USA. Marine Corps. - Shooting ghosts: a U.S. Marine, a conflict photographer, and their journey back from war

We can imagine that among those early hunters and warriors single individuals... saw what others did not.... It is when two such persons discover one another, when, whether with immense difficulties and semi-articulate fumblings or with what would seem to us amazing and elliptical speed, they share their visionit is then that Friendship is born. And instantly they stand together in an immense solitude.

C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

An explosion. The shock wave kicks through my chest. Then silence, a moment of calm as the battle holds still in that instant before everything changes. Dust hangs in the air. Two Marines are down, motionless. Then another bolts toward them through the haze of confusion. Theres shouting and shooting. The spell is broken. Time resumes, sprints forward. They move; I move. My shutter clicks, recording the aftermath of a blast that will weld my life to that of an injured Marine, Sergeant Thomas James Brennan, leader of Third Platoon, Fourth Squad, Able Company, First Battalion, Eighth Marines.

The emotional impact of the explosion reverberates across continents. A few hours later, Sergeant Brennans mother, Karen, is at Boston Childrens Hospital, where she works as a radiology assessment nurse. Karens husband, Jim, sends her an e-mail with a Web link that automatically updates my photos as I file them from Afghanistan. He often does this so they can keep tabs on their twenty-four-year-old son, whom they both call TJ. Between the time Jim sends the message and the time Karen clicks on the refreshed link, photos of TJ lying limp in the dirt have been added to the news feed. Karen recoils from her desk when the images pop up on her screen. She cant read the captions. All she can see is her sons pale, blank face. She pitches forward and drops her head between her knees. Three coworkers rush over to ask whats wrong. Karen gestures at the screen while hyperventilating. I dont know if hes alive or dead, she says. One of her coworkers, who is also from a military family, reads the photo caption and tells Karen that TJ has been injured by an explosion but that hes alive. Karen asks the nurse to close the computer. Then she weeps.

Two years later, TJ and I sit side by side in a silver sedan, cruising down an open highway as strip malls and autumn scenery slide by. Its a Saturday afternoon in late October and were in Massachusetts, on our way to his parents house in Randolph, a suburban town with wide, curving roads and large houses set among trees. We are six and a half thousand miles from where we first met. The last time we sat together was nineteen months ago in Afghanistan. Much has changed. Over there, he was the leader of fourteen U.S. Marines (and one Navy Corpsman) deployed to Helmand Province. I was a photojournalist embedded with his unit. We were leaner back then, our bodies tapered by the demands of our jobs. No matter how many high-calorie ration packs we consumed, the weight still melted from our bodies on long foot patrols under the burden of heavy gear and brutal heat. Now were both living in the United States, far from the conflicts that have marked our lives and within striking distance of countless fast-food joints. Im no longer carrying my cameras everywhere and hes no longer armed with a rifle. Our individual journeys from Afghanistan to here have not been easy, but weve leaned on each other in unexpected ways. The skepticism and even hostility we first felt toward each other have grown into trust.

War tears people apart, but it also flings them together. Through the unpredictability of war and its aftermath, Sergeant Brennan and I became friends. Like most people who know him well, I call him TJ. He calls me Fin. We forged an unlikely bond patrolling together through the dusty alleyways of Helmand Province and camping side by side for weeks in the desert. That bond only deepened after TJ was injured during that Taliban ambush and then later, after we both returned from Afghanistan. When TJ began to suffer from the effects of his injury and from the painful memories of his tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, he told me about his struggles. They sounded familiar.

People rarely consider it, but war correspondents experience similar rates of post - traumatic stress as combat veterans. The causes can be different, but guilt plays a prominent role for both. For TJ its the things hes done, or didnt do, that haunt him. My own conscience is nagged by the fact that I am paid to photograph people at their most vulnerable while Im able to do little to help. I photographed TJ moments after he was injured and nearly killed. Now our friendship offers us both a shot at redemption. TJ sought my help as he confronted his altered reality. Collaborating with him restored something within me at a time when I was confronting my own struggles in the wake of war. It took getting to know each other for us to understand what trauma means, what it does to those who live with it, and how to cope. We are still learning.

Our perspectives on war differIm a witness and TJ is a participant. But like TJ and many other young men, I was drawn to conflict zones. TJ had his own reasons (including the belief that his Marine dress blues would get him laid) whereas I saw the intensity of combat as an ancient rite of passage into manhood, a measure of my worth (and yes, sure, as a way to impress women). He may have known a little about what he was getting into, but I was ignorant of what that journey might cost. TJ and I now embody the stereotypes of the broken military veteran and the damaged war journalist, but such labelswhile truehardly tell the whole story, and serve little purpose. Neither of us is a victim. We both chose to go to war. We seek no sympathy or pity. What were trying to figure out now is how we can lead purposeful lives after experiencing the sense of loss and meaninglessness wrought by war. The last thing we want to do is perpetuate the myth of the trauma hero.

Every true war story is a story of trauma and recovery, author and Iraq war veteran Roy Scranton wrote in a 2015 article for the