The Marlboro Man: He’s A Real Human Being
By SusanUnPC on November 13, 2007 at 6:51 PM in Soldiers/Veterans
[I changed the previous post to one about the cost of the Iraq war -- $1.5 trillion and counting -- and how the pre-war promises of the Bush administration about cheap oil and lower costs at our gas pumps have not only not come true, but continue to mean that we may be stuck in Iraq for a hell of a long time. NOW the rest of that previous post.]
From Keith Olbermann’s Countdown, November 12, 2007:
[F]ew who saw this image of Lance Corporal James Blake Miller in November 2004 is likely to have forgotten it or to forget it. In the years since this photograph of the then 20-year-old dubbed the Marlboro marine was taken, Corporal Miller has been kicked out of the military for, quote, “Personality disorder” when he had trouble adjusting life back at Camp Lejeune, he‘s been divorced, he‘s been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, jobless and at times suicidal, helped most not by the government but principally by the “L.A. Times” photographer who took that picture. As promised, let‘s turn now to Paul Rieckhoff, executive director and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. …
From a 2006 Knight-Ridder story published in The Seattle Times:
Former Marine is “Marlboro Man” no more
By Jim Warren
Knight Ridder Newspapers
CAPTION: Now clean-cut with brown hair and a thin mustache, Blake Miller doesn’t look much like that 2004 photograph.
LONG FORK, Ky. — The steep mountainsides in western Pike County are painted in the drabbest of winter browns and grays now, but already there is a feeling in the air that the land is ready to break out with spring color.
Maybe that’s a good omen for a young man back home after a tour in Iraq but still struggling to cope with the psychological shocks that cut short his career in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Millions of Americans remember him only as the “Marlboro Man”: the grubby, exhausted Marine lance corporal with a cigarette dangling from his lips in a famous 2004 photograph from the battle for Fallujah. The picture became one of the iconic images of the Iraq war.
Around Pike County, though, he’s just plain Blake Miller, 21, and a civilian again. Today, he’s intent on getting over the blackouts and the nightmares, and building a new life with his new wife, Jessica.
And the man whose image became a symbol of the war now wrestles with his own feelings about the conflict.
Today, he doesn’t look much like that 2004 photograph. … READ ALL.
UPDATE: “Despite concerns of overstepping, Times photographer Luis Sinco feels compelled to help the Iraq vet he made famous.” The Los Angeles Times is running several articles on that famous photograph that Luis Sinco snapped, and on Sinco’s efforts to help that “wounded warrior.”
Here’s the beginning of one of those remarkable articles — and the link takes you to the rest of the articles and a photo gallery:
Rescue operation aims to save a wounded warrior
By Luis Sinco : Times Staff Photographer, Second of two parts
November 12, 2007James Blake Miller was in a world of pain, and I figured I should be by his side.
A veterans’ treatment program in West Haven, Conn. — arguably the best in the nation — offered hope. Moe Armstrong, a pioneer in vet-to-vet counseling, had heard of the Marlboro Marine’s troubles and sent him feelers about coming for a visit. Despite my reservations about getting too involved, I had flown from Los Angeles to Kentucky to help Miller grab this lifeline. I coaxed him into my rental car and we headed north.
I questioned myself. Was this the right thing to do? For Miller, yes. But for me? What awaited us at the end of this journey? I caught Miller’s eyes reflected in the rearview mirror, droopy and lifeless. He hadn’t slept well, and a long road led from his home in the Appalachian coal country to New England.
I had taken a photo of Miller for the Los Angeles Times during the battle of Fallouja in November 2004. He was leaning against a wall, a cigarette dangling from his lips. To my surprise, the image became iconic, capturing a sense of the front line in a young Marine’s face. It appeared in dozens of newspapers and on TV broadcasts, giving Miller a moment of fame.
Back home, he had struggled to put Iraq behind him. He was medically discharged from the Marines, suffering from post- traumatic stress disorder. He suffered flashbacks, drank heavily and retreated into a shell.
We had stayed in touch, casually at first. Then something deeper had developed between us. I was one of the few people who could reach him, who understood what he had been through.
I’d flown east in June 2006 after Miller’s wife called me, asking for help. …
UNRELATED / ALSO at ThinkFast today:
“The income gap between black and white families has grown,” according to a new study by the Brookings Institution. One reason for the widening gap is that “incomes among black men have actually declined in the past three decades, when adjusted for inflation.”
by Ronald Scott
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