Artist/War Correspondent

Here's some amazing war reportage from an artist embedded with the 1st Infantry Division in Baqubah, Iraq.

There’s a huge bang; the 113 rocks and Ledlow, Cliat and Camp fall to the floor. I’m afraid they’re dead. An RPG has just hit the side of our vehicle, between Cliat and Gayer, the driver. Gayer’s fallen too, and Theis is shouting at him through his headphones to get up. Smoke and the acrid smell of magnesium powder are everywhere.

Doc saw the RPG round fired at us by a man from behind a tree, his head covered in a black hood. Later, he says it looked like a baseball coming straight for us. Pulling himself back up, he locates the shooter in his rifle sight, peering from around the tree. Doc fires off two rounds and sees the man fall, but can’t tell if he’s killed him.

. . .

The RPGs are coming from our left; Ledlow has relieved Camp to defend that side. There’s another terrifying explosion against the 113, as a grenade lands low on our left track, damaging but not disabling it. An armor piercing round, it destroys one of the plates, but somehow misses the pin, which would have cut the track and rendered us unable to move. Nevertheless, the sprocket can’t engage and we’ve come to a halt: Gayer can’t get the vehicle to move forward. Theis tells him to reverse it and we lurch backwards.

'What the fuck are you doing?' Cliat shouts at Theis. 'You don’t never go backwards in a firefight! Move this fucking thing forward! Forward!'

Riveting stuff. His watercolors are equally fascinating.

Thanks yet again to Sarah for finding this.