Snowbird Greetings!

Holiday Greetings from the land of yankees! OK, not really, folks here in SE Ohio are not much different from my home of South Carolina, though I'd have a hard time convincing my hometown friends of that. To them, everyone North of Charlotte are "damn yankees." Just to illustrate, I was recently looking for a recycling center to get rid of all these moving boxes and the first three replies I got from the patrons of the local country stores were, "We just use a burn barrel 'round here." Ah, refreshing...feels like home already.
My last days at Army Times were both rewarding and stressful. I made a trip to Germany to tell the story of members of Charlie, 1-26 INF returning from a particularly devastating 15 months in Baghdad. I'd spent some time with the unit back in Feb. and it was good reunite with them. The unit lost more men in Iraq than any other Army unit since Vietnam, and I felt it was important to document their experience. Luckily, Army Times felt the same way and committed more resources to telling it than any other project I've worked on with them. I think Kelly Kennedy got their stories right in print and I shot video interviews and portraits that were put together in a final four part series on the web and in the paper by the combined efforts of an extremely talented staff at AT. Editing many hours of their interview footage took more of an emotional toll than I could have imagined. This Christmas, I would encourage you all to read and watch their stories here at Blood Brothers. It's important to remember what our soldiers are experiencing as we think about all of our own blessings.
Working on this project right up until the moment I took my leave from Army Times kept me from thinking about everything and everyone I was leaving behind. But, in my final days there, I experienced an outpouring of care and support that I didn't feel I deserved after just three brief years. At final happy hours and goodbye dinners, I got the chance to replay all the stories and adventures that I'd experienced with the staff. From the tsunami, to hurricanes, to the border to combat. From the mundane to the life and death experiences, I realized just what these people had meant to me, my growth and to my own story. I'll forever be appreciative to them for accepting, teaching, pushing and supporting me and most of all, truly caring for me. I both honored and humbled to count them as friends. The newspaper industry has their own equivalent of a "roast" and send off staffers with a newspaper cover in their honor. Here's mine that will always hold a place of honor above my desk.
Tami and I are now in Vincent, OH starting all over again. In the last few weeks I've been reminded of all the responsibilities of home ownership. (Tami constantly reminds me.) I've gotten my basement home office organized, taken on a myriad of handy man tasks that I just wasn't born to do, and shoveled snow for the first time! Since it's holiday time, Tami's spending most of her time at JCPenney's where she was honored with Manager of the Month in November but she still managed a moment to walk the kids in our first snow.
As always this time of year, I'm realizing just how important all my friends are and, once again, am resolving to reconnect with you all in the new year. Until then, Tami and I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a new year filled with great hope and cheer.
Note: All my contact info has changed. Please update your books and drop me a line so I don't get too lonely in my little basement.
James J. Lee
45 Simmons Cove
Vincent, OH 45784
H: 740-445-5004
C: 740-517-5225
jleephoto@gmail.com

Changes

Sometimes it baffles me how many changes can take place in such a short time. Just three years ago, I accepted my first news job at Army Times. Very green by photojournalism terms, I remember how entirely overwhelmed I was en route to the Tsunami for USA Today on my first international assignment. Since then I've made three trips to Iraq, designed my own web page, learned to shoot and edit video, and seen both my sisters begin their families. I've gotten re-married and started a new life in a new apartment with a new wife. I now have seven nieces and nephews with another on the way next month! Then last week, on vacation with the family at Garden City Beach, my wife Tami got the call telling her she'd finally reached her professional goal after so many years...a store of her own. Next week she'll become the Store Manager for J.C. Penney in Vienna, West Virginia. I wish I could somehow convey to all of you just how proud I am of her. I've never known a harder worker with more commitment to her people. Years of getting up at 4am, working through the holidays, and mentoring countless associates, is finally paying off. And now, in the face of all her accomplishments, her greatest concern is for ME and what I will do in West Virginia.
I admit, I'm once again overwhelmed, even a little scared about the road ahead. But, I'm excited as well about the new opportunities, the things I'll learn, and the stories I hope to tell. A mix of emotions that I've come to know well, to accept, and even embrace. My plan for now is to become a freelance photographer doing a mix of commercial and editorial work that I hope will finance a few of the hundred of ideas for stories that are ricocheting through my mind.
Tami leaves tomorrow for West Virginia and I will follow in a month or two, after I've completed some final stories for Army Times. Thanks to all of you for your support and encouragement. It will continue to be appreciated in the months to come.
Now for the latest story. Pvt. Channing Moss was impaled by a rocket propelled grenade (RPG) in Afghanistan, becoming a living bomb. If his fellow soldiers had followed protocol, they would have sandbagged him and considered him "expectant." Instead, they risked their lives and save his. Watch the video: Channing Moss' Story
Thanks for reading. JLee
Family Vacation Pictures

Life in Perspective

Questions. There are days, many days, when I ask myself why I am doing this? Why I come to Iraq, subject myself to discomfort and danger? Why I put my wife and family through the worry and seperation? All for the sake of pictures when good ones seem few and far between-- often doubting that anyone actually sees them or cares.
Then I am humbled. Almost daily some soldier actually thanks me for what I am doing here. That soldier who has often spent YEARS here, to my two months at a time of site seeing. That soldier who is sucking dust, getting blown up by roadside bombs, walking long patrols under heavy physical and emotional loads, watching his friends fall, worrying about his family worrying about him at home. That soldier, or one of his family members struggling with the seperation and fear, stops me in the chow hall, or sends me an email thanking ME, and I’m always dumbfounded, at a near loss for words, and entirely humbled.
I’m often asked what soldiers think about this war. For most of the ones I’ve talked to, it’s quite simple. They believe in what they are doing. Their missions are to make Iraq more secure, to train Iraqi forces so they can take over, to bring much needed resources to the people, to capture, kill or convert the insurgents and keep the guys beside them alive. No politics, no B.S. They largely believe that what they are doing is slowly and gradually working and that given enough time and resources they will succeed. That are convinced they are helping each other and the Iraqi people.
These are often 19 through 25-year-old guys with a sense of duty and resolve that is hard for me to fathom. They are making life and death split second decisions under some of the worse conditions imaginable. Yet they approach the challenges with the wisdom of experience and professionalism far beyond their years. They do this day after day with little complaint.
I often feel like I’m living in a world spinning wildly out of control where we are losing sight of our ideals, self-absorbed, trying keep up with the rat-race that can be our lives. Too focused on what we want to get out of life instead of what we have to give. Too rushed to “get there” to enjoy much of it. I’m as guilty of all that as the next person. But then I come here, to Iraq, with all it’s miserable implicatations, and I get to walk among people I respect. They care about each other and jobs they are doing above all else. Their motives are good and life is, dare I say, simple. The basics kept in proper perspective. And here, of all places, I sometimes find the faith and hope that so often aludes me in “real life.” If I’m good enough and lucky enough, maybe I will manage to make the right pictures or find the right words to convey who these soldiers are. I think that’s why I’m here.

Heart of Darkness

“Catastrophic! Catastrophic!” It was a radio call meant to get everyone’s attention, and it did. Michelle and I had just arrived at Combat Outpost (COP) Steel in the Ta’Meem district of Ramadi, and we were sitting in a dingy room in a house seized by U.S. forces, talking to three soldiers there who make up part of a Military Transition Team (MiTT), advising Iraqi Army soldiers working in the area. I was listening to the radio traffic out of one ear and the small talk out of the other. I was frustrated and I felt I was wasting time, wishing I could get out on some day patrols and find some good pictures, when I heard that a weapons cache had been discovered near our location. But I was stuck in that little room, thinking to myself that I should be out there, making pictures, when that haunting call came.
“Catastrophic” means that a military vehicle has been completely destroyed, usually by a roadside bomb. It often means that soldiers are dead. We all sat helpless and dejected, listening to the radio calls. We listened for hours. Units responding, trying to help, being routed around more roadside bombs, looking for the “triggerman”, but there was no help for the two soldiers that were killed by the bombs buried near that cache.
Since arriving in Ramadi, Michelle and I have done a lot of stories. We covered the Friday Night Smokers boxing tournaments that allow soldiers to blow off a little steam. We went on a river patrol with a Marine Dam Security Unit. We ate meals with Iraqi Police and the PiTT team soldiers working with them to secure their communities. We went on patrols around COP Falcon in south-central Ramadi, a place one commander called “The Heart of Darkness.” I got my chance to photograph soldiers on day patrols, finding weapons caches and returning sniper fire. I even tried in vain to shoot pictures in complete darkness as COP Falcon was attacked and U.S. gunners fired back from the roof as tracers zipped by overhead.
In between it all we stood around with little groups of soldiers, waiting and smoking and telling stories of home and of war. Listening to their plans and their dreams. We watched movies, made plans for achieving world peace, and laughed at jokes few other civilians would understand. Now we’re back in Baghdad, waiting for our next embed. I’m sitting here trying to catch up on a blog, wanting tell you what it is like out there, thinking I should tell you about these soldiers’ successes, their fighting spirit, their lives and their sacrifice. But what keeps coming through the static is that call of desperation, “Catastrophic! Catastrophic!”
Here are the links to three multi-media stories from Ramadi:
Police Transition Teams
DAM Security Unit 3
COP Falcon
Michelle's Stories can be found here: Army Times In Iraq

Waiting

It seems that when Michelle Tan and I began this trip 4 days ago what we were really committing ourselves to was waiting. Waiting… It’s a condition that soldiers and photojournalist know better than most “normal” people. I’m not talking about being kept waiting 15 minutes for a business meeting, a half hour for a friend that is late for dinner or even the frustration of waiting on a flight that is delayed for a few hours. We’re talking DAYS of waiting, waiting with seemably no end… We began this trip, a trip to “cover the war” in Iraq, on January 11th. We took a relatively easy 12 hour direct flight to Kuwait City. There was a little waiting at the check-in counter and security, then the flight to Kuwait, a little waiting for our visas and at customs, then for a ride to the hotel and then two days of self imposed waiting at the hotel for our bodies to adjust and to get to the Ali Al Saleem Air Terminal for our flight to Baghdad International. Then the waiting REALLY began in earnest. Things have changed for journalists and workers coming to Iraq from Kuwait. In the good ‘ol days, someone collected your passport and visa at your hotel to get your visa stamped back out and the next morning you took a bus to your flight and bada-bing, the next thing you knew you were stepping onto the tarmac and BIAP (Baghdad International Airport) But, things have changed dramatically in the last few months as they tend to do within the military system. Now you drop your passport at a desk where you’re told to check back for the proper stamps in 6-8 hrs. You’re assigned a tent with a bunk and you settle in to rest. Then once receiving your passport and travel voucher, you pack back up and go to a large waiting area called a PAX (Passenger Terminal) and you put your name on a space available waiting list for a flight. Michelle and our were numbers 186 and 187 on the list. The flights left every 1-3 hours and were posted on a board that meant little since flight times were constantly in flux and your name may or may not be called for any given flight at any time. There’s no way to tell according to Air Force personnel how long the wait may be so you’re advised to be there when every flight is called and be ready to answer to your name, grab your gear and hustle out to the plane. The “process” seemed as foreign to all as some ancient voodoo practice. In the mean time, you’re afraid to go very far for very long for fear you’ll miss that call and be stuck longer than necessary. So, you wait. Michelle and I settled or tried to settle on hard chairs lined up in the hanger between burley contracters and soldiers in every uniform. We tried to sleep and would nod for a few minutes before being jolted awake by someone bumping us or the scraping of chairs on concrete or the paranoia that we might miss some vital piece of information that would allow us to get out of pergatory. We waited like that for 20 hours before “Lee, James” was finally called. We hustled all our baggage onto pallets waiting to be loaded onto our plane and were escorted with about 300 other soldiers and contractors to tents 50 feet away where we were told we could wait for another hour before our plane would depart. There we waited another 4 hours talking to the contractors around us, pacing smoking, reading and watching movies on our laptops. When we finally boarded the huge C-17 the flight took about 50 minutes. We trudged through the mud and waited in the dark for an hour on our lugguage . Then we schlepped each of our 80+ pounds of gear through mudholes and across slick rock to a bus stop, waited 15 minutes to ride from that stop to another stop where we would get on a Rhino armored vehicle for the ride across town to the International Zone (IZ) AKA Green Zone. The wait was another 4 1/2 hours packed into a quonset hut with every chair taken but we were finally told to load up and we made the hour ride across town in the big convoy in silence. In the wee hours of the morning we finally arrived at the I.Z., made a call on a borrowed cell phone and were picked up 15 minutes later by two army Specialists from the Combined Press Information Center (CPIC). That’s where we are today, in relative comfort, having had a hot shower and 2 meals and 4 hours sleep. I’ve finally gotten my creditionals and been assigned a bunk bed in the press center. Here we settle in to wait for a helicopter flight to our first embed. So far I’ve completed two 400 page novels, the entire first season of “Lost”, 5 packs of cigerrettes and 2 cans of tobacco, and I’ve change into my second set of clothes with full hopes of getting to the war in a couple of days. And since I’ve done this before I know what that means, more waiting. Lots and lots of waiting. Waiting on helicopters, waiting on convoys, waiting on patrols to start or end. Waiting on my turn at the power outlet, internet connection or telephone. Waiting for the food, the shower, my clothes to dry. Waiting for bombs to go off or insurgents to take their shot, waiting on the light to get right just hoping to make a few good pictures, tell a few good stories and get home safe.
God Bless those who wait.