Sunday, April 12, 2015

Beyond Bullets Afghanistan book


A couple of weeks ago, I was out of books to read so I walked to the local library. This book looked interesting so I checked it out. I haven't been able to get past chapter one because of the above photo. The book is written by a Polish-Canadian photojournalist. He embedded with an American unit in Afghanistan. Every other page has a poignant photo.

This is the story behind the cover photo. The journalist and the unit in which he was embedded were in a long caravan of Humvees. As they drove through a narrow mountain pass, they were ambushed by the Taliban. The attack took less than 15 minutes, and fortunately, no one was injured. The caravan drove another couple of hours and pulled into their base, safe. The journalist was still sitting in his Humvee, looking out at the shattered bulletproof window. Outside, this soldier shown on the cover was just resting against the Humvee, in shock. He stood there for five minutes, totally still. The journalist later learned that when this soldier was home on leave, he killed himself.

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