The Shot

by Gary Ramage

  We flew out again on the day of the ceremony, and when we landed in Rome Matt and I went our separate ways. He had time off in Rome with his wife Paula, and I flew on to Kuwait City, hauling my full photographer kit and a combat helmet.

  The plan was I’d be met at the airport by Pup, and he’d take me under his wing. But while I was taking off from Rome the invasion of Iraq began, and when I landed there was no Pup and no communications with him – there was a war on, so he had other things to do. I just went into photographer mode, and walked up to the first person who looked military, a large, heavily built American. I explained the situation and he nodded and said, ‘I’m not in the army, but I work for Halliburton.’ Something to do with oil, then, I figured. But before I could respond he continued, ‘Actually, my boss is an Australian – I’ll call him and see what he says.’

  This big Yank got on the phone, nodded a bit and then handed the phone to me.

  ‘G’day,’ came this voice down the line. ‘Remember me from Somalia?’

  It was an Aussie officer I’d met more than a decade before, and he remembered me. So the big Yank loaded me into the Chev Suburban and drove me to the Hyatt, where I had a meeting with his Aussie boss, who was now managing the Halliburton operation out of Kuwait City. That meant he controlled all the US Army’s food service, accommodations and mobile latrines and washrooms. He asked me, ‘Do you know Erica Collins?’

  And I said, ‘Fuck off, I knew her in Timor when she was a logistics officer.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘well now she’s a logistics manager for Halliburton, and she’s about to go into Baghdad.’ On the TV sets around the Hyatt, we could see that Baghdad had just fallen. ‘Sit tight and let’s see what I can do for you once Erica is back.’

  For four days I stayed in a suite in the Hyatt that was as big as my house. Early on the fifth day, I woke before dawn and made a coffee, and the call came to saddle up for Baghdad. Me and this other American got into the Chev and, with an MP escort of two Humvees, we motored across Iraq at very high speed on a freeway through the desert. We got into Baghdad before nightfall. There was a lot of damage, but the city wasn’t what you’d call destroyed. There was power to quite a few buildings by the time we arrived and some of the cell towers were working. It was a beaten city, but not a devastated one. And there was action, lots of action: gunfire ringing out and vehicles charging around with squealing tyres. We didn’t really know where to put ourselves because the MP escort had left and neither of us was armed. So we tucked ourselves out of the way and slept in the Chev down by the Tigris. In the morning I stepped out for a piss and looked across the river to the plumes of smoke spewing into the desert sky. When I returned to the Chev, it was gone and all my gear with it. I was fucked.

  I took a few deep breaths and wondered what I was going to do. I was alone, abandoned, without any gear or wallet or passport. In a war zone. As it occurred to me that yes, this time Ramage had pushed the envelope too far, around the corner came my travelling companion. He’d asked directions, and now he knew how to get to the US command HQ.

  As the sun rose we drove through the streets, seeing in daylight what we couldn’t at night. People ran and fast- walked everywhere. Men shouted, radios crackled, enormous trucks with portable generators, portable kitchens, portable telecoms exchanges were being waved through. There were guns and soldiers everywhere and the buildings occupied by the coalition were obvious from the sandbag walls being built by fleets of forklifts. Amazingly, I was in Baghdad. The energy was frenetic, with the sound of hundreds of large diesel engines shaking the air.

  We got to the American HQ, which was located in a white marble building also known as Saddam’s Palace. It was huge and vulgar. I walked down a corridor that was all marble and mirrors, surprisingly untroubled by security. Approaching a bunch of Yanks, I asked where their media unit was. When I found it – a more salubrious media office than any I’ve seen before or since – I introduced myself and asked if they knew Pup. Yes, they knew Pup; he was in another palace. They gave me a cot and told me to relax until they could take me over there. I wandered off for a piss and I walked straight into Paul Bernard, a British Army media officer I knew from my exchange in Germany.

  We greeted each other warmly, and he said he was headed over to the Aussie camp and I could go with him. We drove over there in convoy – because they did not want to fly – and I was directed to an enormous room lined with white marble and with massive crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. The place was buzzing with Aussies in desert cam, and I noted a couple of blokes I knew: my good mate and fellow photographer Mark Dowling from 6 RAR, who I’d played combined forces soccer with, and photographer Corporal Darren Hilder. I walked up to Pup, who had his broad back to me, and tapped him on the shoulder.

  He turned, saw me and his jaw dropped to the floor. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

  At the same time, Darren said something like, ‘Fuck – it’s Ramo!’

  The commotion attracted the attention of the RAAF chief of staff, who was running the joint.

  ‘What are you doing in my HQ?’ he screamed at me. Then he yelled at Pup. And then he ordered me to get out.

  Pup said, ‘He’s one of ours, you can’t kick him onto the streets of Baghdad.’

  But the COS pointed at the door.

  So Pup assigned Mark and Darren to escort me to their quarters while Pup got to work on what to do with me. The poor bugger – Pup had tried to contact me once the invasion was on, to tell me not to come. But I’d been in transit from Gallipoli and didn’t get the message. In any event, I wasn’t supposed to be able to get into Baghdad.

  After a couple of days in the Aussie media quarters, Pup had the Airfield Defence Guards give me an armed escort (called a PSD, or personal security detail) to the airport. They came into the palace with their big strap holsters and helmets, and a flight lieutenant explained the route and what was going to happen. They led me to their army Land Rover and we drove to the airport through incredible scenes. So here I was, being driven to what I assumed would be a court martial, and I had my camera out and was shooting these amazing sights: a street where one building had been reduced to a heap of rubble while the buildings on either side were intact; armadas of tanks around the airport; burnt-out Iraqi military vehicles; plumes of smoke rising into the clear blue sky.

  The Defence Guards took me to the civilian terminal of the airport, watched me check in for a flight into Kuwait City and then Sydney, and waited for me to go through the security gates. I was dressed in my civvies through all of this and not feeling on top of the world. I was thirty-seven, and I’d been in the army for almost twenty years. It was my life – they’d taught me my trade and given me one of the most interesting jobs you could ever do. And I’d royally screwed it up.

  When I got off the plane in Sydney, I rang Barnsey in Canberra and he said, ‘Whatever you do, mate, don’t come to Canberra. Don’t even think about it.’

  So I holed up in the Lane Cove apartment with Mel for a few weeks, on leave. It should have been great to see Mel, but I was back to my post-deployment blues and I was incommunicative. And as I retreated inside myself, I started drinking, and that made me more inclined to be left alone with my thoughts. It was history repeating – I’d been here before, I knew the signs and I knew where it led. And I couldn’t pull out of it.

  Meantime, my case had gone all the way up to the Chief of the Defence Force, General Peter Cosgrove. Also involved in the debate about what to do with me was Brigadier Maurie McNarn – commanding the Australian forces in Iraq – and the Chief of Army, General Ken Gillespie. Basically, that’s a fancy way of saying I was in deep shit. In these kind of situations, the decision-making usually goes all the way up the chain of command, because there’s a case for a court martial and the military hierarchy allows the top guy to make the final determination.

  Ken Gillespie called it ill-disciplined behaviour from a warrant officer – and, worse, it was selfish and dangerous
to other diggers when there was a war on. He wanted me punished. I argued that I’d gone through all the directives, looking for one that would preclude my going in as a freelancer, but I was simply advised there was a CDF directive stating it was not allowed. I didn’t seek an army lawyer because I hadn’t been issued a court martial. I made my case and I let it be known that I had a letter of passage from Pup, a navy commander and a young PR captain giving me authority to travel to Kuwait, to get a visa and to do freelance photography work for the ADF on an embedded basis.

  In the end, they accepted the letter from Pup – and besides, they’d already had a case of the RAN clearance divers earning money on the side by taking a private American contract to clear one of the Iraqi harbours in the Persian Gulf for heavy shipping. If they court-martialled me they’d have to court-martial the clearance divers too. And the Australian military doesn’t like that kind of attention when it’s fighting wars on two fronts, which it was in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  After two weeks sulking in Sydney, wondering what was next for me, I was sent as far away from Australia as possible without sending me to the Middle East. I was off to the Solomons.

  12

  Becoming a Civilian

  So, another conflict zone: the eighth in ten years. By now, your colleagues start to assume that you’re good at this, but there’s no real knack, just a lot of focus and planning about how to get the best shots. In my case, I immediately – before I even land in the place – corral my resources and try to work out what I need to get the best material. In all of these places, there are resources you control yourself, and resources you need to build with alliances. By now I was travelling into conflict zones with a serious amount of equipment: three camera bodies, five lenses, lots of batteries and several rechargers. I was also carrying an INMARSAT sat-phone, a laptop and pads and pens. These were the resources I could control. Other support resources were supplied by the quartermasters. It was the outside resources I had to cultivate, often before I even left Australia, that could make the real difference.

  For instance, when you enter a conflict zone you need to be able to travel widely. So you make friends with the transport corps boys and girls, because you need their Land Rovers and drivers, or you get close to the patrol leaders, or the MPs or the federal police, or whoever else has vehicles and access. One of the big differences between a good portfolio of work and a great one is access. And to get the best access, you need to get close to the guys with the helicopters. Invariably, this means befriending the pilots and the loadmasters, and it means doing something for them. If you can get some shots of a helicopter crew doing good work in your first week in the conflict zone and it gets a run in the papers (with their names spelled correctly), then you have your photographer’s bus for as long as those guys are around. And speaking of resources, start your doxycycline a couple of days before you go into a malaria zone like the Solomons. There may be a bit of nausea and some bad dreams, but it beats malaria. And you get a great tan.

  I was part of the advance party that flew into Honiara. Australia had committed to a project called RAMSI (Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands) with a bunch of other Pacific nations. The task was to keep the peace between rival factions (one of which had instigated a coup), disarm the Guadalcanal militants and open police posts in areas where it had not been possible for the last five or six years.

  When we stepped off the C-130 Hercules, my old mate David Gray from Reuters was there with other Aussie media to greet us. Dave would later help me out in the transition from the military way of doing things to that of a news photographer. This is the last great resource that all photographers need on their side: professional peers and friends, people who have your back and are generous with their time and ideas. You have to reciprocate, but the bonds you form in these places will last forever.

  My new digs in the Solomons was a hotel in Honiara. I was told I was going to manage the imagery back to Defence PR in Canberra: being kept at arm’s length from field work was my punishment for the Iraq snafu. The unit was headed by Major Jeff Squire and his 2IC, Captain Graham Henley. Jeff was a former armoured officer who was a staff officer on ops due to his rank, and Graham was a Vietnam veteran from the Q store stream. The other team members were very junior.

  I had clashed with Henley several times prior to deploying; he couldn’t let my history in Iraq go. But now we were in a conflict zone and I was the only one in the team with a track record in such an environment. When you’re in a place where bad decisions can get people hurt or killed, you just have to ask the guy who’s done it before.

  The clash with Henley ended one night in a kitchen, our makeshift work area in the HQ, with me losing my temper. I snapped and asked him to step outside. To his credit, he calmed everybody and I’m glad he did, because I was so angry it would have ended very badly for me.

  After that blow-up, we tolerated each other a lot better, but I could sense the end coming. The main group stayed in Honiara for several weeks and then flew out, leaving me there to file pictures and video for another five months. When they left I took over the photographic role (no longer just sending back other photographers’ work to Australia) and I’d already done the groundwork with the Aussie and Kiwi helicopter crews. So I was saddling up with them every morning and flying all over the islands, doing whatever they were doing – which was a lot of recon with no real action. I clocked so many hours with those guys that when it was time for me to go, we had a soft drink and they awarded me ‘wings’ because of the amount of flying hours I had accrued with them.

  I flew back to Australia in early November, was given a week off, and spent as much of it as I could in Sydney with Mel. She still had to work but we had a few chats about the future and what was going to happen with the army. My behaviour wasn’t making her feel secure as I was still dealing with the Iraq issue after being separated from her for seven months. I was due to go back to work at the JPAU in Canberra, but before that happened I got a call from Jeff Squire, who said we had to go out to see Barnesy at his house in Cooma. The three of us had to work out what came next after the Iraq affair.

  I arrived in Canberra and taxied to Fairbairn. Jeff and I got in a car and drove to Cooma, a little more than an hour away. We made pleasant small talk and when we sat down to coffee at Barnesy’s place, I was basically waiting for what was to come. Barnsey said I couldn’t be regimental sergeant major at the JPAU because I’d undermined my own authority with that trip to Iraq. I told them I’d resign that day, and then asked if I could go. It was their only option really, as I had managed to avoid the court martial and they still had to punish me and make an example so no one else would do it in the future. Being much older and wiser now, and in hindsight, I would still do it all again. They both did me a big favour. If I had not gone to Iraq as a freelancer I would not be where I am now. I always said I would leave before I became a cranky old warrant officer.

  I returned to Sydney straight away. I had eighteen months’ long service leave owing, and a tonne of recreational leave from twenty years’ service in the army. It gave me some time to start renovations on our Lane Cove flat. Mel was still working at Taronga Zoo and she was my support through those first couple of months out of the army, when everything seemed confusing and overwhelming.

  I spent much of 2004 mucking around. I went overseas, drove around Australia a bit and thought about what I wanted to do. In fact, it was obvious: I loved being a photographer, I’d just moved on from doing it with the army.

  In October 2004 I rang Andrew Darby, the picture editor at The Daily Telegraph in Sydney. I knew him from my time in Timor; I’d been sending photos direct to his desk and even liaised with him and taken suggestions as to what he wanted. He’d run my shot of the digger with the local boy on the Dili beach on the front page, and he’d run some of the material that I’d taken while freelancing in Iraq. So I felt Darbs and I had a similar sense of what made a good picture, but I still had a lot to learn.

&nbs
p; I told him what had happened with the army, and he was amazed to hear that I was doing nothing with a camera. He got back to me the next day and said he could put me on work experience for two weeks. After one week he gave me a job. The stirrer Ramage had met with the tabloid Tele, and we got along just fine.

  I felt like I’d come home.

  ***

  Darbs had more faith in me than I had in myself. I was paired with Mark McCormack, a really good News Ltd1 photographer who these days is the picture editor at the Cairns Post. Mark put me through my paces and I owe him a great debt. He knew I was technically proficient, so he just focused on giving me the tasty bits, the inside tips on doing a variety of gigs. He took me to all sorts of shoots: the courtroom, police raids, corporate announcements, paparazzi chases, Parliament and just around-town shots. I watched him closely and saw the lenses he used and his flash settings, and most importantly his positioning. I knew how to position for the best shot, but he knew how to put himself in the best slot among other photographers and journalists.

  It’s an art I learned quickly, because in newspapers you have to get the shot. There were no excuses, no second chances, no conciliatory pats on the back if you turned up empty-handed. At News Ltd, if you didn’t have the shot then you shouldn’t be back in the newsroom. In the army, I didn’t have to deal with the media scrum, but for press professionals it’s a crucial skill. If you’re on the wrong side of the courtroom steps and the circus veers off away from you, you’re screwed. If you get caught behind a TV crew and the prey shuts the car door before you can shoot, you’re screwed. So I focused on my positioning very early and I became a planner. Famously so, in some people’s eyes. There was the time at Parliament House in Canberra when Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott were retiring, and I wanted to get the shot of them walking out of the elevator. In my mind that was the shot. So I snuck upstairs and walked with them to the elevator, put myself into the elevator with them where I wasn’t allowed to photograph. And when the elevator opened two floors down, I got in front of them and walked backwards out into the media scrum with my camera going, so I got the best shots and everyone else got shots of Ramage’s back.