LUKE BURBANK, host:
Well, he's been called the Marlboro Marine and there's a pretty decent chance you've seen his face even if you've never heard the name James Blake Miller.
Miller was a lance corporal fighting a fierce battle in Fallujah, Iraq back in November of 2004. He took a smoke break and the look on his dirty, slightly bloodied face kind of said everything.
An L.A. Times photographer, Luis Sinco, was there, and he took a photo. That image was reprinted in newspapers all over the country. But that wasn't the end of the story. Lance Corporal Miller came back home and he was not okay.
Lance Corporal JAMES BLAKE MILLER (War Veteran): A recurring dream is me actually looking down the rifle and knowing that, you know, I'm about to pull the trigger on that person. It's an insane connection that you make with that person at that point. To see somebody in your sights and to pull that trigger, it's almost like you're there with them, seeing their life flash before their eyes as well as taking it.
BURBANK: That's from an amazing kind of collection of video and of photographs and also written material on the L.A. Times Web site. It follows James Blake Miller after he came home from Iraq. It also is written by the photographer who took that photo, Luis Sinco.
And Luis Sinco joins us now. Hi, Luis.
Mr. LUIS SINCO (Photo Journalist, Los Angeles Times): Good morning. How are you?
BURBANK: Good. Thank you for coming on the show. It's early for you out there in the West, I'd imagine.
Mr. SINCO: Yeah. You guys wake up way too early for me.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BURBANK: Can you just take me back to that November day when you took this picture?
Mr. SINCO: Yeah. It was the year...
BURBANK: What was the scene there?
Mr. SINCO: I'm sorry. Ask me that again.
BURBANK: What was the scene there?
Mr. SINCO: The scene? Oh, we've just come under heavy fire and the Marines had basically kicked down the door to our house and we all piled in and they had set up positions up on the rooftop. And at that time I saw that I had a few minutes 'til my deadline, so I was transmitting photos. And there were two, loud explosions as Blake called in the tanks, and they came and covered us.
And at that moment, I went up to the - ran up to the rooftop and saw Blake up there and he sat down close behind; I snapped his photo. And soon enough, it was on the front page of many, many newspapers.
BURBANK: When you took that picture, did you think, oh, this is going to really be something?
Mr. SINCO: No, I did not. I didn't think much of the photo. It was a nice photo; I knew that from the beginning. But I didn't think it really conveyed much considering that we've been under heavy fire for many, many hours leading up to that point.
I thought my editors wanted to have more shots of the action and I didn't think a tight shot on the kid's face smoking a cigarette was really anything. I guess that I knew it's a nice photo, but it was the last of 11 pictures I transmitted that day.
BURBANK: You write in your piece that you didn't even know this guy's name. You just put it in as Marine. And then a few days later, your bosses tell you they want a follow-up piece on this guy. How do you even track him down?
Mr. SINCO: Well, you know, we were embedded with his unit. And it was just a matter of asking around and finding out where they were at the moment, and then going there and meeting up with him.
BURBANK: What kind of a guy was he in Iraq, at least, when you talked to him in that follow up? Did he seem generally upbeat, confident?
Mr. SINCO: Well, it was strange because I had actually taken his photo the week before and the newspaper used it in the preparation leading up to the assault on Fallujah.
However, his face had changed so much that I didn't even recognize who he was. And it was all very, very strange because, like I said, I actually talked to him on one occasion to get his name and just ask him his hometown, that the day that I took the photo - it just was his face had changed enormously. He went from being a young boy to a man and I, for the life of me, couldn't recognize his face as it was blowing on my computer screen. But...
BURBANK: Well, he ended up back in the U.S. as did you. And you, guys, ended up meeting up again and you talked about him changing. How had he changed when he was Blake in the United States now, out of the Marines?
Mr. SINCO: You know what, I didn't really get to know him that well in Iraq. I talked to him on a couple of occasions, then I talked to him for the follow-up story. But, you know, I didn't really know Blake at that point. I mean, I was embedded with the...
BURBANK: But what was he like when you met up within America? Was he - I mean, was he becoming disillusioned? I heard that he had PTSD?
Mr. SINCO: Well, when I since first met up with him and Jessica, I just was struck by how rudderless their life seemed to be. They were drinking all night, sleeping all day, really had no plans for the immediate or long-term future. He just seemed to be kind of like floating in his own world and, you know, he was kind of brooding and sullen most of the time. He's got a sharp wit to own but, you know, his humor tended to be a little more sarcastic than hopeful. And, like I said, I didn't really know him that well. It - I actually got to know him more as, you know, in the last year and a half since we reconnected.
BURBANK: What are some of the problems that he's faced? I mean, you've been trying to help him with some of them, you write.
Mr. SINCO: Well, I mean, he's a - first of all when he came back, the - his future plans were pretty much upset. He wanted to go into law enforcement but, you know, the PTSD diagnosis killed that dream. Again, too much drinking, not enough direction in his life. He just seemed to be kind of like living it day-to-day.
BURBANK: And how did you try to help him out?
Mr. SINCO: Well, you know what, I - it's been a strange transformation for me because when I first went to meet him, I really didn't want to do this. I just wanted to forget everything about Iraq and, you know, it would have been fine with me if I had never seen him again.
I have to thank my wife for basically pushing me on this. She said, you've got to basically give in to this. You and him have a bond. You probably will for the rest of your life. I think you need to go do the story on this guy. And so that's when I went to see him and, like I said, at first it wasn't so much I was trying to help him as much as I was trying to document the life of somebody who found, you know, a moment of fame during the war and then came home.
It wasn't until later on when, you know, he - I sensed that was suicidal that I basically stepped from the role of being a journalist, a photo journalist to one to help somebody - help him, in particular.
BURBANK: We're pretty short on time. But do you - you made this guy, unwittingly, anyway, kind of more than he would have normally been just as a soldier in terms of his fame. Do you feel a little responsible - he was just a regular soldier suddenly elevated?
Mr. SINCO: A little bit. I mean, you know, I think that when you're in a situation like that with a lot of - with several people, you know, where you've come close to death and, you know, you've been in the grip of death with these folks, I think that you just develop this bond. And when I saw him suffering, it was an agonizing decision to reach out and help for me because I just wanted to maintain my professional distance. But, you know, it comes back to you; this is somebody that you've been through a life-changing experience with.
BURBANK: Well, and you document it amazingly at the L.A. Times Web site. We're going to link it to our site because it's something everybody needs to check out however they feel about the war.
Luis Sinco of the L.A. Times, thank you so much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
