By Donald R. Winslow
© 2009 News Photographer magazine
DOVER, DE (March 5, 2006) – In the last minutes of Sunday night the media watched as the first flag-draped coffin carrying the body of a fallen American soldier came home to Dover Air Force Base after the Pentagon took action to lift an 18-year ban on covering the country's returning war dead.
With the family's permission, photographers and reporters watched as the body of U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers, 30, of Hopewell, VA, in a standard military silver metal coffin covered by a neatly secured American flag, was carried off a military transport aircraft.
Among the photographers covering the event were Joshua Roberts shooting for Reuters, and Evan Vucci of the Associated Press. Their photos moved first on the networks around 11:47 p.m. Eastern time.
Brendan Smialowski covered the return for The New York Times - his photo of the casket coming off the plane fronted the Times Web site shortly after midnight - and Nikki Kahn covered it for The Washington Post. Mike Connor was there shooting for The Washington Times, and Mark Wilson was shooting for Getty Images.
An eight-member team wearing white gloves and camouflage battle fatigues carried the flag-draped casket from a large white airplane during a solemn ceremony on a cool, clear night, Associated Press writer Randall Chase wrote from the scene shortly after midnight.
The airman's wife and other family members were present, Chase said, and the ceremony took about 20 minutes.
"We were about fifty to sixty feet from the casket," Roberts told News Photographer magazine as he drove back to Washington from Dover around 1 a.m. ET after filing his pictures through the SIngapore desk.
The photographer said it was "breezy, just enough to put a chill on the night."
The photographers didn't used strobes, Roberts said, but instead shot using the tarmac's ambient light.
"It was those mercury vapor airport lights," Roberts said, and using 1600 ISO it was about a 60th at f2.8. "They were moving slow enough that the shutter speed was sufficient."
Roberts said that while he was driving to Dover on Sunday night, he kept thinking about how solemn the ceremony is that he was about to photograph. His own father is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, so he's familiar with the dignified and respectful manner in which military funerals and body transfers are traditionally conducted.
"But then once I started shooting pictures, it was more 'in the moment" and I thought, 'This needs to be recorded well.' Since I was shooting from just one position, I tried to get as many different 'looks' as possible (verticals, horizontals, wide shots)."
Roberts said the photographers were on the left side of the 747, toward the rear, and after they were in position - but before the casket was carried out - the soldier's family members were brought up close to the plane in a van.
"They were off to our right," Roberts said. "They stood on the other side of the van, the van blocked our view of them as they watched." After the transfer the family got back in the van and departed, unseen.
"While this was so sad for the family, a terrible thing, I'm so very grateful that they said 'yes' to letting the return be photographed," Roberts said. "I think that it's important that while we're in wars in two different countries to show this aspect of the story. And to the credit of the military, they take this sort of thing very seriously. This isn't just some piece of cargo they're handling."
The New York Times said tonight that in the hours leading up to the transfer of Myers' body to Dover, Air Force officials sought and received permission from the airman's family for the media to witness his homecoming.
The arrival of his body was the first time a service member killed in battle has been welcomed home publicly in the almost two decades since the ban took effect.
Myers was killed April 4 near Helmand Provice in Afghanistan when he was hit with an improvised explosive device, according to the Department of Defense.
In February the National Press Photographers Association called on President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates to lift the Dover photography ban.
Letters from NPPA president Bob Carey and NPPA's general counsel Mickey H. Osterreicher to Obama and Gates said, "We believe that the Department of Defense ban on media coverage of the return of our fallen heroes, which in turn prevents the public from seeing images of these events, violates the very principles of free speech and free exchange of ideas, for which these very heros have died."
The fallen airman was a member of the 48th Civil Engineer Squadron based in Lakenheath, England. Last year Myers was awarded with the Bronze Star for bravery for his actions in combat during Operation Enduring Freedom, the DOD said when announcing his death.
The Pentagon's new policy for media coverage of a fallen soldier's return to Dover is based on seeking permission from the victim's family. If they grant permission, then the coverage of that soldier's casket will be allowed. If several caskets arrive on the same flight, coverage will be allowed only for those whose families have given permission, the DOD says.
The coverage of Myers' return is the first since the Obama administration reviewed and lifted a ban on media coverage of America's returning war casualties to the Dover Air Force Base mortuary facilities. The ban was put in place by the George H.W. Bush administration in 1991 during the Persian Gulf War. Critics said Bush banned media coverage to "hide the true cost of war" and to stem the tide of any possible turn in public opinion against the war. The Bush administration justified the ban as a means of "sparing the soldiers' families from anguish."
During the Vietnam War the daily pictures of so many flag-covered caskets coming back to the tarmac in Dover helped shift America's attitude to be against the war, so much so that the Pentagon began referring to how the public might react to a military operation's casualties as "the Dover test."
During the war in Iraq and Afghanistan the George W. Bush administration continued the ban for the duration of its time in office, and it was only when President Obama was elected that he told journalists during the new president's first live televised news conference from the White House that he had ordered Secretary of Defense Gates to review the policy with an eye toward lifting the ban.
The new policy for Dover media coverage was shaped after the policy used by the military at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, across the Potomac River from the White House and adjacent to the west perimeter of the Pentagon, historically the nation's premier burial ground for war heros and those from epic battles dating back to the Civil War. Defense Secretary Gates said that Arlington's policy for media coverage has always been to seek the family's permission, and if the family consents then reporters and photographers have witnessed the ceremonies from a respectful distance while escorted by military public affairs officers, and that he believed a similar set of rules should work for Dover as well.
Vice President Joe Biden, who for many years was a Senator representing Delaware, was strongly opposed to the Pentagon ban on media coverage of returning war dead. "The past practice didn't account for a family's wishes and I believed that was wrong," Biden said before the ban was lifted. "I have always believed that the decision as to how to honor our fallen heroes should be left up to the families." Biden also said he thought the ban was "shameful" and that America's war heros were being "snuck back into the country under the cover of night."
