A Conversation with Photographer Bruce Haley

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

BH: …you know, not some big leaf you’re going have an allergic reaction to.

UR: Before you were a photographer, you were with the Army Special Forces, right?

BH: I was with the 82nd Airborne for a while and I was an instructor at the reconnaissance commando school at Fort Bragg—I had that kind of stuff in my background. Then I was a cop for a while and I was on a S.W.A.T team. Photography was just kind of a hobby. As I became disenchanted with what I was doing at the time I decided to combine all those aspects of my background with my hobby.

UR: How much did you draw on your military and police training when you were doing your work in Afghanistan or in Burma?

BH: Immensely! The upper hand right off the bat is understanding how all those weapons delivery systems work. It doesn’t always save you, but it helps to know how this stuff works.

UR: Did you ever run in to a situation where you just felt like you were better trained and the fighters you were following were doing it all wrong?

BH: In some cases, yeah. In Afghanistan—I mean, that was just absurd. We had less than 20 people, most of them under 18. They were armed with AK-47s and a couple of RPGs and one single-tube rocket launcher and they attacked a Soviet base fortified with dug-in tanks and heavy artillery! I had not experience at the time; it was my first gig. There were like four of us [photographers and journalists]. We were up in this mountain hut in Afghanistan and we were pressing the commander to send us all on some mission or something.

We always blame it on the British journalist because he committed, like, the ultimate atrocity in the eyes of the Afghans: he farted during the Commander’s meal. You don’t do that. The commander and all his men basically got up from the dinner table with their meals and walked out. That night they decided to send us on this mission—it was really bad, so we all figured it was due to this guy.

So this little ragtag group attacked the Soviet base. We went along this dry riverbed. They had these little crevices dug into the riverbank. You could look down this big sloping, mined area and there was the base. So they get in these positions and they set up this single-tube rocket launcher. They pray and they do the Allahu Akbar thing and press the little switch to start the attack and nothing happens. So there’s another ten minutes of farting around. So they think they’ve got it fixed and they do the Allahu Akbar thing again. They press the switch and nothing happens. I’m sitting there, going: Shit! This is ridiculous!

I know the Soviets know we’re there. There’s no way they could have missed this. So these guys—it must have taken them 30 or 40 minutes to get this thing figured out. So they finally press the switch and BOOM!—this dinky little single-tube rocket launcher fires. It arcs out and lands like two-thirds of the way to the base. It doesn’t even reach the friggin’ base after all of this! And the Soviets—half of these guys are probably drunk, sitting in their positions with the heavy artillery—I’m sure they were getting the biggest kick in the world out of this. They’re just waiting: “Ivan! We’re going to fuck with these guys. We’re just going to wait.” And the second the Mujahedeen fires this little rocket launcher, these guys answered back with this massive friggin’ artillery shell that landed right in the middle of us. They had the coordinates of the position dialed in before they even fired their first shot. This thing came in and took out this tree that was behind me.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print