GUARDIAN– The young marine lit a cigarette and let it dangle. White smoke wafted around his helmet. His face was smeared with war paint. Blood trickled from his right ear and the bridge of his nose. Momentarily deafened by cannon blasts, he didn’t know the shooting had stopped. He stared at the sunrise. His expression caught my eye. To me, it said terrified, exhausted and glad just to be alive. I recognised that look because that’s how I felt too. I raised my camera and snapped a few shots.

With the click of a shutter, Marine Lance Corporal James Blake Miller, a country boy from Kentucky, became an emblem of the war in Iraq. The image would change two lives – his and mine.

I was embedded with Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, as it entered Falluja, an insurgent stronghold in Iraq’s Sunni Triangle, on 8 November 2004. We encountered heavy fire almost immediately. We were pinned down all night at a traffic circle, where a six-inch kerb offered the only protection. I hunkered down in the gutter that endless night, praying for daylight, trying hard to make myself small. A cold rain came down. I cursed the Marines’ illumination flares that wafted slowly earthward, making us wait an eternity for darkness to return.

At dawn, the gunfire and explosions subsided. A white phosphorus artillery round burst overhead, showering blazing-hot tendrils. We came across three insurgents lying in the street, two of them dead, their blood mixing with rain. The third, a wiry Arab youth, tried to mouth a few words. All I could think was: ‘Buddy, you’re already dead.’

We rounded a corner and again came under heavy fire, forcing us to scramble for cover. I ran behind a Marine as we crossed the street, the bullets ricocheting at our feet. Gunfire poured down and it seemed incredible that no one was hit. A pair of tanks rumbled down the road to shield us. The Marines kicked open the door of a house and we all piled in.

Miller and other Marines took positions on the rooftop; I set up my satellite phone to transmit photos. But as I worked downstairs in the kitchen, a deep rumble almost blew the room apart. Two cannon rounds had slammed into a nearby house. Miller, the platoon’s radioman, had called in the tanks, pinpointed the targets and shouted: ‘Fire!’

I ran to the roof and saw smouldering ruins across a large vacant lot. Beneath a heap of bricks, men lay dead or dying. I sat down and collected my wits. Miller propped himself against a wall and lit his cigarette. I transmitted the picture that night. Power in Falluja had been cut in advance of the assault, forcing me to be judicious with my batteries. I considered not even sending Miller’s picture, thinking my editors would prefer images of fierce combat. The photo of Miller was the last of 11 that I sent that day.

On the second day of the battle, I called my wife by satellite phone to tell her that I was OK. She told me my photo had ended up on the front page of more than 150 newspapers. Dan Rather had gushed over it on the evening news. Friends and family had called her to say they had seen the photo – my photo.

Soon, my editors called and asked me to find the ‘Marlboro Marine’ for a follow-up story. Who was this brave young hero? Women wanted to marry him. Mothers wanted to know whether he was their son. I didn’t even know his name. Shellshocked and exhausted, I had simply identified Miller as ‘a Marine’ and clicked ‘send’.

I found Miller four days later in an auditorium in the city’s civic centre. Miller’s unit was taking a break, eating military rations. Clean-shaven and without war paint, Miller, 20, looked much younger than the battle-stressed warrior in the picture – young enough to be my son. He was co-operative, but embarrassed about the photo’s impact back home.

Once our story identified him, the national fascination grew stronger. People shipped care packages, making sure Miller had more than enough smokes. President Bush sent cigars, candy and memorabilia from the White House. Then Major General Richard F Natonski, head of the 1st Marine Division, made a special trip to see the Marlboro Marine. To talk to Miller, Natonski had to weave between earthen berms, run through bombed-out buildings and make a mad sprint across a street to avoid sniper fire before diving into a shattered store front. ‘Miller, get your ass up here,’ a first sergeant barked on the radio.

Miller had no idea what was going on as he ran through the rubble. He snapped to attention when he saw the general. Natonski shook Miller’s hand. Americans had ‘connected’ with his photo, the general said, and nobody wanted to see him wounded or dead. ‘We can have you home tomorrow,’ he said.

Miller hesitated, then shook his head. He did not want to leave his buddies behind. ‘It just wasn’t right,’ he told me later. ‘Your father raised one hell of a young man,’ the general said, looking Miller in the eye. They said goodbye and Natonski scrambled back to the command post.

For his loyalty, Miller was rewarded with horror. The assault on Falluja raged on, leaving nearly 100 Americans dead and 450 wounded. The bodies of some 1,200 insurgents littered the streets. As the fighting dragged on, the story fell off the front page. I joined the exodus of journalists going home or moving to the next story. More than a year and a half would pass before I saw Miller again.

Continue reading about the Marlboro Marine.

© GUARDIAN, 2007