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Afghanistan Journal:
A Reporter At War
A reporter at war
By KEITH KLUWE
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS-JOURNAL
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (March 9, 2003) — I felt like I was in a tornado for the 11 days between the time I volunteered in November and left for a two-week training mission in PA. My wife Cheryl and I moved our wedding up seven months; had three days to plan it. I had to withdraw from school. I had to pack everything I might need for a combat zone where it snows in the mountains and gets to be 130 degrees on the desert floor during the day. It was a blur, and I´m still finding stuff that I forgot I packed two months ago.
Cheryl and my dad came and visited me at Ft. Benning, GA when the training mission was over in PA. I had to say goodbye to the both of them again. My dad hugged me and told me that he loved me and to keep my head down. I told Cheryl that I loved her and that I would miss her every day we were apart and that I would see her in a year. I talked to her a few days later and she told me she didn´t cry until she started driving back to Ormond Beach. She didn´t see me cry on my walk back to the barracks I was living in. We shipped out the following morning.
We took a charter bus to Atlanta International Airport, checked all our bags and weapons and tried to act relaxed until the flight. From Baltimore/Washington International Airport, we flew on a military charter flight through Turkey, Kyrgyzstan and then took an Italian Air Force C-130 into Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, where I stayed about a week until my flight to Kandahar.
Bagram is a spooky place. There are no lights anywhere on the base. Everything from unloading the planes with forklifts to something as simple as going to the bathroom is done using moonlight or night vision goggles. It took a little bit of getting used to. I was a police officer. We were taught that light is your friend. Here we own the night because of all the different types of night vision equipment we have.
My first week in Afghanistan I took photos of an honor guard bringing home the remains of a soldier who was killed on a combat mission. It wasn´t the first time I had seen something like this; I spent six months on a funeral detail while I was in the Marine Corps. Every Marine I helped bury was older though, they had lived life. This soldier was younger than me. I didn´t know him, but it made me cry.
I cried for a brother soldier who died doing what he believed in. I cried for his wife, thinking about how sad and lonely she will be now that he is gone. I thought about my own wife and hoped that she wouldn´t have to go through the same thing. I cried for the other soldiers in his unit that were standing there at attention, saluting him with tears in their eyes as his body was brought past.
I saw a photo on the front page of a newspaper over here that showed his remains being taken off an aircraft by an Air Force honor guard in Germany. I had to relive what I had felt when I shot my photos of the honor guard here.
Those images are etched into my mind. I saw them when I took the photo. I saw them when I made the photos ready to be put in a newspaper. I saw them again when I sent them back to the states. I saw somebody else´s photos of the same thing. It´s not something I will forget.
There are tears in my eyes as I write this. I´m trying to hide them from the other guys in my office, writing email home to their families. Some things are too personal to share at the office. Crying for a brother is one of them.
Hope all is well in the states,
Keith A. Kluwe
109th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment
Kandahar Air Base, Afghanistan
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