By: Charles Geraci Knight Ridder's launch today of a powerful online multimedia package chronicling the last two weeks of 12 U.S. Marines appears seamless, but the project did not come easy for the newspaper chain's famed war correspondent Joseph L. Galloway. "This was the hardest thing I've ever written or edited," he admits. "I sat in a busy newsroom with tears streaming down my face."
Galloway, a decorated veteran, co-author of the book "We Were Soldiers Once... and Young" and an embedded reporter in Iraq last year, added, "The Pentagon puts out, on its Web site, every day the names of casualties in Iraq but it's very one-dimensional. It seemed to me it was time to paint a real portrait of a real human being who's lost his life in this war."
He told E&P he wants the country to know "who it is losing when the names are printed in a little box in the paper or flash across on a Web site."
Galloway co-wrote the lead print article for the package, which appeared in Knight Ridder papers across the country on Sunday, based partly on classified military documents detailing how the 12 soldiers, from a unit based at Camp Pendleton, Calif., died in Iraq. The online package includes video, audio, interviews with family members, letters and photographs. (See related story on the project at E&P Online.)
He stressed that political opinions on the war did not seep into this story. Galloway has been openly critical of the aftermath of the Iraq war in his weekly column. "This package is completely without politics," he said. "This package is about human beings."
Galloway takes issue with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's recent use of the word "fungible" to describe U.S. soldiers. "Webster defines 'fungible' as 'interchangeable.' This package is proof they're not interchangeable," he says. "They are not spare parts."
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