Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
March 16, 2008 By Alissa J. Rubin
BAGHDAD--IT was a rainy evening when we boarded the C-130 Hercules, a military transport plane with four long rows of canvas seats that run fore to aft. Your knees touch the knees of the soldier sitting across from you. There are no backs to the seats; you lean against netting, and as the aircraft vibrates everyone sways, pitching forward and back, as if aboard ship.
The airmen who supervise the waves of soldiers moving from base to base strap the soldiers’ backpacks and trunks, and any civilian suitcases, to wooden pallets at the back of the plane. They are the only items on the aircraft that don’t move.
Except on my plane there was one other: a coffin draped in a pristine American flag. A soldier going home. It was a riveting sight. The flag so perfectly clean in this country of dust. The stripes of white, pure as farmer’s cream; the blue, a brilliant navy; and the red, true and strong. Strapped at its base, like the luggage, the coffin moved not an inch the entire flight.
We each stared at it as we took our places. But as soon as the soldiers settled in their seats, they looked anywhere else. Some looked intently at their boots; others stared into the middle distance above it, fixing their gaze on the plane’s metal sides. Others retreated, closing their eyes.
In their half dreams — for the rocking of the plane does lead one to doze — did they go home to some peaceful place, a farm in Iowa, a suburb on the Pacific? Or were they remembering some sandy palm grove or cramped Iraqi street, loud with gunfire, where they just missed joining the man traveling with us? Did they wonder why they had stayed on desolate military bases where drudgery, not heroism, was the daily bread?
It is hard to look at a coffin and not think about your own close calls or about friends you lost. I thought about a fellow reporter, Mark Fineman, who died next to me at a checkpoint in Baghdad in September 2003. He did not die in combat, but could he have been saved had he been back home in Washington?
We were standing at an entry point to the Green Zone, waiting for an escort to take us in. He was 51, just eight years older than I was, but far more experienced as a foreign correspondent. He had been abroad for more than 20 years.
Mark was tall, thin, with a graying ponytail; you would have thought him a misplaced California hippie until he started to talk. Then his questions rattled out, trenchant and informed. He interviewed with his whole body, leaning forward; he wrote intensely, drilling his pencil into the paper.
He said he didn’t feel well and sat on a chair. Moments later he pitched forward, hitting his head. He was too heavy for me to turn over by myself. Somebody helped; another person tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Somehow we got him to the American military hospital, but he had suffered a massive heart attack; it was too late.
I should have done something different. I had never been unable to help someone who needed help.
I wondered if his body had traveled in a coffin like this, wrapped in a perfect American flag. Perhaps those were only for servicemen. Mark’s body was taken to Dover, Del., where the military receives its dead. As a journalist, would he have felt awkward receiving the same treatment as a slain soldier?
Does it matter where you die when you are far from those you love? If your family is there, or if you are lying in the room you lived in for years or holding some talisman of it— a favorite pillow, a photograph, a shell you collected as a child, at least you feel close to home. Mark and this man both died with no chance to say “goodbye” or “I love you.”
Before we took off, one of the airmen shouted at the soldiers and me: “No pictures. One flash and you’re off this plane. And do not, I repeat, do not touch this,” pointing at the coffin. “Do not put your boots on this, do not put your packs on this, do not ....” He left the sentence unfinished.
Then came the din of flying — a mix of engine roar, wind, mechanical sounds. We pushed our earplugs deeper in. As if in a dream, I was surrounded by people, but no one could hear me. I watched the coffin, appointed myself its guardian, prepared to glare from underneath my helmet if a soldier stretched out his leg and took the risk of brushing it. But no one even came close.
Then we were landing. Not at any destination on the screen at Baghdad, where we had boarded. This stop was for the coffin. The stern airman admonished us: “Get off from the front. Single file. Line up. I want four rows. We are presenting arms. You will come to attention and salute.”
It was dark and there was a chill, damp wind. It had been raining. The soldiers jogged off the plane effortlessly despite the heavy gear. We formed four lines behind the plane, just beyond the circle of light cast by the bird’s open back gate.
Six servicemen hoisted the coffin onto their shoulders, solemnly carrying it off the C-130 and loading it onto a waiting truck. Standing in the dark, uncertain of where we were, it seemed time had stopped. We stood at attention and saluted. All of us who had never known this man were, at that moment, thinking about him.
I raised my left hand to my forehead, saw the soldier in front of me salute with his right, and wondered if I, as a reporter, should be saluting at all. I brought my hand down and before I could raise my other hand, the salute was over.
I was told later by a soldier on the plane that he was 20 years old, a specialist stationed in Baghdad. He had been driving to a memorial for three members of his company when his Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb.
What were his parents thinking, his sister or brother, his fiancée — if he had one? I hoped he had died quickly. I wondered what exactly he had died for. And although I did not know him, I felt melancholy as we flew onward, accompanied now by ghosts and memories of loss.
March 16, 2008 By Alissa J. Rubin
BAGHDAD--IT was a rainy evening when we boarded the C-130 Hercules, a military transport plane with four long rows of canvas seats that run fore to aft. Your knees touch the knees of the soldier sitting across from you. There are no backs to the seats; you lean against netting, and as the aircraft vibrates everyone sways, pitching forward and back, as if aboard ship.
The airmen who supervise the waves of soldiers moving from base to base strap the soldiers’ backpacks and trunks, and any civilian suitcases, to wooden pallets at the back of the plane. They are the only items on the aircraft that don’t move.
Except on my plane there was one other: a coffin draped in a pristine American flag. A soldier going home. It was a riveting sight. The flag so perfectly clean in this country of dust. The stripes of white, pure as farmer’s cream; the blue, a brilliant navy; and the red, true and strong. Strapped at its base, like the luggage, the coffin moved not an inch the entire flight.
We each stared at it as we took our places. But as soon as the soldiers settled in their seats, they looked anywhere else. Some looked intently at their boots; others stared into the middle distance above it, fixing their gaze on the plane’s metal sides. Others retreated, closing their eyes.
In their half dreams — for the rocking of the plane does lead one to doze — did they go home to some peaceful place, a farm in Iowa, a suburb on the Pacific? Or were they remembering some sandy palm grove or cramped Iraqi street, loud with gunfire, where they just missed joining the man traveling with us? Did they wonder why they had stayed on desolate military bases where drudgery, not heroism, was the daily bread?
It is hard to look at a coffin and not think about your own close calls or about friends you lost. I thought about a fellow reporter, Mark Fineman, who died next to me at a checkpoint in Baghdad in September 2003. He did not die in combat, but could he have been saved had he been back home in Washington?
We were standing at an entry point to the Green Zone, waiting for an escort to take us in. He was 51, just eight years older than I was, but far more experienced as a foreign correspondent. He had been abroad for more than 20 years.
Mark was tall, thin, with a graying ponytail; you would have thought him a misplaced California hippie until he started to talk. Then his questions rattled out, trenchant and informed. He interviewed with his whole body, leaning forward; he wrote intensely, drilling his pencil into the paper.
He said he didn’t feel well and sat on a chair. Moments later he pitched forward, hitting his head. He was too heavy for me to turn over by myself. Somebody helped; another person tried mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Somehow we got him to the American military hospital, but he had suffered a massive heart attack; it was too late.
I should have done something different. I had never been unable to help someone who needed help.
I wondered if his body had traveled in a coffin like this, wrapped in a perfect American flag. Perhaps those were only for servicemen. Mark’s body was taken to Dover, Del., where the military receives its dead. As a journalist, would he have felt awkward receiving the same treatment as a slain soldier?
Does it matter where you die when you are far from those you love? If your family is there, or if you are lying in the room you lived in for years or holding some talisman of it— a favorite pillow, a photograph, a shell you collected as a child, at least you feel close to home. Mark and this man both died with no chance to say “goodbye” or “I love you.”
Before we took off, one of the airmen shouted at the soldiers and me: “No pictures. One flash and you’re off this plane. And do not, I repeat, do not touch this,” pointing at the coffin. “Do not put your boots on this, do not put your packs on this, do not ....” He left the sentence unfinished.
Then came the din of flying — a mix of engine roar, wind, mechanical sounds. We pushed our earplugs deeper in. As if in a dream, I was surrounded by people, but no one could hear me. I watched the coffin, appointed myself its guardian, prepared to glare from underneath my helmet if a soldier stretched out his leg and took the risk of brushing it. But no one even came close.
Then we were landing. Not at any destination on the screen at Baghdad, where we had boarded. This stop was for the coffin. The stern airman admonished us: “Get off from the front. Single file. Line up. I want four rows. We are presenting arms. You will come to attention and salute.”
It was dark and there was a chill, damp wind. It had been raining. The soldiers jogged off the plane effortlessly despite the heavy gear. We formed four lines behind the plane, just beyond the circle of light cast by the bird’s open back gate.
Six servicemen hoisted the coffin onto their shoulders, solemnly carrying it off the C-130 and loading it onto a waiting truck. Standing in the dark, uncertain of where we were, it seemed time had stopped. We stood at attention and saluted. All of us who had never known this man were, at that moment, thinking about him.
I raised my left hand to my forehead, saw the soldier in front of me salute with his right, and wondered if I, as a reporter, should be saluting at all. I brought my hand down and before I could raise my other hand, the salute was over.
I was told later by a soldier on the plane that he was 20 years old, a specialist stationed in Baghdad. He had been driving to a memorial for three members of his company when his Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb.
What were his parents thinking, his sister or brother, his fiancée — if he had one? I hoped he had died quickly. I wondered what exactly he had died for. And although I did not know him, I felt melancholy as we flew onward, accompanied now by ghosts and memories of loss.