The Tao of War Photography

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48. Pleasant footnote to #47: several months later you may be surprised when your confiscated film arrives by post, completely processed and intact, with a small printed note bearing a quite regal-looking seal and the words “With Compliments of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.”

49. Equation: the number of days your average group of Thai border police will spend trying to catch you sneaking back into their country is directly proportional to the amount of cross-border black market bribe money they’ve taken in that month.

50. Equation: the number of journalists covering any given conflict is directly proportional to the proximity of comfortable lodging and booze.

51. Sometimes small things REALLY mean a lot: should you be swept away in a raging monsoon-fed river and repeatedly pulled underwater, bashed against rocks, etc. etc., until you’re choking for air and fighting unconsciousness, be thankful for that long piece of bamboo arching into the river that provides something (albeit very slippery and difficult) to hang onto and eventually save yourself.

52. Lesson learned from #51: don’t let your big stupid ass get swept away in the river in the first place.

53. Accept the inevitable:  if your agency syndicates a 30-picture set worldwide, rest assured that the five photos you like least will be published eons before your favorite five ever see the light of day.

54. Back to war:  if you’ve become adept at dodging unwanted social invitations back home, apply this skill when you’re asked along on a kamikaze mission with ill-equipped teenage soldiers who are hopelessly outnumbered.

55. The downside to the advice in #54 is that you usually don’t realize that you’ve tagged along on a kamikaze mission until things truly turn to shit and you can’t get the hell out because you’re pinned down. Now is a good time to refer back to #1.

56. Example of a kamikaze mission that I somehow (see #13) survived: a score of mostly teenaged mujahideen, armed only with AK-47s, the odd RPG-7, and one single-tube rocket launcher with a faulty firing mechanism, attack a Soviet-occupied base defended by tanks, field artillery pieces, and nearby rotary- and fixed-wing air support.

57. (Also: if the soldiers you are accompanying believe that to die a martyr’s death admits them instantly to Paradise, while you believe that to die a war photographer’s death probably just hurts a lot, these irreconcilable differences should give you pause for reflection).

58. If your group initiates an attack with an indirect-fire round that lands nowhere near its intended target, and the opposing side immediately answers by planting a huge artillery shell precisely into your midst, guess what: the position that you’re attacking from is already on their ‘speed-dial’ under “Reach Out and Touch Someone” (if you don’t understand this, see #18).

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