When I left Afghanistan in 2012, it was in shame. I had been injured and whether it was mental or physical, I didn’t recover well enough to continue doing my job. In many ways, I’m not sure I ever recovered. Lights are still too bright, sounds too loud. I still get dizzy spells if I stand or turn too quickly. Grocery shopping is such a frenzied sensory experience I often avoid it for weeks. My vision is deteriorating and if I’m not careful, most of what I type and read is a jumbled mess of letters.
I was ashamed that I couldn’t work. I was ashamed that my work up until that point had been mediocre. I was never a great photographer, but by then lifting a camera to my eye was a nauseating experience and the end result was generally blurry. A better photographer and better Marine had arrived and within a matter of weeks, she excelled leaps and bounds beyond any work I ever produced. My work had been treading water for six months; an act of survival as my life crumbled around me capped off by a head injury.
A bloody cherry on top of six months of personal hell.
What I didn’t know at the time – and would only start to learn in a matter of weeks – was that I had taken the most important photos I’d ever take. It still surprises me when these photos pop back up in my periphery.
“Miss Lisa, I was working on these posters for [Marine Fighter Attack Squadron] 211, and I pulled up these photos and noticed your name on them.”
I knew exactly what photos this Marine was talking about. They have been irrevocably and unintentionally tied to VMFA-211 since the attack on Bastion in 2012. I took these photos almost a week to the day before my head injury, and just about two months before Lt. Col. Chris Raible lost his life defending the Bastion flight line.
Getting those photos was something of a to-do wrapped in politics and petty drama. I had had a contentious e-mail relationship with the self-appointed “public affairs officer” of the squadron (squadrons don’t have their own PAO’s, and you’re not a PAO until you’ve, you know, qualified in that job field). On their previous rotation to Afghanistan, an enterprising young Marine had essentially deployed himself (it’s one hell of a story) to serve as the squadron’s very own combat correspondent. As they were based in Kandahar, far from the rest of the wing in Leatherneck, it wasn’t unreasonable. For the air wing public affairs or combat camera to cover their activities, we’d have to send someone all the way to Kandahar for days on end. It’s inefficient. Their “PAO” was quite convinced they rated a correspondent just for them.
They wanted coverage and we made it happen. I flew out to Kandahar with my combat camera counterpart and we spent about three days milling between the Harrier and KC-130 squadrons. My relationship with the 211 “PAO” went from contentious to congenial in about .25 seconds. It’s amazing what a big smile will get you.
Because of this, I became their go-to contact for PAO things. In at least a few minds, I had apparently been adopted as “their PAO,” and that suited me fine. Once we got past the initial frustration, they were a great bunch of Marines to work with. When it came time for them to move their squadron from Kandahar to Leatherneck, I was the Marine they called to cover it. It was the last good thing I did in Afghanistan.
I remember some stories more than others, and this one sticks out. Maybe because of everything that followed, or maybe because it was just a good day. It was busy and confusing, trying to get to the right place at the right time to capture their CO landing a Harrier on the Bastion flight line as the marker for their move from Kandahar. My photos weren’t even that good. The sun was blinding and I ended up majorly blowing most of my photos out.
I remember getting the picture of Raible climbing out of the aircraft. I remember my frustration that it wasn’t his plane and didn’t have his name on the side. I remember my satisfaction that I captured an open smile from him as he prepared to climb down. I knew that would be a good one. Smiling faces are always good.
I had to physically chase Raible to get a few comments from him. I didn’t even get enough for a story. We just ran the pictures with extended captions. He was tired and stressed. He didn’t want to talk to me, but never said that. I saw it in his eyes. The man had just flown in from Kandahar and had much more important things to be doing than talking to the corporal with a camera. He was polite and professional and he answered my questions, which I kept as condensed as possible. I didn’t want to take up his time any more than he wanted me taking up his time. I wanted him to remember me as quick and professional, and want me around for future stories. I liked being their go-to correspondent.
And that was it. I had what I needed so I went back to our compound and got to work editing and writing captions. I released the photos once they were approved, and didn’t give it anymore thought. It was a throwaway story, something for the command chronology to document this administrative and logistical move. No one would really care that this squadron moved from one base to another.
A week later I was in the ROLL-3 trying to piece together what just happened. By the end of August I was back home. Two weeks after arriving back home, I opened the news to the biggest gut check I’d received since losing a close friend of mine a few months into the deployment. The Bastion flight line had been attacked and the Harrier squadron was the hardest hit. Raible and Sgt. Bradley Atwell had died defending the flight line. Marines whose last ground combat training had been MCT right after boot camp had picked up their rifles and launched a successful counterattack. All in all it had been a story of Marines doing what Marines do best, dropping everything and rushing headlong into a firefight.
After my head injury and weeks spent in Afghanistan about as useful as a bump on a log (let’s be real, less useful), to this day I still feel guilty. My first instinct has always been that I should have been there, which is nonsense. Even without my injury, I would have rotated back to the US by the time this attack happened. It still feels like a personal failure that I wasn’t there. I couldn’t be with them in the aftermath and help pick up the pieces. I was useless.
In the weeks that followed, this bizarre thing happened: those photos I took, that throwaway picture story, began popping up in various media outlets reporting on the attack. This has continued. Quite often when someone writes about this event, my photos accompany the story. When my Marine was tasked with created an informational “hero” poster for the squadron, that picture I took of Raible smiling from the open canopy of a Harrier was what he found.
It’s a strange legacy.
It feels strange. I didn’t know Raible from Adam. I only did a few things with this squadron. But the most important images I captured on that deployment came from an event most correspondents would consider mundane. I could be wrong about this, but I’ve never found other pictures of the squadron or Raible after what I took. Not professional, formally released photos, anyway. I was in the right place at the right time and captured this single moment with no idea how important it would be later. When people want to talk about this story, when they want to talk about him, my image has helped.
It was a small thing. It still is. But that image is out there, and just when I think it’s gone, it pops up again on my newsfeed. Sometimes we want life to happen in these big moments where we get to be the hero. It would have been something to take photos that won awards or be there to document a battle. Instead, I got this quiet moment at an uninteresting event that captured this person as he was. I don’t know if it’s worth being proud of or not, but I think if it’s helped tell his story, then I did a worthwhile thing.