Photo Gallery
Skip down to Charles Jones' commentary about the slideshow
These are the faces of war - and uneasy peace - in Iraq. The best pictures were taken by U.S. Marine Corps combat correspondents who shared them with me while I visited Anbar Province at Camp Fallujah in June, 2007.
I took the rest of the pictures, including the ones showing the visit of a contingent of Marines, led by then-Brig. Gen. John Allen to Haditha, once the scene of some of the most difficult house-to-house fighting. By the time of my visit, clashes with insurgents had died down in western Iraq as we met Sunni sheiks, city officials, and provincial leaders. The hard work of rebuilding Iraq had begun.
What can't be shown through pictures was the oppressive heat (upwards of 115 degrees), made all the more unbearable by the requirement to wear body armor and a helmet. Water bottles were everywhere, with the constant order to pump fluids. Yet we also were served hot, sweet tea in crystal cups by the gracious mayor of Haditha. Strangely, the hot tea seemed to take the edge off the Death Valley-caliber heat.
Pictures also can't capture the sounds of two cultures -- Arab and American -- trying to communicate through translators. They also can't convey the war-weary faces and tired stares of men and women and children in the main hospital in Haditha.
The pungent smell of roasted lamb on rice served at the Haditha's mayor's office also can't be captured on film.
These images do convey some sense of Anbar Province in mid-2007. Mostly, I hope they show Marines doing their jobs, day in and day out, even as their work in the dangerous heat and still-treacherous countryside went mostly ignored and unreported back in the States.