing I’ve ever seen!” Marine 2: We just don’t fit in anywhere else anymore. MIAN POSHTEH, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

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Family members wait to greet their loved ones returning from Iraq. There is a tradition at Fort Hood. Before the soldiers deploy and upon their return, they are each hugged by seventy-nineyear-old Elizabeth Laird. On their departure, she gives each soldier a copy of Psalm 91, which reads, “You shall not fear the terror of the night nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that roams in darkness, nor the plague that ravages at noon. Though a thousand fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, near you it shall not come.” FORT HOOD, TEXAS. USA. 2011

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Lieutenant Ryan Kules (left) talks to another injured soldier at a poker tournament fundraiser for the Paralyzed Veterans of America. Kules lost his right arm and left leg in a roadside bomb explosion in Iraq that killed two other men in his vehicle. Reflecting on the injury, his wife Nancy said, “People think what a great story it is, and what blessings we’ve had, and how Ryan has overcome great odds. But they don’t think about the daily repercussions of it. The heart of the matter isn’t something you can therapy away. It is what it is. It’s our new reality.” WASHINGTON, D.C. USA. 2009

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The funeral for Sergeant Seth Ricketts, a week after he was killed in Afghanistan. Ricketts died in an ambush on February 27, 2010, in Badghis. The province is a remote area of western Afghanistan that had been largely peaceful. He was the 997th U.S. casualty in the war. He joined the Army the day after 9/11 and was on his fifth tour. Hundreds attended his viewing, memorial service and funeral. Others lined the convoy route, waving American flags, hands on their hearts. His family said he was born a warrior. In the first picture of him as a baby, his fists are in the air. CORINTH, MISSISSIPPI. USA. 2010

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Specialist Scott Jones at Fort Drum in upstate New York, a month after returning from Afghanistan. He was to be discharged the following week, having completed his time in the Army. His unit of the 10th Mountain Division was going through a tough transition home. Several of the soldiers had been arrested for drunk driving. Another was committed to a psychiatric hospital after he’d beaten a civilian in a drunken rage. In Afghanistan, I had met the soldier that later inflicted the beating. He had told me that two of his friends had disintegrated when a massive roadside bomb hit their “gator,” an unarmored golf-cart-like vehicle normally used as a light transport on large bases. The next day, their platoon returned to the village where the bomb had been set off. The soldier told me how he had methodically fired his automatic grenade-launcher into the houses. WATERTOWN, NEW YORK. USA. 2007

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Past midnight in a snow-covered field. It’s a few days after the end of my first trip to Iraq. UPSALA. SWEDEN. 2006

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General Stanley McChrystal, commander of Coalition forces in Afghanistan, reviews a map of Helmand Province at Forward Operating Base Delhi during a routine battlefield visit. McChrystal was famous among his aides for running eight miles a day, eating one simple meal, and sleeping no more than four hours a night. He resigned his command several months later after an article in Rolling Stone quoted his aides making insulting remarks about the Obama administration. McChrystal’s departure was mourned by many; he was seen as a modern, sophisticated and intelligent officer who had achieved great success in running special operations in Iraq. In an interview after retiring, he said, “A successful counterinsurgency needs a legitimate government. You need to offer to the people an alternative to what the insurgent is offering. The Taliban don’t offer a very compelling narrative or popular government, but the government of Afghanistan has a huge problem with its popular legitimacy as well.” GARMSIR, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

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A Humvee destroyed by an IED in Helmand Province. In 2009, more than 60 percent of all Coalition casualties were caused by the improvised bombs.

An injured Afghan child is led onto an American base for treatment. After being searched for weapons, his father was allowed to accompany him on base. His grandfather had to stay behind.

GARMSIR, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

GARMSIR, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

American medics treat an Afghan child injured in the head. There are few health clinics in rural Afghanistan, so civilians are forced to seek treatment at Coalition bases.

Marines debrief after a patrol. Their patrols were accompanied by an Afghan translator. The Afghan, who gave his name as “Rocky,” was a contractor who had moved to America when he was a child. He joined the U.S. Army but despite being fluent in Pashto and Dari, the two most common languages in Afghanistan, he was deployed twice to Iraq, a country where neither language is spoken. When he left the Army he was hired as a contractor—where he earned a far higher wage—and was sent to Afghanistan as a translator.

GARMSIR, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

MIAN POSHTEH, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

American soldiers on a foot patrol noticed that two young men were eying them and fidgeting. Anticipating violence, they stormed their house. During the search the soldiers teased a young medic about his virginity. The soldiers had already searched hundreds of houses during their deployment, and the banter was casual as they swept the family’s possessions onto the floor. In the next room they were questioning a boy. “Have there been any new faces around the house lately?” “Are your brothers coming and going at strange hours?” The boy muttered noncommittal answers and stared at the ground. They found no contraband in the house, but the hands of the young men came up with a faint residue of explosives. The lieutenant in charge of the platoon decided to detain them, though he thought they were innocent. The explosives tests were notoriously unreliable. They were blindfolded, and their hands bound with zip ties. The rest of the family began screaming and beating their chests. The soldiers locked them in a room and pushed the two stumbling men toward the Stryker. MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006

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A Marine after a firefight with the Taliban. MIAN POSHTEH, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

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A U.S. Blackhawk helicopter lands at the Ranch House, a small American outpost deep in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. There were no decent roads and all medevacs, re-supply and transport were done by helicopter. Blackhawks were in short supply, forcing the U.S. military to turn to outside contractors. They rented ex-Soviet helicopters, rickety and ancient and known as “Jingle Air.” They came with pilots, some of whom had served in the Russian Army during the previous war in Afghanistan. They were storied figures, legendary for their bravery under fire and rumored to be heavy vodka drinkers in flight. WAIGUL VALLEY, NURISTAN. AFGHANISTAN. 2007

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Kathryn Condon, director of Arlington National Cemetery. She came to the job following a scandal in which the remains of thousands of soldiers were found to be buried in mislabeled or incorrect graves. Remains have also been lost or discovered in cemetery landfills, and caskets have been buried on top of one another. The scandal horrified many families, who fear that they have been mourning at the wrong graves. In a well-publicized case, Scott Warner drove to Arlington from Canton, Ohio, to confirm where his son Heath was buried. There was no record of Heath at the funeral home where his remains were allegedly kept before burial. The funeral itself had been closed casket, as Heath’s body was badly mangled by a roadside bombing in Iraq. The cemetery staff had promised to disinter the coffin and open it in front of Warner, but when he arrived they told him they had already confirmed that his son was indeed buried in the right place. Warner insisted they open the casket for him and he picked through the pieces of his decomposing son, looking for a tattoo on his arm. He found the tattoo. ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA. USA. 2011

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Specialist James Worster (left) and Sergeant Brandon Benjamin take a cigarette break during a lull in the casualties coming into the Baghdad ER. Two months later, Worster would die of an overdose of propofol, a sedative he had been pocketing while treating patients. BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2006

James’s mother and brother at their home four months after his death. NORTH POLE, ALASKA. USA. 2007

Worster was a veteran of a previous tour to Iraq. He had been transferred to the hospital unit from the infantry after being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. While the hospital staff saved the lives of over 90 percent of their patients, the failures took a toll, especially on the younger soldiers. Some of them stole leftover painkillers to ease into sleep on their off-hours. As the year went on and casualties increased, they began taking drugs recreationally. There were parties in the barracks with the stolen drugs and alcohol that had been shipped in empty mouthwash bottles from home. At one, a soldier ran naked and shouting through the hallways. Another soldier insisted that he could see the Virgin Mary levitating in front of him. A medic later told me, “You see so much shit and you feel endlessly alone. Everyone slept with everyone else. We longed to feel something other than pain and suffering.” Eventually, a concerned medic reported the problem to the hospital’s senior staff. The command didn’t act. The staff continued to be responsible and highly effective at their jobs. In April 2006, Worster went home on leave. His wife had grown distant in his absence, and he was suspicious and upset. He was joyriding in a new Mustang when his son Trevor pointed out, “That’s Ken’s house.” James didn’t know anyone named Ken, and he confronted his wife. She denied an affair, but others described a string of men. After fourteen days, Worster returned to Iraq. His friends found that he was quieter and rarely smiled. He began to use stronger drugs more often and more privately. He followed news of his wife on her MySpace page, where she wrote thinly veiled accounts of her trysts. When the unit gathered for formation on September 18, 2006, Worster was missing. Benjamin went to his room to check on him and found it unlocked. Worster was slumped against the floor, a needle in his arm, his lips blue. The unit returned to America a few weeks later. The top officers were relieved of command. The unit was broken up, and several of the medics were discharged from the Army for alcohol and drug abuse.

A soldier surveys the damage after shooting a target with a sawed-off shotgun. Frequent trips to the range helped battle boredom as the Iraq war wound down. BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2010

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Lisa Ruiz, as mourners leave a memorial service for her son. Manuel Ruiz, twenty-one, had died the previous week in a helicopter crash in Iraq. He was one week into his second tour. Two years later I was at Arlington Cemetery on Veterans Day. A steady rain was falling but Section 60 was packed with people. I walked around, reluctant to intrude on private grief. I paid respects at the graves of people I had known. Near the edge of the cemetery, Manuel Ruiz Sr. knelt at his son’s grave. His eyes were closed, his lined face wet and contorted. Lisa stood above him, teary and frowning, wrapped in a homemade quilt covered in hearts and carrying a brightly colored striped umbrella. I greeted them and there was mutual recognition followed by awkward small talk about how they were holding up in the years that had passed. FEDERALSBURG, MARYLAND. USA. 2007

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Ground Zero, a few hours after President Obama announced that U.S. Navy SEALs had killed Osama bin Laden in a raid in Pakistan. NEW YORK, NEW YORK. USA. 2011

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The night before a memorial service for Andrew Small. He was nineteen when he was killed during an ambush in Afghanistan, along with two other soldiers. The platoon had first arrived at the Holiday Inn a few hours earlier and gathered at the bar. Some soldiers talked quietly in the booths. A few of the younger soldiers got wasted. Trouble soon started. A well-meaning stranger, a veteran of the Navy in the 1980s, told them he understood, and they shouted him out of the bar. At closing time two of the most intoxicated soldiers got into a fight, and one tried to rip the other’s ear off with his teeth. After a chase through the halls, they were separated and forced into bed. The senior noncommissioned officers took turns standing guard at their doors for the rest of the night. In the morning, one of them was still too drunk to attend the service and he was left alone to sleep in the charter bus. After the ceremony, Small’s squad leader Sergeant Jason Crawford grieved in the woods. He lingered there until Andrew’s mother, Cindy, found him and held him in a long embrace. The crowd had dispersed, preparing to meet again at the local recreation center. Crawford walked over to Andrew’s grave, took off his pressed jacket, laid it carefully on the grass, and knelt for several minutes in front of the stone. Etched into the marker was a portrait of Small in high school, smiling widely. Crawford got up and walked out of the cemetery arm in arm with Sergeant Wilder, another squad leader who had survived the same ambush. On the way to the reception, Crawford stopped at a liquor store and pounded a beer. When he rejoined the unit, he posed for photographs, smiling broadly with Andrew’s mother and father. WISCASSET, MAINE. USA. 2007

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A soldier is treated after being shot in the chest in an ambush. A few days before, his unit, the 173rd Airborne Brigade, had begun its second deployment to Afghanistan. He was hit at dusk on one of his first patrols in the Korengal Valley. A second soldier, Timothy Vimoto, was killed in the ambush. In the background his buddies wait with the blanket-covered body for a medevac helicopter. Vimoto, nineteen, was the son of the top ranking enlisted man in the same unit. Father and son had deployed to Afghanistan together. During the flight to the hospital the wounded man kept trying to look at the bundle next to him, but the flight medic forced him back down. As soon as the helicopter landed, the casualties were carried out, and blood poured onto the tarmac. The medic hosed down the chopper’s floor as the rest of the crew grabbed coffee for the flight back to base. KORENGAL VALLEY, KUNAR. AFGHANISTAN. 2007

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Excerpts from a conversation with Erik Malmstrom

10/4/2012

“In some ways you’re very powerful as a junior military officer but you’re also powerless. When you go into these places you walk into a situation with a long back history. You inherit all the screwed-up things the units did before you. You inherit an Afghan history that has led to xenophobia and a deeply ingrained warrior culture. You’re a blip on the screen in the scheme of things. “Think of the people that go in the military, their training, their lead up to deployment. It’s all geared toward fighting. We tried to do mock interactions with villagers but that stuff is so hokey. “In terms of the media, what really pisses me off is that through the embed process the media buys into the alpha male infantry culture. “To have a hope of succeeding you have to be part warrior, part anthropologist, part diplomat, part development worker. “You can fight all the time and that’s a necessary skill but not sufficient to really have an impact. What people care about is tangible change. It isn’t just security but roads, schools, healthcare. All those things take a long time and aren’t things the military is particularly good at providing. But even if we had given them a lot more I’m not sure it would have stemmed a lot of the issues. “When we left we were perceived as the fair weather friend who completely under-delivered. We were in the Waigul for just a little over two years. We really screwed all the people who took a huge risk to come forward and cooperate. “They felt betrayed by me because I told them we’d be with them. They felt betrayed more generally by the Americans. To their credit they were still willing to talk and be friendly. [In 2010 Malmstrom went back to Afghanistan as a graduate student to research business development. While there, he interviewed several of the leaders in the Waigul Valley.] “The picture they painted of the valley these days is of foreign fighters armed and walking around openly. The locals are totally intimidated. The insurgents are a de facto security force. The Afghan security forces are weak and inept and rarely leave the district center, and they don’t have the respect of the people. The valley is now a staging ground to attack Americans. “When I look back I think of a few things. There’s the initial losses to my guys. Then the losses to the replacements. There is guilt there. Part of me thinks we did the best we could and the other part of me thought they were doomed to fail. We weren’t willing to stay there for a generation to switch things and you really can’t make an impact in a year or two. You also have to be committed when things get tough. “I have close Afghan friends there and it’s difficult to deal with because they bear the consequences of this whole debacle. They still live in that valley. We go over there as a military force and take casualties but it’s not our mothers, fathers, children. Afghanistan is not in a better place than when I left five years ago and is marching on another path to a civil war or an anarchic situation that I don’t really see ending.”

Lieutenant Erik Malmstrom turns away from photographs of three of his soldiers killed in a Taliban ambush in the Waigul Valley on August 11, 2006. By the end of the deployment Malmstrom’s brigade had lost more men than any single unit in Afghanistan since the war began. JALALABAD. AFGHANISTAN. 2007 122

Raymond Hubbard drinks with his friend Alvin. I joined them, and we got drunk as hell that night, ending up in Alvin’s basement after fleeing a bar. Alvin’s brother had threatened to beat the shit out of a customer. “When I woke up it was gradual. I couldn’t speak. I could only grunt. I couldn’t move the right side of my body. I didn’t know what happened to me. I thought I was in Wisconsin. I had to be told that I was in an attack a couple of times for it to sink in. I couldn’t remember what kind of attack. Someone told me I was on a secret mission, but the wheels started turning and I thought, ‘What kind of secret mission could I have been on? I was just a Specialist in the National Guard!’ It took a month and then it all flooded back. A wave of emotion that came over me. “I think I’d been conscious for a week when my wife told me I had lost my leg. I looked at the shapes beneath the blanket and I saw there wasn’t a shape below my knee on the left leg. At the moment I didn’t pity myself. I thought, ok, what do I have to do? I thought it wasn’t going to be that bad at all. “It was one day at a time. My mind had been so badly damaged that my short-term memory was gone and a lot of my long-term memory was affected. It was worse for my family than for me. I couldn’t put names to faces for a while. When I left for Iraq I was 210 pounds. At my lowest weight I was 135 pounds. “I wanted to get out of there because I had two sons that needed me back at home. My boys are terrific. The first report card after I got hit they got all As. They didn’t want Dad to worry about their schoolwork. “My real father. Him and my mother divorced when I was less than one. His life was drinking. He lived in a small trailer. He didn’t have to pay any money. He got his government disability payments. He was just pissed off at the world. He signed up to go to Vietnam because his best friend—his cousin—was killed over there and he wanted to exact revenge. He would have been a talented soldier if he’d gone into it with the right attitude. He felt like Vietnam stole his life away. When he tried to tell me what he went through I couldn’t really comprehend. I was fourteen when he died. When I look at it now I see where he was coming from, but I know that he made the wrong decisions in reacting to the injuries he sustained in combat. “He was stabbed in the leg in a bar fight in Cambodia. There was a story that he’d written which said he was in a guard tower when a mortar detonated on the base of the tower and threw him out, causing head trauma which caused epilepsy. He said he was afflicted by Agent Orange. He used a cane for the rest of his life. He was the worst drunk I’ve ever seen. Blitzed beyond belief, talking about killing Gooks and going into epileptic fits.” The rocket attack took part of Raymond’s leg and part of his mind. After being discharged from the hospital, he spent months watching TV all night and purchased hundreds of swords and knives on the Home Shopping Network, letting them pile up on the floor of his living room. As his leg and mind grew stronger, he cleared away the clutter. In June 2008, nearly two years after his injuries, Raymond was medically retired from the Army. After many months of tests, he was granted 100 percent disability for the rest of his life. He was stunned and thrilled by the ruling. Expecting less than 50 percent, he had feared that he would be unable to provide for his family. In 2012, Social Security revoked his benefits after medical tests declared he could function adequately without a leg. JANESVILLE, WISCONSIN. USA. 2007

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Raymond asleep in the middle of the day after taking his painkillers. It had been a year and a half since the explosion, and Raymond was still largely debilitated.

Raymond with his black lab Dace at the American Kennel Club. Dace was donated to provide emotional companionship and to help Raymond walk as he adjusted to his prosthetic leg.

DARIEN, WISCONSIN. USA. 2007

NEW YORK, NEW YORK. USA. 2008

Raymond and his wife Sarah. Less than two years later, they separated and divorced. Raymond voting in the Republican congressional primary. DARIEN, WISCONSIN. USA. 2010

DARIEN, WISCONSIN. USA. 2007

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Families as they catch the first glimpse of their loved ones returning home from Iraq. These soldiers were among the last to come back from the war. A hired DJ blasted dance tracks through giant speakers. Some sat nervously while others laughed and danced. The 1st Cavalry dates back to the Civil War, and welcoming comrades were dressed in Civil War–era uniforms and mounted on horses. The DJ attempted a moment of levity by appropriating the chant, “Move That Bus” from a popular home makeover show as the bus pulled in with the troops. The soldiers started to march in formation toward the waiting crowd but everything quickly disintegrated into wild clutching, hugging and tears. Most of the homecomings were tender and joyful, while others seemed awkward and foreboding. A few soldiers had no one to greet them and quickly picked up their bags and left. FORT HOOD, TEXAS. USA. 2011

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A house in Federalsburg, Maryland, after the funeral of Manuel Ruiz, who was killed a few days earlier in a helicopter crash in Iraq. The funeral reception took place at the local Veterans of Foreign Wars club. Members from the small community clustered around the buffet table, chatting and drinking while a projector ran a looping slideshow of Ruiz’s childhood. Afterward the family posed for pictures. They grimaced as the photographer pleaded with them to smile. The youngest son grinned widely on command and then ran off to play with his friends. FEDERALSBURG, MARYLAND. USA. 2007

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Brian Cowdrey returns from a year-long tour in Afghanistan, flanked by his wife, Jill, and their three sons, Justin, Nathan and Jacob. It was his third deployment. Cowdrey, thirty-nine, was killed on his fourth tour on October 13, 2011, in Kunar Province, Afghanistan. His oldest son, Justin, had enlisted in the Army a few months before his father’s death. FAYETTEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA. USA. 2010

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A stranger playing a video game notices Raymond’s prosthesis and takes aim. Most Americans have become disconnected from the military since the abolishment of the draft. Less than 1 percent of Americans served in the Iraq and Afghan wars; 9 percent served during World War II. NEW YORK, NEW YORK. USA. 2007

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Raymond at dawn before a doctor’s appointment at Fort Knox. FORT KNOX, KENTUCKY. USA. 2008

Raymond at a medical appointment to determine the benefits he will receive for his injuries. FORT KNOX, KENTUCKY. USA. 2008

Outside Raymond’s room in the Mologne House, an outpatient ward at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Many of the wounded were amputees. The ward was furnished like a comfortable, mid-range motel near a highway exit. It had the latest flat screen TVs and Apple computers. Despite the amenities, every night the soldiers would gather outside in the breezeway to swap war stories and get drunk. Once I asked a soldier who looked uninjured what was wrong with him. He showed me the colostomy bag he’ll have for the rest of his life. He had been shot in the stomach. Along the meandering paths cutting through the vast complex, you could often find young soldiers in wheelchairs, sitting alone in the shadows. WASHINGTON, D.C. USA. 2007

An Afghan security guard in his quarters at the Ranch House in Nuristan. The Americans had created an Afghan unit to serve alongside them. They had several reasons. They were overstretched, they wanted an Afghan face on their presence in this remote and wary region, and they hoped to build a security force that could eventually replace them. Several months after this picture was taken, sixty to eighty insurgents launched an attack on the base using knowledge of its defenses allegedly provided by a disgruntled former security guard. In the brutal fight that ensued, the insurgents and Americans fought just feet from each other. Matthew Ferrara, the platoon commander, called in a gun run from a circling American plane. Thirteen insurgents were killed and the rest retreated. A few months later, the same American platoon was ambushed nearby and every soldier was killed or wounded. WAIGUL VALLEY, NURISTAN. AFGHANISTAN. 2007

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Times Square, an hour after the death of Osama bin Laden was announced by President Obama. Several hundred people, many of them drunk college students, congregated in Times Square and Ground Zero to celebrate his death. A father and son preened and swaggered in front of a large American flag hanging from a fence. A few mournful and solitary figures stood quietly on the edges of the revelers. NEW YORK, NEW YORK. USA. 2011

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With the last light of day fading, hundreds of flowers were placed on Seth Ricketts’s freshly dug grave. A car drove up with his in-laws and three-year-old son Aiden. Aiden posed like a ninja on the grave as his grandmother snapped pictures. CORINTH, MISSISSIPPI. USA. 2010

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An Iraqi civilian wounded in the head by an IED is treated at the scene by an American medic before being taken to the local hospital. It had been an unusually violent day mixing absurdity with danger. On one patrol a turret gunner scanning the streets shouted for the Stryker to stop. Several soldiers leapt out and began frisking a man dressed in a woman’s black abaya and wearing makeup. An agitated vendor shouted at the soldiers that the man lived in the neighborhood and always dressed like a woman. The soldiers released him and moved on. Minutes later there were gunshots. The soldiers followed the sound to a quiet street. On the ground lay the body of an Iraqi policeman in civilian clothing. He’d been executed in a drive-by shooting while returning from work. He’d almost gotten home. His family clutched at his body, wailing and ripping at their clothes, collapsing in despair at his side. The American soldiers began fanning out and kicking in doors to neighboring buildings. The terrified residents denied witnessing anything. The soldiers became increasingly angry. When they saw two teenagers smirking at them from down the street, they grabbed them and shoved them roughly against a wall. A sergeant pulled out his pistol and pressed it against one young man’s head while the platoon commander yelled threats. I hesitated to photograph the scene. I was angry at the brutal death of the policeman and had become sympathetic to the American soldiers I was living and patrolling with. By the time I raised my camera the moment had passed. MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006

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Partial transcript of conversation with Mom and Dad before my first trip to Iraq. December 2005 Me: I have a lot of interests, but this is one that’s been persistent and it’s come to the time that I can either do it or not and I’ve made the decision to do it. If that makes sense . . . but of course it doesn’t completely. Mom: Well, we can wrap it up. In terms of making sense, Peter, I understand what you’re saying and that it makes sense to you, but it’s just hard for Dad and me to accept. Dad: We can’t. The risk factor . . . I understand what drives you. I am concerned about the fact that in my view you have not sufficiently analyzed the element of obsession. Me: Not sufficiently analyzed? Of course, I’m obsessed. Dad: That causes me concern. The risk factor weighs higher in my mind and Mom’s mind than probably in your mind because there’s a difference in age here. Me: There’s a difference in age and a difference in perspective and in our lives. I don’t think there are a lot of people that have a commitment to the kinds of things I do. That makes risks like these seem acceptable to me. Dad: I think the big concern I have is that at some point you will grow out of it, which is just a question of age and family circumstances. What, of course, terrifies me is that you won’t have a chance to grow out of it.

Interview with Mom and Dad after showing them a draft of this book. August 2013 Dad: I remember some of what you talked about but mostly I remember how I felt. I remember us going to bed and lying there for a while. Eventually, Mom said, “I’m going to do the dishes.” We went downstairs in the middle of the night, did the dishes, and just sat in the kitchen. I remember thinking that there must be so many parents that sit in the kitchen after something happens to their son or daughter, which is what we were terribly afraid of. . . . Jenny was the one that understood and gave it her blessing. You wanted us to grace it and we had difficulty with that. Me: I have no regrets. I’m disturbed by how few regrets I have. It changed my life but it changed it for the better. Decisively for the better. Mom: You’re close to Patcha [note: my Grandpa served in the U.S. Army in World War II]. Patcha gained a lot from the war. It took him out of his home and put him in another environment where he was very successful. In many ways a highlight of his life . . . But it did damage to you internally. It was not without its consequences for you. Me: Well, it led to a six-year freeze on my emotional development in intimate relationships. Dad: I have had nights where I really thought I’ll have to fly over and bring you back in a body bag. I thought that many, many times. Or a leg blown off. Would you say what you say now? Or would you say this ruined your life? I view this as Russian roulette.

My mom’s reflection through the porch door on a rainy fall day. BETHESDA, MARYLAND. USA. 2009

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A soldier waking up after an unsuccessful search for an insurgent leader in a village in eastern Afghanistan. The patrol had left the base at dusk. As it neared the village, a dog started barking. His warning was quickly taken up by the other dogs of the valley, and soon the mountains echoed with their howls. The mountain trail was steep and slippery, and it took another thirty minutes until the patrol reached the village. A confused and frantic search turned up nothing. Exhausted, we climbed to the top of the mountain and slept for a few hours on the roof of a house. In the morning the young lieutenant called together a meeting of the village elders. He yelled at them for collaborating with the insurgents. They eyed him coolly and replied that they would strongly consider helping the Americans if they were able to provide security but that this was the first time they’d seen an American patrol in months. NANGALAM, KUNAR. AFGHANISTAN. 2007

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An American soldier stands guard at dawn atop a mud house overlooking a small village suspected of harboring an insurgent leader.

A joint Afghan-American patrol climbs the nearly vertical path back toward the Ranch House from the town of Aranas.

NANGALAM, KUNAR. AFGHANISTAN. 2007

WAIGUL VALLEY, NURISTAN. AFGHANISTAN. 2007

At dusk, two Afghan troops pray while a third mans a recoilless rifle.

An Afghan boy in a school in the Pech Valley. American forces have fought in the Pech for much of the war, and over one hundred soldiers have died there. In February 2011 American forces started withdrawing. An unnamed American official said, “What we figured out is that people in the Pech really aren’t anti-U.S. or anti-anything; they just want to be left alone. Our presence is what’s destabilizing the area.” Six months later, American troops started rebuilding their force in the valley.

PECH VALLEY, KUNAR. AFGHANISTAN. 2007

PECH VALLEY, KUNAR. AFGHANISTAN. 2007

A passing couple lit by a streetlamp. I was in Iran with my dad on a tour of ancient archaeological sites. It was the only way we could visit as visas are not ordinarily granted to American citizens. While traveling through Iran I’d often skip the guided events to wander the streets. Sometimes I was followed, but inevitably a young man would overcome his shyness and come up to me to practice his English, ask about America, and talk about his love of American TV. Favorites were Sex and the City and 24, a show about an American counterterrorist agent. 24 has received criticism for glorifying torture and negatively depicting Muslims. In November 2006 the dean of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point met producers of the show and asked them to stop depicting torture, fearing the huge popularity of the series in the American military was leading to copycat abuses. The show toned it down, but did not stop its depictions. SHIRAZ. IRAN. 2010

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Fleet Week, New York City. Children and adults clambered on tanks and helicopters whose weapon systems were stenciled with the names of wives, lovers and mothers. A long line of people waited in the heat for the chance to explore a Marine assault ship. A waitress who worked at a nearby bar walked down the line, flirting with every sailor and Marine and offering coupons for free drinks. An attentive audience watched proudly as Marines in starched uniforms demonstrated their weapons. The children giggled and squealed, made shooting noises and chased one another. NEW YORK, NEW YORK. USA. 2008

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Sergeant Jackson rested in the living room while his platoon searched the rest of the house for a suspected insurgent. They found nothing suspicious, and the commander assumed he had received bad intelligence. Most of the raids I witnessed were dry holes. Before leaving, the commanding officer would occasionally compensate for damage by pressing a wad of soiled dinars or dollars into wary hands. Usually the platoon would leave without an apology to continue searching for their target, or return to base before insurgents had the chance to organize and attack. RAWA. IRAQ. 2006

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Fahima, on her wedding night, flanked by her nieces. She is the bride of Dost Mohammed Khairy. This was Dost’s first time back in Afghanistan since 2001. In 1999 he was working for the United Nations and contracted Guillain-Barré Syndrome by drinking polluted river water. The disease left him in a wheelchair with limited function below his neck. The U.N. abandoned responsibility for him, despite the years he had spent working for them in some of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan. As a local hire without a contract, he had no recognized claim. His family sought treatment for him in Pakistan. Accompanied by his mother, he spent two years at a refugee camp in Peshawar, Pakistan. In 2003 some remaining friends at the U.N. helped him to get refugee status and move to the United States. He settled outside of Phoenix with his mother and was later joined by his younger brother, Farshad. They moved to a cramped housing complex, which housed many other refugee families from former conflict zones. Dost lived in his own room in the apartment while his mother and Farshad shared the second bedroom. The family were surviving on small Social Security payments while Dost learned English at a community college, wrote commentary on the Afghan conflict and chatted on Skype with other Afghan refugees. His mother and brother took care of the daily tasks: she cooked and cleaned, and Farshad bathed Dost in the mornings, brought him food and cigarettes, and lifted him in and out of his wheelchair. It took three years for Fahima to clear immigration proceedings and come to the United States. She and Dost have two children. MAZAR-E SHARIF. AFGHANISTAN. 2008

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Usually the stray dogs hanging around Patrol Base California were welcomed by the soldiers. But I was told that a few weeks earlier when one of the dogs urinated on a soldier’s cot he and his buddies taped a grenade to the dog’s jaw and pulled the pin. During the tour of the 1st Battalion, 32nd Regiment, 3rd Brigade of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division, California was attacked over eighty times. The patrol base was situated on a dirt road that skirted the winding and fast moving Pech River. It was small and crowded. The soldiers lived in sandbagged bunkers. Gas generators rattled in the trench line. The soldiers ate prepackaged food, MREs. There was no running water, showers or phones. When not on patrol, they passed the days playing cards and video games, and watching movies. A few times a week, trucks brought fresh food and every two weeks a squad would spend twenty-four hours at a larger base down the road, cleaning up and calling home. Three Humvees with heavy weapons were parked along the perimeter and constantly manned, scanning the ridgeline across the river. At dusk some soldiers would slip away to the Afghan bunkers to smoke hash. Two had already been caught, sent home and dismissed from the Army. PECH VALLEY, KUNAR. AFGHANISTAN. 2007

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Breakfast at FOB Delhi. The American megabases boasted elaborate cafeterias with dozens of food options, nightly specials, ice cream bars, a half-dozen types of pie and numerous drink choices, but at the front lines there were only pre-cooked rations that were chemically heated and served.

Sandfly bites.

GARMSIR, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

PECH VALLEY, KUNAR. AFGHANISTAN. 2007

An Afghan boy from a nearby village hangs out at Patrol Base California. A few locals would come regularly to the base to sell food to the soldiers and do odd jobs for some extra money. PECH VALLEY. AFGHANISTAN. 2007

An American soldier smokes hash with Afghan troops at California. As the deployment wound down, the platoon leadership rarely left their bunkers, and drug use became more casual. The men would duck into bunkers or behind the boulders that dotted the outpost to smoke joints and take whip-its from cans of antidust spray. PECH VALLEY, KUNAR. AFGHANISTAN. 2007

I was sleeping in a nearby Army base when the echo of an explosion from Mosul startled me awake. I walked over to the motor pool as a column of Stryker armored vehicles rolled in. A few men hurried past me, their faces tightly drawn. I joined the next patrol heading into town and was told there had been a suicide bombing. Nine people had been killed and twenty-three wounded in a crowded café during the breakfast hour. The Strykers stopped down the street from the blast site, and we walked to the gaping hole in the block of buildings. The soldiers had stopped by the Abu-Ali restaurant many times for sugary tea or a chat with the friendly owner. Now bits of flesh and scorched food, splinters of furniture and crockery choked the floor. The streets were empty except for a few curious bystanders. The patrol moved to the hospital to check on the victims. Ali, the owner, lay on one of the beds. Only his nose and lips were visible beneath the bandages, and they were caked in dried blood. He did not survive the day. MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006

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A teenager stopped for suspicious behavior in Rawa, a violent Sunni town in Anbar Province near the Syrian border. He had scowled at a passing Stryker column. One of the gunners yelled for the convoy to stop and leapt out of the hatch. He pointed his carbine at the boy’s head and screamed at him in English to lie on the ground. The Iraqi stood uncomprehending and shaking, his arms thrust high into the air. He was shoved into the dirt and searched. Nothing was found on him. The commander of the American unit wanted to investigate further and demanded to be taken to the young man’s house. It was also clear of contraband. RAWA. IRAQ. 2006

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A memorial service for Staff Sergeant Kevin Jessen, killed the previous day. He was twenty-eight and on his third tour. He had a wife, Carrie, and a two-year-old son, Cameron. At the ceremony, a scratchy recording of bagpipes played a mournful hymn. Later on, a civilian sat alone in a tent near the landing pad weeping softly. He was an Internet service technician there to do maintenance. Jessen had been assigned to pick him up on his arrival. They had a friendly talk at the chow hall that night. Less than twenty-four hours later, Jessen was killed when a bomb he was defusing exploded. The civilian’s job usually insulated him from the violence of the war. Jessen was the first soldier he’d personally known who had died. RAWA. IRAQ. 2006

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A gardener of a small health clinic. American Marines were visiting to check if medical supplies were needed. The Captain and a doctor had a conversation about okra. The Marine praised the Afghan way of preparing the vegetable in a stew with tomatoes and caramelized onions. He told the doctor that at home in South Carolina he just deep-fried it. GARMSIR, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

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General Stanley McChrystal, two months into his command of Coalition forces in Afghanistan. Several years after retiring from the military, he gave an interview to Foreign Affairs. He stated, “If you look at the role I had in Iraq, it is sexy, it is satisfying, it is manly, it scratches an itch in American culture that people like.” He went on to say, “But I was doing that as a part of a wider effort, and it was that wider effort that I took control of in Afghanistan. . . . The whole point of war is to take care of people, not just to kill them. You have to have a positive reason that protects people, or it’s wrong.” KABUL. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

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Bullet holes in a wall after a deadly raid. Alpha Company of 1-17, 172nd Stryker Brigade was on a joint all-night operation to search ten houses. I was down the street with the company commander when we heard a single burst from a machine gun. There was a pause and then the air was choked with gunfire. We ran toward the shooting. A soldier, wounded and shivering, was being carried into a Stryker. The house swirled with American and Iraqi troops. Men and boys in their pajamas were lined up squatting against the wall, their arms tied behind their backs. MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006

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Iraqis as a patrol passes.

Soldiers search the backyard of a suspected insurgent hideaway. Nothing was found.

MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006

BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2006

Many Iraqi soldiers covered their faces in masks as the insurgency intensified. They were afraid of being identified and their families targeted. “They look just like the terrorists,” one American soldier commented.

Women sob as soldiers arrest their family. It was my first raid in Iraq on my third day in the country. At the time, I felt almost no emotion. I was consumed by the novelty and the mania. We got back to the base as the sun was beginning to rise. I opened the door to my trailer and turned on the buzzing fluorescent lights. I was ashamed of my excitement, and tried to convince myself I wasn’t really feeling such joy to be at war. I went out on raids every few days for the next two months. By the end of my time there, that adrenaline had been taken over by sadness and unease and I would collapse on the bed and fall into dreamless sleep.

MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006

MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006

The woman had guided a line of soldiers through the night. When they arrived at her son’s door, she called out his name. In the silence, the lock clicked. The troops kicked in the door and detained the men inside. The mother screamed and pounded her breasts with her fists.

Sergeant Nick Sprovtsoff of Flint, Michigan, in his bunker at Patrol Base California. He was on his third tour and was there to train and advise a local platoon of the Afghan Army. It was a delicate negotiation. The Afghans were reluctant to go on patrols. They were largely in the Army for the money as it was one of the few paying jobs available. Sprovtsoff couldn’t force them to patrol, so he spent hours cleaning a large stockpile of weapons and doing pushups. At night he watched DVDs and told me about his previous tours in Iraq. His worst memory was from the second invasion of Fallujah in November 2004. Some members of his unit had advanced on foot while the rest waited in armored vehicles. At a pre-appointed time the soldiers swapped places, and Sprovtsoff went on foot while his best friend took a seat inside. A few minutes later a rocket-propelled grenade hit the vehicle and his friend was killed. In late September 2011, I received a Facebook post from a medic I knew in Afghanistan asking me to get in touch. I sensed immediately that Nick was dead. He was the only other guy living with us in our bunker. Nick had been on his fifth tour and left behind a daughter and a pregnant wife. We had emailed sporadically over the years. On getting married:

“It is actually the same girl we were talking about when we were together. We got engaged when I got back from that trip on a Friday, and the following Wednesday I got asked to go back to fill a spot for another Marine that got killed on the team that replaced us over there. So I said I would and they told me I would be leaving the following Wednesday, so we got married before I left on Monday. Then when I got back we had a big wedding in her hometown of Colville, Washington. So that’s that story.” On getting back from a deployment:

“Shit got pretty thick a couple times after you took off man, it’s probably better you weren’t there man. It was pretty serious, anyway we all made it home alive and that’s about all anybody can ask for. Take care.” On his new job:

“It’s a good deal though, at least I’ll have something to market to the world when I get out. Everybody gets out at some point.” Nick was killed September 28, 2011, in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, along with Christopher Diaz. He was twenty-eight years old. PECH VALLEY, KUNAR. AFGHANISTAN. 2007

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An American soldier inspects the corpse of an Iraqi killed in a firefight a few minutes before. The top half of his head was strewn in pieces on the wall and ground. His legs were locked in mid-stride. He had raised his hand to protect his face as he was shot. The corpse had the complexion and rigidity of a destroyed mannequin. It seemed impossible that he’d ever been alive at all. The soldiers searching the house found whatever reasons they could to pass by the room and stare at the body. One American soldier stood away from the others, looking downward and breathing heavily. He shook his head and murmured inaudibly. He’d been the one, another soldier whispered to me, who pulled the trigger. “Shot the Iraqi’s head to pieces.” MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006

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An Army officer and Iraq veteran with friends at Rockaway Beach just before dawn at the end of summer. QUEENS, NEW YORK. USA. 2011

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Women watch as the men of the family are led away by American and Iraqi troops. The raid had discovered a cache of weapons. MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006

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Rosie Ricketts wakes up her son Aiden before the viewing of her husband Seth, killed in Afghanistan the previous week. The temporary coffin carrying Seth Ricketts arrived at Dover Air Force Base on March 2. The bodies of dead soldiers are brought back to Dover and their families are often on hand to attend a brief ceremony as the flag-wrapped cases are removed from the plane and taken to the mortuary. The ban on media coverage of these transfers, in place during the Bush Administration, was lifted in February 2009 when Secretary of Defense Robert Gates ruled it was the families’ choice if the press should be allowed to photograph the return of their dead. In general, about half the families consent to coverage. GLEN, MISSISSIPPI. USA. 2010

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The body of Seth Ricketts arrives at Dover Air Force Base.

The viewing of Seth Ricketts.

DOVER, MARYLAND. USA. 2010

GLEN, MISSISSIPPI. USA. 2010

The funeral of Seth Ricketts. Most of Seth’s friends are now out of the military, having chosen to return to civilian life at the end of their enlistments. When his best friend Kevin Allen decided to leave and become a security guard at a luxury resort, Ricketts opted to stay in, saying, “What else could I do? I’m not going to bag groceries. I’m not going to wait on someone hand and foot.” Allen misses the soldier’s life, and doing a job for which he feels pride.

Seth Ricketts was buried near his hometown at the Corinth National Cemetery, a veterans cemetery started right after the Civil War with the unidentified dead of a nearby battle. After Seth’s coffin was lowered into the ground, a small crew of men shoveled dirt into the grave, pounding it down with a mechanical dirt-packer.

GLEN, MISSISSIPPI. USA. 2010

GLEN, MISSISSIPPI. USA. 2010

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Sergeant Jeff Reffner after being injured by an IED. BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2006

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Raymond Hubbard with his children, Brady and Riley. Since his injuries, Raymond has become an avid collector of Star Wars memorabilia. This is one of several family photos I took at Raymond’s request. DARIEN, WISCONSIN. USA. 2007

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A memorial next to the light rail station in Lafayette, California, marks the American dead from Iraq and Afghanistan. A cross represents each casualty. At the time this picture was taken in April of 2011, more than six thousand American soldiers had been killed in the wars. Vandals defaced it several times in its first weeks. On a website listing reader reviews of notable sights, one commenter laments seeing two young boys shooting a BB gun at bugs and small animals scurrying among the crosses. LAFAYETTE, CALIFORNIA. USA. 2011

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A young Marine at FOB Delhi. One of his friends asked if I wanted to see a picture he’d drawn. It was of an angry pig with a giant, engorged phallus, dressed like a Marine, holding a machine gun. A dream bubble coming out of the pig’s head showed a reclining naked female pig. GARMSIR, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

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A C-130 transport plane flying into Baghdad. Due to the threat of missiles and small arms fire, the procedure on arrival was to corkscrew rapidly in a steep dive. After several minutes of hard dips and turns the plane abruptly pulled up, dropped its wheels, and safely landed seconds later. ABOVE IRAQ. 2010

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A medic with the 10th Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad carries a wounded soldier from a helicopter. He had been badly burned when his vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device. He died of his injuries. Six months later I was with the medic drinking beer at an Applebee’s in Colorado Springs. He was tough and somewhat aloof in Iraq, but cried as he recalled his deployment. BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2006

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Private Baird was shot, his brachial artery severed. His placid, groggy features turned to panic as he realized he was unable to move the fingers of his right hand. Flight medic Michael Julio stroked his face and held his good hand while Baird looked at the unresponsive one with deep concentration. At last the fingers stirred slightly. ABOVE EASTERN AFGHANISTAN. 2007

This Afghan soldier was badly injured by an IED. He awoke during the medevac flight, disoriented and terrified. He pitched his head back and shrieked, “Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah,” pausing only to catch his breath. When Julio tried to push pain medication through the IV, the Afghan bit him in the arm and then leapt up and tried to wrench the helicopter door open at five thousand feet. The flight crew and I jumped on him. He writhed wildly as we each grabbed a limb and forced him back down to the bed of the helicopter. Julio put a knee on his chest and jabbed a sedative into him. He quieted. Julio didn’t expect the man to survive the operating table. ABOVE EASTERN AFGHANISTAN. 2007

Shopping at the PX in Bagram Air Force Base. It was often the only place to get the comforts of home. BAGRAM. AFGHANISTAN. 2007

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Raymond Hubbard at Ground Zero. It was his first visit to the site of the September 11 attacks. He went with a friend, Eric, an Iraq veteran with severe post-traumatic stress disorder. They were staying with me, and on the way back to my apartment, Eric yelled for me to pull over. Gasping for breath, he wrenched open the door and vomited. When he shut the door he wiped his mouth and stared vacantly out the window for the rest of the ride home. NEW YORK, NEW YORK. USA. 2009

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A few minutes earlier, Marines on patrol had noticed some suspicious activity. A motorcycle had driven by slowly, the driver staring at them intently. From a nearby ditch there was clearly someone watching their movements. As the troops walked down the road, an IED exploded and several men disappeared into the cloud, but no one was killed or badly hurt. The Marines gathered themselves and crossed a dry irrigation canal to another road. The commander ordered five men from the town to come to their position. Five village elders complied warily. The radio picked up chatter among the Taliban suggesting another bomb was hidden by the road. At gunpoint the commander questioned the men. To one old man he yelled, “That bomb went off because you didn’t stop them!” The man responded, pleadingly, “I don’t know anything, so how could I stop it?” The commander waved him off, “Alright, get away from here, alright.” After questioning the elders, the Americans forced them to form a human shield. The Afghans were told to fan out across the road and walk forward in tandem. The Marines followed cautiously behind. As reporter Dexter Filkins and I began documenting these actions, the Marine commander halted the patrol and decided to return to base. MIAN POSHTEH, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

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On April 7, 2007, three weeks after arriving in Iraq for his fourth tour, Bobby Henline’s Humvee was destroyed. Four other soldiers were killed and Bobby was burned over 38 percent of his body. He slipped into a coma. “I was on a giant iceberg at night. The stars were out. It was comfortable.” He recounts a vision he had while unconscious, “I heard voices telling me it was going to be ok. I thought I was in the judgment room and it was God telling me I was going to go back, that I had a mission, but it would be on his terms.” The early months in the hospital were a blur. He put nurses in headlocks. Over and over he sang, “How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.” As he was going through rehab with other badly injured soldiers he tried to keep everyone’s spirits up by telling jokes. His therapist kept nagging him to try stand-up comedy. He attempted some hastily crafted material at an open-mic night and although it was a flop, he loved it. He wanted to create a space where people could engage with him about his burns, so he kept telling jokes. “I had a good time in Iraq but that last tour was a real blast. It took me four tours to realize my lucky number is three.” “In about ten years I can go to my roast pre-cooked.” “On the fourth of July I always go to a fireworks stand. I run up real excited and ask them, ‘can you give me the same stuff as last year? It was great!’” “The skin on my scalp burned off so the doctors replaced it with my stomach. When I eat too much I get headaches.” Bobby started providing comic relief for other burn survivors, greeting new patients at the Brooks Army Medical Center in San Antonio and regularly visiting a twelve-year-old burned as a toddler who had undergone dozens of horribly painful skin graft surgeries. Adjusting to life at home was harder. Bobby has three kids and has been married for twenty years. The kids had become used to him being gone. “They’ve changed, you’ve changed. You don’t want to jump back in and make decisions . . . In the Army you get so used to being told what to do. You have to live with a different mindset there that you can’t live with here. You need to let it go, but it’s so hard to turn off. PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] takes you back to that place. When you get home the kids want to jump on you, climb on you, and you feel like, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.’” “You get used to getting stared at and looking at yourself in the mirror. It becomes you. But there are days I don’t want to be stared at. . . . Still, I feel sexy.” DALLAS, TEXAS. USA. 2013

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Sergeant Jeff Reffner, minutes after being wounded in an explosion. He had been on a convoy sweeping for IEDs when his commander ordered the driver to speed up. They were moving too fast to see the bomb on the road. When he recovered consciousness moments after the blast, Reffner tried to lift his leg and it just “folded in half.” He spent several years at Walter Reed Hospital and has had thirty-one surgeries on the leg. Although he is in good spirits and able to walk, doctors have told him that he may suffer from chronic pain for the rest of his life. He has no regrets, saying, “I’d rather me get hurt than one of my friends.” BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2006

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An Iraqi policeman is treated by American medics at a hospital in the Green Zone. Someone had written “ouchie” and drawn a frowning cartoon face on one of his bandages. The hospital staff often objectified Iraqi patients’ suffering. The worst casualties were given nicknames. One soldier melted by the fire caused by an IED blast was called “goo man.”

Sergeant Joshua Jump after being wounded by a roadside bomb. Several months later I received an email from him. He had found his picture online and wanted a copy. He wrote, “I didn’t really get the chance to see my injuries before they were pretty well healed and it’s kinda cool to see them now.” He said he was thankful that other people could now see “what is really going on in the world.” BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2006

BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2006

A child wounded in the abdomen by shrapnel from a car bomb. After surgery, several of the smitten medics posed for pictures with the semi-conscious girl. BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2006

Captain Kearns, a nurse in the 10th Combat Support Hospital, takes a moment for himself after the death of an American soldier in the Baghdad ER. BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2006

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Sergeant Brown in the final days of a fifteen-month deployment to Afghanistan. He was on his second tour. Earlier that day his platoon had patrolled to a nearby village of a few hundred people. A sizable crowd gathered when word spread that the soldiers were there to hand out medical supplies. The distribution had been poorly organized and the panicked troops flung packets of pills at the surging crowd. A group of triumphant children walked away and began eating the aspirin and vitamins. They ran into an interpreter and asked him why the candy tasted so bad. PECH VALLEY, KUNAR. AFGHANISTAN. 2007

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A feverish Iraqi policeman clutches an American medic at Ibn Sina Hospital in Baghdad’s Green Zone. He and a dozen other injured Iraqis had been hurriedly transferred from a military hospital in Balad because of a sudden influx of American casualties. There weren’t enough beds for everyone. The medical staff at Ibn Sina hadn’t been informed of the Iraqis’ arrival and there was brief chaos as every available set of hands was roused to help carry stretchers into the ER. The policeman’s skin was burning from fever, and the staff worried that he would suffer brain damage if it didn’t break. The attending American doctor muttered angrily that he never should have been transferred in his acute condition. The doctors often spoke of the marginal care afforded to Iraqis. After initial treatment by the American military they were usually transferred to the overburdened Iraqi medical system where the most severely injured often languished and died. BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2006

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ATLANTA, GEORGIA. USA. 2009

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More than 90 percent of this soldier’s body was burned when a roadside bomb hit his vehicle and ignited the fuel tank. His camouflage uniform dangled over the bed, torn open by the medics who had treated him on the helicopter. Clumps of his skin had peeled away. What was left was mottled and nearly translucent. He was in and out of consciousness, his eyes stabbing open for a few seconds. As he was lifted from the stretcher to the ER bed, he screamed, “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” then, “Put me to sleep, please put me to sleep.” There was another photographer in the ER and he leaned his camera over the heads of the medical staff to get an overhead shot. The soldier yelled, “Get that fucking camera out of my face!” Those were his last words. BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2006

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Army instructors plan a surprise nighttime raid on a unit training for a deployment to Iraq. FORT IRWIN, CALIFORNIA. USA. 2011

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Simone Ferrara before her brother Matthew’s funeral. Lieutenant Matthew Ferrera was killed by insurgents while commanding a platoon in the remote Waigul Valley on the Af-Pak border. The valley was a major transit point for insurgents, so a small outpost was set up by Lieutenant Erik Malmstrom with a platoon of thirty soldiers. In an effort to win hearts and minds he met regularly with tribal elders of Aranas. His unit built a school, installed a small hydroelectric dam that brought Aranas electricity for the first time, and began constructing a road to the nearest regional center. Early on in Malmstrom’s deployment an insurgent attack killed and wounded 20 percent of his men, but his development efforts eventually won the guarded approved of the village elders and the platoon served out the rest of its deployment in relative peace. Ferrara was his replacement, and the insurgents took advantage of the inexperienced newcomers. Disguised as Afghan security forces, they launched a major attack and breached the base. Ferrara was forced to call in an air strike on his own position. In the end, the attackers were driven off, but not before two Afghan soldiers were killed and eleven of Ferrara’s men were wounded. On November 9, 2007, Ferrara was on his last patrol before being reassigned to battalion headquarters. He and his platoon were ambushed by a large number of insurgents. Ferrara was shot in the head and killed along with five other Americans and three Afghans. He was twentyfour years old. Following the ambush, the Waigul Valley returned to insurgent control. In June 2008, the Americans made one more attempt to reestablish a military presence. Nine Americans were killed when their unfinished outpost was attacked from the nearby town of Wanat. Ferrara’s funeral was held in Torrance, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. Hundreds attended. His sister Simone said it felt like someone else’s funeral. His parents, Mario and Linda, kept their composure behind sunglasses. His three brothers wept openly. The eldest, Marcus, a major in the Army, had previously served in Iraq. His younger brothers Andrew and Damon later deployed to the same region where Matt was killed. After the funeral Marcus spent a long moment looking at his brother’s face, partly reconstructed by postmortem surgery. When he raised his gaze from his brother’s body for the last time, his face crumpled into a choking sob. When the service was done, Ferrara’s body was cremated and the family returned to their home to celebrate his life. A bonfire was built in the backyard and his friends and family sat into the late hours of the night, drinking beer, smoking cigars and telling stories about Matt’s life. Nearly all of his friends were already combat veterans. At the end of the night everyone was a little drunk and laughing over stories from high school or college. The party broke up near dawn, and as the last guests left the house, the Ferraras stood at the door to hug and kiss everyone goodbye. TORRANCE, CALIFORNIA. USA. 2007

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Lieutenant Erik Malmstrom, left, and Lieutenant Matthew Ferrara meet with the elders of Aranas. Malmstrom was on the final days of his deployment. Ferrara had arrived the previous day to replace him.

Lieutenant Matthew Ferrara on his first patrol. WAIGUL VALLEY, NURISTAN. AFGHANISTAN. 2007

WAIGUL VALLEY, NURISTAN. AFGHANISTAN. 2007

Matt’s childhood room.

Matt’s father, Mario, two years after the death of his son.

TORRANCE, CALIFORNIA. USA. 2009

TORRANCE, CALIFORNIA. USA. 2009

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The view from the bedroom where I grew up. The shelves are still cluttered with model airplanes and toy soldiers from when I was a kid. BETHESDA, MARYLAND. USA. 2006

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Place setting for a fallen soldier in the cafeteria of Forward Operating Base Falcon. The rose represents the love of the family. The red ribbon around the vase symbolizes memory and the continued search for those missing in action. The lemon on the plate signifies the bitterness of loss. The salt represents tears. BAGHDAD. IRAQ. 2010

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Private First Class Raymond Henry, twenty-one, of Anaheim, California, watches a group of schoolboys playing basketball while his commander meets with their principal. The night before, an American patrol had been hit by a grenade thrown from one of the school windows. Only a few weeks later, Henry was killed by an IED. He had joined the Army hoping it would increase his chances of being accepted into the fire department. He had been a standout basketball player in high school and had taught kids in a summer league. MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006

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The aftermath of a violent raid. An American soldier had been wounded, an insurgent killed. This boy, temporarily deranged by the sudden violence, leapt at an American soldier. His face was smashed by a rifle butt, his hands were tied, and he was forced to kneel against the wall. As the house was searched his eyes locked forward, his expression frozen in place. In the next room a woman and two young boys were curled together, trembling. When I caught them in the glare of my headlamp, they shrieked and moaned. An Iraqi interpreter went in to question one of the boys. He whispered back, and the soldiers started digging in the garden. No weapons were found but bomb-making instructions were discovered in the house. MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006

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A detained Iraqi. MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006

Each male family member of a suspected insurgent was interrogated after a midnight raid. They were separated and individually brought into a dark, windowless room. A high-powered flashlight was directed at their eyes as they were questioned about the whereabouts of a brother. They said they hadn’t seen him in months, that maybe he was in Baghdad or Jordan or Syria. Intelligence had indicated there would be a torture chamber in the basement, but a search turned up only dank and broken furniture. The family was deferential, apologetic and conciliatory. The informant stood outside the house, scrawny and hunched in an ill-fitting flak jacket. He wore a carefully wrapped scarf and sunglasses to conceal his identity. Despite the failed search, he claimed to have seen the suspect at the house that morning. To induce the suspect to turn himself in, the commander detained one of his brothers. MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006

An American medic treats a civilian wounded by the explosion of a roadside bomb that had just missed our patrol. The man had been driving with his wife and brother in an old hatchback. The commander ordered our patrol to stop. The medic jumped out of the Stryker and ran to the ruined car, followed by several soldiers. They found the driver slumped over the steering wheel, bleeding from multiple wounds. The other passengers were untouched. Private Johnson laid the patient on the ground and bandaged him up. The other soldiers pointed their rifles in his direction, lighting the scene with high-powered flashlights attached to the muzzles. During the short ride to the hospital, he muttered prayers and stared at his bloodied hand. MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006

In the glare of a rifle mounted flash light, a woman huddles with her children. Soldiers search the house. A few streets away an innocent civilian was killed in a simultaneous raid. He had startled some soldiers keeping watch on his roof. MOSUL. IRAQ. 2006

Marines at FOB Delhi searching along a gravel helicopter pad. They are looking for any metal objects that could be swept up by the rotor blades and damage or disable them. GARMSIR, HELMAND. AFGHANISTAN. 2009

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The wary inhabitants of this isolated village in Nineveh had never seen an American patrol, and asked what country they were from. They had heard of America, and served sugary tea to the soldiers but otherwise kept their distance. The troops took turns riding the donkey and posed for pictures holding lambs. In the Bible, Nineveh is described as a wicked city. God sent the prophet Jonah to preach there, and its inhabitants repented. God decided to spare the city. NINEVEH. IRAQ. 2006

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Patrol Base California during a sandstorm. A platoon of Americans, and an equal number of Afghans were stationed here. The two lived separately, the Americans in bunkers, the Afghans in a sandbagged plywood hut. The relationship was tense. The Americans usually ignored the Afghans, frustrated by their reluctance to patrol the surrounding areas. Many of the American soldiers were on their second or third tour since 2001 and they wanted the Afghans to take more responsibility for military operations. However, the Afghans were poorly equipped, with antiquated helmets and body armor and few radios, armored vehicles, night-vision goggles or medical supplies. Since the Americans were well outfitted, the Afghan commander felt that they should bear the burden of risk. During my embed there was only one instance when the Afghans patrolled without significant American support. Accompanied by their Marine advisor Nick Sprovtsoff, they walked several kilometers down the Pech Valley Road before turning around. Sprovtsoff was exasperated but relieved. Before the patrol he had taught me to use his radio to call for support in case he was shot. PECH VALLEY, KUNAR. AFGHANISTAN. 2007

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Robert Chamberlain in bed at dawn. Later that day, he was promoted to Major. He is a veteran of two tours to Iraq and a Rhodes scholar. Like many soldiers he has struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder. He talks of trauma:

“For me, being traumatized, because I came back to a robust support system, turned out to be a good thing, or at least a growing thing. At the same time it feels extremely weird to talk about a horrible tragic world event as a personal growth opportunity. Four million people have been displaced. Hundreds of thousands have died . . .” “I feel like we’re at a stage where we’ve de-stigmatized psychiatric help to an extent that it’s ok if you go, there will be no judgment. I’ve always said that to my men and have always felt it. At the same time it was such a huge emotional hurdle to get over. I felt ashamed.” And his American identity:

“America has always been . . . a land of crazy tensions and contradictions. We were the first real experiment in Western and representative democracy, only horribly imperfect. We kept slaves and expanded franchise and human freedom at the same time we ethnically cleansed the American West. We talked about expanding democracy abroad at the same time we engaged in gunboat diplomacy and aggressively supported dictators and autocrats throughout the world. I don’t believe that one is a cynical manipulation of the other. . . . I deeply believe that most people you meet on an individual level have an innate sense of fairness and justice. America at its best is when people have harnessed that sense. There are so many people that work hard to achieve social justice in America and don’t get sent to prison and aren’t subject to assassination campaigns, and aren’t intimidated by their local militia. That’s worth defending; the space for humanity to achieve its best. That’s what America’s about to me.” BROOKLYN, NEW YORK. USA. 2011

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Section 60, burial site of the American dead from Iraq and Afghanistan. On Memorial Day and Veterans Day, relatives and friends of the fallen visit the cemetery together. On a balmy Veterans Day in 2007, a few families remained as dusk fell. They lit candles and chatted softly. In front of one grave, a woman had collapsed. The others went to comfort her, but she shook them off. She stayed until the last of the light faded, leaving behind a pile of crushed, clenched flowers. ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA. USA. 2008

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Bobby Henline didn’t realize how badly he was injured until he returned home. When that sank in, he prayed for God to take him in his sleep. He didn’t want to be a burden on his family. HOUSTON, TEXAS. USA. 2013

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Bobby feels for the light switch before going to bed. His damaged left eyelid can’t fully close, so he applies an ointment over his eye to protect the retina while he sleeps. Bobby in his backyard.

HOUSTON, TEXAS. USA. 2013

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS. USA. 2013

Bobby talks with Chastity McCandless. Her brother Rodney was killed in the Humvee explosion that also injured him. Rodney died at the age of twenty-one. Bobby tried to track down Rodney’s family for years, eventually succeeding through Facebook. When she first saw Bobby, Chastity embraced him and wept, chanting, “You’re family now, you’re family.” She wanted to know everything about the days her brother and Bobby had spent together. She told him that her life had dipped toward drugs and alcohol since her brother’s death.

Bobby dances after a dinner in his honor. For a long time Chastity wouldn’t accept what had happened, and believed that Rodney had joined the Special Forces and gone undercover. Rodney’s funeral was closed casket because of his horrific injuries, but that only confirmed her suspicions. The meeting with Bobby helped her accept that her brother was truly gone but was watching over her somewhere. At the end of the visit they posed for a photo together in front of a Mexican restaurant. As the shutter clicked a fuel truck pulled up. “That’s Rodney,” whispered her friend. Chastity gasped. Rodney drove fuel trucks in the Army, and she took it as a sign of his lingering spirit.

EL CAMPO, TEXAS. USA. 2013

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK. USA. 2013

On a flight from Kabul to Mazar-E Sharif. ABOVE AFGHANISTAN. 2007

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I have a lot of memories that don’t have a photograph. Walking into the dining hall after a deadly patrol in which a suicide bomber hit a Stryker and finding a Filipino contractor dressed in drag singing Britney Spears karaoke on stage. On patrol through a Muslim cemetery in Mosul, the chaplain stopping to piss, zipping up and calling it a holy piss. The recovering wounded at Stetson’s Bar in a brutal drunken fight over which branch of the service is better, the Army or the Marines. A soldier gets hit in the head by shrapnel. When it’s opened for surgery they find a terminal brain tumor. One fall night at Walter Reed, he yells, “Watch this!” and clamps a bottle of whiskey between his lips and collapses backwards and lets most of the bottle just empty down his throat before we get it together and pull it away. I was on a routine patrol on the streets of Mosul when the point man shouted “that fucking midget looks just like George W. Bush!” The soldiers gawked at the man as they passed. He returned a steely, resigned gaze while bystanders chuckled. Hearing Third Eye Blind being piped through tinny speakers in the operating room as a surgeon stands frozen over the bloody burned body of a dying Iraqi soldier but thinking only of driving around aimlessly in high school. The half-built set of Star Wars Lego that Major Hill keeps in his room that he means to send to his son as a birthday gift. Arriving at Smith and 9th Street and seeing a man in Marine fatigues passed out in the cold. Pat looks like hate and tells me to fuck off and fuck myself but then he talks and talks. He’s a Marine sniper about to go on his third tour. Playing darts at a bar near Walter Reed with Raymond and Mike. Getting steadily drunker but having a good time. We finish a game and Mike asks us if we know he had killed a kid in Iraq. She was walking toward his patrol with a grenade in her hand and he was ordered to shoot her. Her parents had found the grenade and wanted to turn it over to the soldiers and thought that a child was the safest way. A few months later a bomb hits his Humvee and destroys his arm. Me, caught somewhere between the war and home and not quite realizing it. Watching videos of the Baghdad ER just before dawn, unable to look at my pictures of the same place. The principal of a girls’ school in Mosul accuses a patrol of soldiers of molesting her students at a checkpoint. When the captain challenges her account, she says she will sweep the whole thing under the carpet for $40,000. Dreaming of unseen terrors in a tent in Rawa. Again and again I keep waking up into the same shadowy nightmare. I went to Reffner’s Purple Heart ceremony in Altoona. As I arrive at the Ramada, a Vietnam vet in a wheelchair is getting thrown out. He couldn’t pay his bill. Faces marked by thoughts and deeds, others untouched by the same.

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I was sleeping in my dorm in New Haven when the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center. My roommate came in and shook me awake. I followed him into the living room and saw our friend Emily curled into a ball, her eyes peeking through her hands. I turned to face the TV and moments later the second plane hit. After a few hours of confusing coverage I went for a walk. Some people seemed distraught but most went about their day, shopping for groceries and heading to class. Several weeks after 9/11, I visited New York on assignment for my college newspaper. Ground Zero was closed off and a faint dust lingered in the air. The blocks around the site of the attack were filled with rapidly disintegrating posters of the missing. Someone had erected a plywood stand and left pens and sticky notes for passers-by to write their thoughts on the attacks. NEW YORK, NEW YORK. USA. 2001

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Dedicated with the greatest love to my parents, Emily and Antoine, and sister, Jenny, for their unconditional support despite their deepest fears. For my grandfather Patcha, who taught me about people. In memory of Manya and Marie-Louise van Agtmael who ensured that no decision was taken lightly. Yo Cuomo, Bonnie Briant and Kristi Norgaard for their design brilliance and seemingly endless patience. Kira Pollack for being so incredibly supportive over the years. This work wouldn’t have been possible without her. Gaia Squarci for teaching me about love. Christian Hansen for being family; Dumeetha Luthra for putting things in perspective and giving me endless help in editing the text; Ellen and Vimal Vora for always being there; Chiho and Christoph Bangert for helping me figure things out; Erik Malmstrom and Sarah Stillman for the conversations to make sense of it all; Axel Gerdau for sending me off and welcoming me back; Mobalaji Dawodu for the late nights; Robert Chamberlain for his wisdom; Alan Chin for his endless reservoir of knowledge; Philipp Ebeling and Olivia Arthur for being big brother and sister; Michael Christopher Brown and Curran Hatleberg for the endless editing sessions; Raymond Hubbard for his friendship and collaboration; Kathy Ryan and Stacey Baker for their insight and support; Paul Moakley for his friendship and kindness; with appreciation and respect for my friends and colleagues in the field and at home—Moises Saman, Mike Kamber, Franco Pagetti, Jehad Nga, Ashley Gilbertson, Joao Silva, Ben Lowy, Alvaro Ybarra Zavala, Adam Ferguson, Jared Moossy, David Finkel and Dexter Filkins; Sander Colson for his honesty; Joel Resnicow for wisdom during trying times; Aunt Jane; Cousin Ross; Jacob Taylor, Jon Melmed and Matt Robinson for many years of friendship; Jason Eskenazi and Mark Ovaska for pow-wows on Beard Street; The Hansen Family; Phil Bicker for caring; JP Pappis for giving me a chance; Jamie Wellford for having confidence in me before I had any of my own; Aneil Shirke for help when it was needed most.

Peter van Agtmael is a member of Magnum Photos. He graduated from Yale University in 2003 with honors in history. He has been awarded the W. Eugene Smith Grant, the ICP Infinity Award, and the Lumix FreeLens Award, as well as honors and awards from World Press Photo, American Photography Annual, the Pulitzer Center, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Photo District News, Foam Magazine and Photolucida. He was born in Washington, D.C., in 1981. www.magnumphotos.com www.petervanagtmael.net

Thanks to Matt Baldwin, Marc Silverman, Vivek Garg, Ben Schrader, Eve Gutman, Jason Walcutt, Will Kendall, Chesa Boudin, Amy Sharpe, Dan Stein, Jenny Wickens, Ryan Bingham, Kitra Cahana, Ben Ehrenreich, Todd Heisler, Justin Maxon, Richard Mosse, Pete Muller, Jon Schlesinger, Shaul Schwarz, Sarah Medway, Dan and Victoria Pollock, Mario and Linda Ferrara and Donna Thornton. Bobby Henline and Michael Julio. I’m very grateful for the support from Whitney Johnson, Elissa Curtis, David Carthas, Joanna Milter, Clinton Cargill and Patrick Witty. The photographers and staff at Magnum Photos. I’m especially grateful for advice and support from Alex Majoli, Christopher Anderson, Larry Towell, Paolo Pellegrin, Martin Parr, Thomas Dworzak, Paul Fusco, Jonas Bendiksen, Alec Soth, Bruce Gilden, Jim Goldberg, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Mikhael Subotzky, David Alan Harvey, Donovan Wylie, Jacob Sobol, Susan Meiselas, Richard Kalvar, David Hurn, Gilles Peress and Chien-Chi Chang. Many other photographers and others in the industry were very generous to me when I was starting out. James Nachtwey, Ron Haviv, Gary Knight, Jay Clendenin, David Burnett, Jon Jones, Betsy Karel and llkka Uimonen. In memory of Auntie E., Anthony Shadid, Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington.

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Disco Night Sept 11 © 2014 Peter Van Agtmael

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner in any media, or transmitted by any means whatsoever, electronic or mechanical (including photocopy, film or video recording, Internet posting, or any other information storage and retrieval system), without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Cover: A sign outside Arbor Ridge Catering and Banquet Hall advertising a 1970s-style Disco Night. An ad for the event promised: Dress your retro best and boogie on down! Break out your bell-bottoms and polish your platforms! There will be prizes for Best Dressed and Best Dancer. HOPEWELL JUNCTION, NEW YORK. USA. 2010

Pages 20–21, 38–39, 56–57, 106–7, 128–29, 150–51, 196–97, 212–13, 224–25, 240–41: The graffiti photos were taken at Ali Al Salem Air Force Base in Kuwait. The base was the main transit point for soldiers entering and leaving Iraq. There were dozens of trailers with bathroom and shower facilities skirting the edge of the complex. The walls of the bathroom stalls were covered in graffiti. ALI AL SALEM. KUWAIT. 2006

Pages 84–85: One of dozens of sheets of construction paper with writings by an Iraq war amputee who had a psychotic break. He had stopped taking painkillers and antidepressants in an attempt to kick his addiction. NEW YORK, NEW YORK. USA. 2008

Published in the United States by Red Hook Editions www.redhookeditions.com

First edition, 2014 ISBN 978-0-9841954-2-8 Book design by Yolanda Cuomo Design, NYC Associate Designer: Bonnie Briant Proofreader: Susan Ciccotti Packaged by Paper Cinema, LLC PAPER CINEMA

Printed and bound by Graphicom in Italy