More to Me

“GET INSIDE!” Jack could hear Ben, the chopper pilot, yelling over the incessant whuppa whuppa whuppa of the blades as he leaned out of the opening of the medevac so far he was more out than in, but he had to get the shot. It was his job. As they approached the ground and the dust flew everywhere, a bullet went right through Jack’s hat. The force of the bullet ripped it right off his head. Even so, it didn’t alter his approach to his work. When he was working, he used the camera lens as his eyes and today what he saw through that lens was absolute carnage under a dusty haze, which made it look like a dream. Or, rather, a nightmare. He continued snapping pictures as one man after another was dragged, carried or ran out of the jungle toward the chopper. Soldiers were running backwards shooting their guns, providing cover for the troops who were being carried or were too bloody and disoriented to protect themselves from the gunfire bombarding them as they made their way to the chopper. Jack shot it all as one by one they were loaded into the medevac. Once everyone was in, the pilot pulled the chopper up and flew back to base to the deafening sounds of whuppa whuppa whuppa and missiles whizzing by barely missing them. As they flew over the jungle of Vietnam back to the relative safety of the base, Jack thought to himself how beautiful it looked from far above and how unnecessary this all was. Once landed, the pilot jumped out of the chopper, and in a rage ran around to the other side yanking Jack’s shoulder back to stop him as he was walking toward triage. He could feel a trickle of blood running down his head from where the bullet grazed him. 

“Who the hell do you think you are? You arrogant jackass. I personally don’t give a shit if anything happens to you, but I’m the one that’s gonna catch hell if you don’t make it back. You can ride along with me, because I have no choice but when you hang out of the chopper like you just did back there, I can’t make quick movements because you’ll fall out! And that limits how I fly, and I can’t have that. I need to be able to maneuver to avoid incoming fire. I need to focus on getting those boys out of that god-forsaken jungle. If you make that one ounce more difficult for me I will push you out myself, and I won’t come back for you. Do you hear me? This may be a game for you, but it’s life and death for us.” Ben pushed him aside and walked away from him. Jack was shocked and ashamed of himself and realized that what he does here may put someone else in danger. He grew up a little that day. It was 1974 and the war would soon be over but he was only a 22-year-old kid fresh out of journalism school trying to make a name for himself.

From that point on, he was aware of everything he did and everyone around him so that he didn’t get in the way or cause any problems. He got amazing pictures of an untenable war that were sent through the AP wire and were picked up in papers all over the world. Those pictures made him the most famous photojournalist of his time. Beautiful, ugly, haunting images of a war nobody understood and fewer and fewer people wanted. 

After that, he was sent on assignments all over the world. He covered wars, civil unrest, political coups in every far off corner of the globe and drug cartel activity that decimated small border towns, and he risked his life every day to bring the truth to people.

His coworkers and other correspondents called him a badass, but he didn’t think of himself as particularly brave. The people he was shooting were the brave ones, and he tried to convey that through his photography. 

He had a life filled with risk and danger for over a decade but then he met a woman in one of those war-torn countries and fell in love. He brought her home, married her and they started a family. She never asked him to stop going on assignments but as the years went by and kids got older, the lure of getting that picture that perfectly encapsulated a moment in time began to be less important to him than Davey’s baseball game or Beth’s ballet recital. He decided to leave the dangers of photojournalism behind him, and he opened a photography studio in town.

You'd think that it would be easy, but it was hard. It was almost harder than dodging bullets in some far off land. After a while though he got used to the quiet and while he missed the adventure and even the danger to a degree, he did enjoy shooting the happy events of people’s lives. And he loved being able to be home with his wife and kids and soon no one remembered, not even himself half the time, that he used to be a badass who hung out of medevac choppers in Vietnam. 

*****

“Papa, what are these?” Jake called out to his grandfather from the other room. “I don’t know, Jake. What are you looking at?” replied Jack as he walked toward the back bedroom where his grandson was. Jack was old now and walked with the help of a cane and hadn't taken any pictures of anything other than his family for a long time.

“These pictures. Why do you have all these pictures of protests and soldiers,” asked Jake. As Jack walked into the room, he saw that Jake had taken all the pictures out of the closet and the Pulitzer Prize he had won for his photo series on Vietnam. As he looked at his grandson, who he knew only saw him as an old man who never did anything very exciting, he decided to finally talk about what he did when he was young. 

“You know, Jake, I didn't always walk with a cane and need bifocals to see. I was young once, if you can believe it." Jake looked at him like he knew it had to be true but wasn't quite sure. "There’s more to me than the worn out old man you see when you look at me," said Jack with a smile and a distant look in his eyes. "It’s kind of funny that your mom is so protective now that she doesn't even like me using the stove without someone being here but there was a time when I was a little wild, kind of crazy, and went on lots of adventures,” said Jack as his grandson listened intently to story after incredible story.