Kevin Sites: The Soccer War

Kevin Sites writes an interesting diary entry on the problems of being a war journalist.

An extract: I know what a body looks like after it's been hit with mortar fragments, improvised bombs, 7.62 rounds from an AK-47 and 5.56 rounds from an M16 or an M4. I know what a human head looks like after it's exploded from a sniper shot. I've seen bodies burned, blown apart, submerged in cars and wrapped around tall trees from the force of a tsunami.

Here's the problem, as any soldier, police homicide detective, doctor or coroner will tell you: after a while that pit in your stomach you first feel when you confront the aftermath of violent death goes away. The flood of emotions, the pondering, "what if it were my child, parent, friend, me?" stops. Soon you feel nothing at all.

When the security guard pulled out the stainless steel tables from the morgue vault holding the bodies of the children, I felt nothing. Well, not exactly. I felt bad, and correctly so, that I was part of a media horde descending on people during their most intimate moments of grief. I justified it, as I have had to in the past, with the belief that the world needs to understand the victimizations of war.

During a discussion about this occupational hazard, a close friend told me that the numbness was the survival instinct needed to do the job at the moment that counts, the strength necessary to hold it together to complete the task.

And while that may be true, there are times, like when my camera flash is going off within the grimy, white tile room of that Kashmir morgue, that I wish I felt something — something for those children still dressed like children, in T-shirts, jeans and sneakers despite their shredded bodies and burnt faces.