Boots on the Ground

American troops in Iraq aren't abstractions. They could be your sons or daughters or best friends from high school. To bring that simple truth home, Post photographer Andrea Bruce Woodall walked some very rugged miles in their shoes

Washington Post photographer Andrea Bruce Woodall has traveled to Iraq five times since the war began. Most recently, she arrived a week shy of the first anniversary of the invasion in March and stayed through a period in which a widespread insurgency against the U.S. occupation flared anew, and U.S. fatalities approached 1,000. For some Americans, the chaos and violence in Iraq has receded to a kind of grim background noise, distant and impersonal. Woodall set out to dispel that creeping indifference by getting up-close and specific. Here, through her camera's lens and her personal journal, is Iraq as it's seen from the bulletproof window of a Humvee.

3/10/04

I CAN'T GET THE BOMBINGS OUT OF MY HEAD. Not just one, but the aftermath of them all. The metallic smell of blood. The stains on the roads. As if each victim was blown up individually, from the inside out, or maybe dropped from the sky. Razor wire collects flesh like torn pieces of clothing . . . I saw one police officer go mad in Baghdad recently, obsessively picking up stray pieces. I thought, maybe for burial -- but it seemed more drastic, more urgent. U.S. Army and other Iraqi police tried to stop him with force. But he yelled back, shrugging their hands off his shoulder, never losing sight of the ground, the razor wire, the pieces, quickly filling his plastic bag -- until the bag was full and he had to pile the pieces into his hands, gloved in plastic, intestines hanging through his fingers.

People always want me to take pictures of every last piece. Like proof. I have to do it -- we won't use the photos -- but it makes them feel better. An eyeball. Teeth. A finger swept into a corner. Piles of bloody shoes. Brains. Other things that I don't recognize but I know by the smell. Pieces stick to the bottom of my shoes.

No one cries at these scenes. We all -- Iraqis, U.S. soldiers, journalists, family members -- walk from the bombing to the hospitals to the morgue. We are all sleepwalking. Numb. A nightmare. It happens almost every day.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38111-2004Nov9.html

collateral damage
no photos,by mandate of the administration