In this essay for The New Yorker, Elliot Ackerman reflects on two photographs that bookend his experience of the Iraq War: one taken with his mentor, Major Douglas Zembiec, on the day of his Marine Corps commissioning, and another, taken a decade later, of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani at a battlefield in northern Iraq.
A Photograph on the USS Constitution
Ackerman describes the picture from May, 2003, of himself and Zembiec in dress blues aboard the USS Constitution just after Zembiec pinned his lieutenant's bars, a moment of pride before both men would go on to fight, and be wounded, in Fallujah.
The Death of "The Unapologetic Warrior"
Ackerman recounts Zembiec's later deployment to Baghdad as a C.I.A. adviser, and his death in a 2007 raid against a Shiite militia in Sadr City, framing Zembiec's own words about purpose and sacrifice against the manner of his loss.
A Second Photograph, Years Later
Ackerman describes coming across a photograph of Qassem Suleimani at the liberation of Amerli in 2014, and reflects on the irony that Suleimani's forces relied on the same American air power his militias once evaded in Sadr City, near the landing zone later named for Zembiec.
Read the Original Article
This essay originally appeared in The New Yorker.