The Wall.
The place out there where soldiers clash in wars and conflicts and incidents around the world to settle a score, right a wrong, claim territory, bring down governments, install new governments, and revisit ancient struggles and political differences still brewing – 33 of them, according to Foreign Policy Magazine (http://www.foreignpolicy.com) as we speak – in lands around the world, large and small.
And, if, as Winston Churchill once said during WWII, “In war, the truth is so precious, she must be accompanied by a bodyguard of lies,” then, surely, those bodyguards of lies must also be accompanied by those other denizens of the wall, the war correspondents – who, along with the soldiers are right in the thick of it.
And like the soldiers, the journalists die.
Forty-six of them in 2011. Another 10 in 2012, and 12 missing and hundreds imprisoned, hundreds more kidnapped and beaten or tortured, according to The Committee to Protect Journalists (http://www.cpj.org), an international organization whose sole purpose is to defend, assist, and provide resources to journalists worldwide.
In hot spots around the world, the journalists work to sift through the facts and find the truth behind the struggle they are covering and get it out there, before that bodyguard of lies can race around the world.
And for most of them, the work is a labor of love, indeed, a passion, a kind of calling.
Why else put your life on the line every day and night for the length of an assignment which can extend from a few days to a few years of trudging along with soldiers, dodging bullets and shellfire and RPG (rocket propelled grenade) fire and bombs, perilous terrain, tainted food and brackish water, no sleep, and the urgency of a deadline hungry editor waiting back home for the latest dispatch?
Why, indeed.
Long hours, not really great pay, shattered home lives back there, mystery illnesses and infections, an inability to really distinguish, after a while, on which side of the border of the conflicted hot spot is insanity, and on which side is sanity,
And eventually, a pretty good bet is you’ll have a case of PTSD boiling to the top, which brings us to one of the many occupational hazards of the life of a war correspondent: the great possibility of developing dependance on alcohol and/or drugs either as a sedation or as a pain-killer.
This reporter speaks from experience of years of covering hot spots around the world and suffering, among some of the hazards listed above, deeply buried memories of battles and shellfire and shrapnel embedded in the body and broken bones twisted in a helicopter crash and the horror of being “detained” in a place deep inside a country and not knowing if you would leave as you arrived: alive.
And the deeper, more painful memories of colleagues and friends who did not come back from the wall, and some of them who fell before your eyes in an agony of pain.
Why, indeed.
For this reporter, it was for the love of the work and the passion and the calling.
And for Marie Colvin, and the colleague, Remi Ochlik, who died during shellfire from Syrian government shelling of the stronghold of government opposition in the city of Homs, it was, according to their families and colleagues and editors, much the same.
The love of the work, the passion for getting the truth out before that bodyguard of lies races around the world, the calling which gives you immense satisfaction once that duty has been satisfied.
This reporter still flinchs when the word comes of yet another colleague, or friend, or even a stranger whose work I am familiar with.
Flinches, and remembers. And will never forget it, nor regret doing it.
RIP Marie Colvin, American, and Remi Ochlik, Frenchman, and the many more journalists from so many countries who toil in so many other countries all year round, who have gone before you both, and the many who will fall again out there on “The Wall.”