Kasey Anderson - I Was A Photograph

They called him the "Marlboro Man", a Marine with a thousand yard stare and a smoke, taking a break during the second battle of Fallujah.  It's perhaps the greatest photograph of the entire war.

It was a sensation.  CBS News ran it on their nightly broadcast.  People from all over the country sent him care packages filled with cigarettes.  President Bush sent him cigars from the White House.  The General commanding Miller's First Marine Division personally offered to ship him stateside, because of how people back home connected with him, and the morale impact were he to die.

Miller turned the General down.  He wanted to stay with his buddies.

Memorial Day is a time when we stop to remember those who didn't make it home.  For LCpl James Blake Miller, every day is Memorial Day.  Like many soldiers from many wars, he remembers those of his comrades who didn't make it back.  Like many soldiers from many wars, he would wake at night haunted by ghosts waiting on the other side of the door.  These days we have a name for this: PTSD.  It has treatments available, although it's not always clear how effective they are.  Soldiers from older wars were more or less left on their own.

LCpl Miller understands the true meaning of Memorial Day, in a way that we are lucky not to fathom.  This holiday weekend, remember that it's not about the barbeque.  The Marlboro Marine doesn't need that reminder.



I Was A Photograph (Songwriter: Kasey Anderson)

Sky the color of a match been struck
Sun just hangin' like the noose got stuck
And you can try to stare it back down
But you can't cover it up
Red dirt rising 'til it fills your lungs
Your hand's the bullet and your heart's the gun
And you learned how to turn your back on almost anything
But you never learned to run

You've seen the ditches where the dead get left
And the hungry cats in the hollow chests
And you can pin your eyes shut, boy
But you can't get no rest
Hell, its just bones scattered in the dust
And it don't mean nothing to the TV trucks
'Til it's real American boys
Spittin' up real American blood

In Charlie company, first thing you're taught
Is you ain't worth half of what you thought
And just like everything else I learned
I couldn't shut it off
So I felt like nothing when I got back home
And my father saw me in my granddad's clothes
And said, "you inherit my blood, boy
But your sins are all your own"

I don't sleep like I did before
I just wake up trembling on the bedroom floor
Always seven steps from the ghosts
On the other side of that door
Wondering, what did I do to earn another day
'Cause I don't confess, sure as hell don't pray
I just defend, attack, withdraw
And delay

You know my face, I was a photograph
On the front page, 'neath the headline war
And I was numb back then, boy
I ain't even numb no more

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine; et lux perpetua luceat eis.