Ever since Anderson died, I’ve been dreaming vividly, dreams I remember for days.  It opened my eyes wider, put me more in the here and now, like a deep breath on a cold morning in a strange place.
I went on a patrol Feb. 27, 2005 with a company that split into three teams - each team set up a checkpoint on a road in southeast Baghdad, a loosely populated, quasi-industrial part of the city.  At night, the roads were almost empty. The teams stopped cars, searched them for bombs and guns, asked some questions, and sent them on their way.
After an hour of this, we picked up and moved to another road, a lonely dirt strip with a shit river on one side, a junkyard on the other.  A small dog, chained up in a deep shadow on the side of the road, howled at us with anger and pain.  All of our lights were out; a line of armored Humvees, a tank-like creature (a FASV for the militarily inclined) and thirty soldiers waited in the dark, except for the guy standing in the middle of the road with a flashlight to wave cars down.  Three distinct species of noisy frog competed with the dog for our ears’ attention while we peered into the darkness, watching.
A pair of headlights and the sound of an overworked engine came to us from the road leading to the city, coming fast.
The flashlight was not getting their attention so warning shots went off, gleaming tracers that arc and twist and dive through the air - a beautiful thing to watch when they’re yours.  Screeching tires, four doors pop open hands in the air, driver shouts proudly, “Meesta, I am drrrink!”
The drunk Muslim men weaved slowly away after the encounter, still seeming happy to be alive and wasted in Baghdad.
At the same time, two miles away, another team was in the same position - a speeding car coming toward them in the dark.  Shots came from everywhere, and Anderson fell, shot through the stomach from one side to the other.  A huge machine gun on the FASV ended the exchange, obliterated the car and everything in it.  It shuddered to a halt and they tried to piece together what happened, as the medics tried to stop the river from his aorta.
No one knows for sure what happened, whether the Iraqi shot him, or whether he moved into the line of fire or what.
The sound of confusion and anguish coming from the little green box made the dog and the frogs and the crickets and the clanking of our iron weapons disappear.
I photographed in the moonlight, no flash allowed, and quietly conducted interviews, scribbling with a red lens penlight in my teeth.
There are questions from the man and questions from me.
The teams linked together again and drove back to the base. The deafening rattle in the belly of the FASV made conversation impossible, faraway stares on men’s faces, lit by dim green light.
Your perception of meaningless noise and your tolerance of the inane comes back slowly, through the days, the stare fades and your level of awareness does too.  I understand why people are drawn to this terrible work, and I’m sure there will always be a supply of those willing to go to war for rulers to manipulate.
This month’s magazine is almost ready to go to print - I think it looks pretty good.  We print about 3500 of them, distribute 2500 here, send the rest to the families back at Fort Stewart.  Won the Army photojournalism contest again this year for covering a four-day Civil War reenactment in Florida, dressed as a Georgia reb and carrying my Nikon D2H in a tarred canvas haversack.  Good times.
Thanks to everyone for writing me.  Things are good.
Your Correspondent in Baghdad,
Ben