Shadowing Practice: World's Most Dangerous Paper Route | Full Documentary - Learn English Speaking with Video
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The End away from his soil, his paper is there with him.
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This is their hometown paper away from home.
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President Kennedy died at 1 p.m.
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Central Korea.
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It has helped shape American history by reporting it, often from the front lines.
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I shall resign.
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From its brief appearance during the Civil War to its current online platform,
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the daily newspaper Stars and Stripes has kept generations of American service members deployed around the world connected to home.
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Let me tell you how important it was in 67, 68.
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No Internet, no cell phone.
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It was the lifeline.
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It's a newspaper by the military, for the military, and its unique mission of independently reporting on issues important to sailors,
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soldiers, marines, and airmen has often been met with attempts at censorship and suppression.
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We are not a mouthpiece for the military.
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In fact, we're the exact opposite.
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The soldiers, they don't want you to tell a good story.
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They just want you to tell the truth.
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Over the years, many courageous editors and reporters have fiercely protected Stripe's independence, even if sometimes the truth hurt.
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During the Vietnam conflict, there was a lot of civil disobedience, and for those of us in uniform, it's pretty painful to read about it.
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Getting stories from the battlefield can be harrowing, even deadly.
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A lot of journalists have been killed in these wars.
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When I came back from Vietnam, there were seven of us left alive.
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Yet since 1942, Stars and Stripes has been printed like a hometown newspaper for the troops,
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and then delivered along the world's most dangerous paper route.
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That's me, Steve Croft.
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In 1968, I was drafted into the United States Army.
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At that time, it was pretty clear that I would be sent to Vietnam.
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So before I had to report, I enlisted and managed to get myself into public information.
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I spent 10 months with the 25th Infantry Division before it was redeployed.
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And then I had a choice between going to Armed Forces Network or to Stars and Stripes,
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and I picked Stars and Stripes primarily because it was an independent newspaper in Saigon.
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Everybody read.
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Everybody.
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It was a good newspaper.
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That was the news source for Vietnam.
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That's what we had.
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You didn't have television news.
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You couldn't see it.
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And when you'd come in from patrol or you'd get your rations delivered out in the field, the helicopter would come in, and there'd be a few copies of Stars and Stripes, normally, on the helicopter.
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Maybe you remember this guy, my dear friend and 60 Minutes colleague, Andy Rooney.
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Like me, Andy got his start as a journalist reporting for Stars and Stripes.
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Often embedded with bomber units over Europe, Andy covered some of the most historic and dramatic moments of World War II.
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For me, reporting for Stars and Stripes in Vietnam was a fantastic assignment.
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I was allowed to be any place in the country at any time, which was very unusual.
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And I had a priority in terms of getting helicopters.
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We did not wear military uniforms that showed our rank.
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We wore correspondence uniforms.
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So it was very much the frustration sometimes of command people that I didn't answer to them.
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The lieutenant colonel at the Da Nang Press Center used to call up all the time
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and complain about Stars and Stripes people because they didn't salute him.
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And we were not required to salute anybody.
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It's always been a unique relationship between Stars and Stripes and its owner, the Department of Defense.
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Max Lederer is the current publisher.
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Our charter is to file the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and report independently,
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unbiasedly, and accurately about the actions of the Department of Defense.
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I like to use an example.
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The CEO of IBM said, let's create a newspaper, and I'm going to pay for that newspaper, I'm going to staff that newspaper, I'm going to give that newspaper access.
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How long does that newspaper last the first time they write an article criticizing what the CEO for IBM does?
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That's what Stars and Stripes does.
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I remember the first time that really I had anybody shooting at me in Vietnam.
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Went out on a marine patrol and we were ambushed.
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After the fire had stopped, the Vietnamese officers in command started dragging people out of their hooches and one of them was a woman,
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and they kept holding her head underwater to try and get her to talk.
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I took pictures.
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I wrote a story.
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It did not run.
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I think it was killed at the top.
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Problem, obviously, was the fact that it was the behavior of the Vietnamese officers.
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You know, it was 1971, and most of the news on the front page of Stars and Stripes in Vietnam was the turmoil at home, not the fighting in Vietnam.
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Over the years, Congress realized the danger of Defense Department interference with the newspaper.
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Current Stripes editor Kerry Leonard was an Army Special Forces medic before spending 28 years with the Associated Press.
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Long before I came here, I think they had, at times, military commanders that were editors, and that was a problem.
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Congress realized that there was a danger of censorship in there, so they made it worth it.
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We've got an ombudsman now whose only job is to report
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to Congress once a year about whether there's been any interference in our editorial freedoms.
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In the ten years I've been here, I don't think there's been a single time when the military inappropriately tried to influence the story.
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There are a lot of stories in Stars and Stripes about abuses within the Pentagon.
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They're being critical of the military, providing, you know, that First Amendment protection where you can push back against power, and that's a good thing.
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There are lots of developments in the battlefield and beyond that make you wince.
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There are setbacks, there are mistakes, there are challenges.
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The battlefield in particular is a pretty unforgiving place.
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I think Stars and Stripes over the years, again, not just in Afghanistan, but nearly four years I spent in Iraq, the year in the Balkans,
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Central America, Haiti, Kuwait, and so forth, sought to get the facts right,
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is careful about releasing details that might, in fact, give the enemy some advantage.
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They're quite sensitive, I think, to that, but they're also going to get the facts out.
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And there was the time back in 1945 when another four-star general stood up for us.
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Bill Malden's wildly popular Stars and Stripes cartoon, cartoon, Willie and Joe, featured unshaven and unkempt fictional GIs.
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When Malden's characters poked fun at General George Patton's insistence on spit and polish for men in combat, the general became incensed.
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Bill Malden has called the General Patton's office and General Patton said, how dare you write this cartoon?
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You'll stop doing this.
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He politely responded, yes sir, and then General Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, stepped in and said, no,
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you do your job and General Patton will not bother you again.
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And he continued on to write his Willie and Joe cartoon from there on.
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Bill Mulden would go on to win the Pulitzer Prize for his brilliant work on Willie and Joe for Stars and Stripes.
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Am I a brave guy?
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No. John Olson always wanted to be a war photographer.
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He was drafted and sent to Vietnam three years before I was.
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He was promised he could take pictures for Stars and Stripes if he extended his tour.
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Working for Stars and Stripes was fabulous, because they let me go where I wanted to go, do what I wanted to do.
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And there were six reporters there and myself.
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And the reporter's attitude was, he can go wherever he wants to go, do whatever he wants to do, as long as we don't have to go with him.
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Because they knew if they'd come with me, they'd get shot at.
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The first combat mission I went on was with the 1st Cavalry Division.
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It was a big operation.
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And as we took off and flew toward the LZ, the Air Force aircraft, you could see them come over our heads and drop napalm.
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And the helicopter gunships strafing the landing zone.
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Two ships had been shot down.
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There was heavy firing.
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army units that had got on the ground in the first wave, heading toward the wood line, and I made pictures.
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And there's a beauty about being a photographer.
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In the middle of the worst of times, in the middle of total chaos, I'm busy doing what I know how to do.
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And it's this false sense of protection.
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And I was a natural.
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I was a.. and I loved it.
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As Churchill said, the most exhilarating feeling in the world is getting shot at with that result.
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And there's just something about putting yourself in danger that's a real high, as long as you survive.
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I started covering wars in Bosnia for Knight Ritter, and then moved to the Associated Press,
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spent a decade with them, working globally, covering wars, Olympics,
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presidential campaigns, football, basketball, hockey.
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In 2011, veteran war correspondent Laura Rausch joined Stars and Stripes as a downrange reporter in Afghanistan.
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People ask a lot what it's like to go to war.
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And to me, this image captures what war looks like, at least the way I saw war embedded with infantry units.
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Can't tell you how many images I have of the back of a Marine
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or the back of a soldier in a blown-out background and running into the abyss, not knowing what you're running into.
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Today, Laura lives with her husband and daughter in California's Napa Valley, among some of the best wine-making grapes in the world, far from the dangers of the battlefield.
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Hi, baby.
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Hi, sweet girl.
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You said you having fun with daddy?
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Oh, is he letting you drive?
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Yes, my life has changed.
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Yeah, I have to worry about getting hit by tractor debris Instead of shrapnel and gunfire.
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The great thing about working for Stars and Stripes is that you get real time in the field and you're downrange, so you get more time than you get with most publications
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because that's all you do as the downrange reporters cover the war.
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The sad part is that the best writing comes from the most traumatic experiences.
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When you're moved, when you've seen, you know, when you've watched kids die, and I say kids because they're kids, When you see that, you're sorry.
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God, it's just hard for me to go back.
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The story about the Pathfinders, I'd heard about it.
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That's why I wanted to get over there and tell that story.
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I'd heard about this devastating attack where they lost six soldiers in a single event.
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When I embedded the company commander, he asked me to leave that one alone.
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He didn't think that his men were ready to tell that story tell that story.
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So for the next month, Laura photographed the unit at work, while the story of one of the deadliest days for U.S forces in the Afghan war went unreported.
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Then she decided it was time to move on.
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The company commander came and said, come back and you can do the story now.
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And I spent another six months reporting that story.
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With cameras, notebook and tape recorder, Laura settled in with the surviving members of the Pathfinder team from the Army's 101st Airborne Division,
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slowly building trust until they were ready to talk about that day.
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You know, it's told through the eyes of this soldier, John McMillan, and when they get the call, his buddy, his best friend, is out with this small unit out in the field,
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and they're getting reports that, you know, people were killed.
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And he's.. he's just worried about his buddy, his buddy making it.
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You're either with somebody for the worst days of their life, or you're asking them to recount the worst days of their lives.
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And there has to be that trust that you're gonna get it right.
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And that takes a long time.
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McMillan, 22, recalled the worst of days.
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A profound sadness lingered in his voice.
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His brown eyes revealed immense pain.
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With their buddies under attack, John McMillan's team landed to reinforce their position.
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He was relieved to see that his friend, specialist Adam Patton, was alive.
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For the first time since he left the fob, McMillan's hands stopped shaking.
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He set up a sniper rifle and through his scope could see the relief in Patton's eyes.
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For just a moment, both men eased up.
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Patton smiled and waved at his friend, giving him a goofy little half-wave that McMillan loves so much.
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as Patton went to lie prone to set up his rifle, an IED ignited beneath him.
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The massive explosion sent a plume smoking debris 600 feet in the air.
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McMillan would lose four other friends that day, including his team leader, Staff Sergeant Ergen Oseman, whom he called the toughest soldier he'd ever known.
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We're taught to accept the realities of war, McMillan said, they don't teach you what it does to you.
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Just, how could you not write that story?
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You know?
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In this case, the story became about how they dealt with their loss
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and how they put themselves back together as a unit.
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They kept going, and that's why I wanted to tell their story.
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These stories are written for the military community.
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All the mothers, the fathers, and grandparents back home and for the service members stationed in scores of countries around the world,
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including those still in Afghanistan.
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We need to get the paper delivered, because it is about the paper.
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And it's about the soldier that receives the paper.
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And if he doesn't receive the paper on time, he's not going to read the paper.
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So then why deliver the paper?
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As the longtime circulation manager for Stars and Stripes, Bob Reisman travels throughout the Middle East to ensure smooth delivery of the paper to the troops.
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The Stas and Stripes paper route is all over the Middle East.
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Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia.
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It also stretches into North Africa.
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I mean, we had Djibouti, we deliver papers every day as well.
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But Afghanistan presents its own set of problems.
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How to get this hometown paper to the battlefield.
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The challenge is that they're printed in Bahrain and we have to have them shipped over from Bahrain to Bagram.
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They're moved through three different services in order to get onto the planes that fly over from Bahrain to here.
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And then they're trucked out to the delivery points on the base.
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in Afghanistan where the internet is very bad or Kuwait, the internet is bad.
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Their first thing in the morning with their cup of coffee is the Stars and Stripes.
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They're picking the paper out.
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I was in my fourth month with Stars and Stripes, April 51.
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Red Grandy was the new guy at Stripes Europe when he drove to Koblenz, Germany to take pictures of General Eisenhower,
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an assignment that would alter the course of the young photographer's career.
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When he got there at 10 o'clock in the morning, he was reviewing the troops.
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What Red soon found out was what the rest of the world, except for General Eisenhower, already knew, that President Truman had fired another general,
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Douglas MacArthur, just a few hours earlier.
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So I thought it would make a great picture.
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I even told the other photographers, I said, he's got a kind of rubber face like that, I think that would make a great picture.
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We got up to reviewing the troops, and one of the UPI photographers said, did you hear the news about MacArthur?
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And Eisenhower said, no, I, no, what happened?
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He said he's been fired by Truman.
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And then Ike looked away with this funny look.
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And this is five hours after the whole world knew about it.
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And he said, well, I'll be darned.
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Red was the only photographer to anticipate what he knew would be a memorable reaction from the general.
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The picture became an instant hit.
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Well, when that hit, stars and stripes, the whole world picked up on it.
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Life magazine and Time and Newsweek, every newspaper in the United States, I think, just about carried that picture.
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After I took the picture of Eisenhower, he sent me an autographed print of it.
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At the bottom he wrote for Red Grandy, who in this picture surprised an old soldier, Dwight D.
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Eisenhower.
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Red would spend the next 35 years at Stars and Stripes in Europe without ever setting foot on a battlefield.
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But he photographed many of the most important stories and people of his time.
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We were covering all countries between Pakistan and Iceland,
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just five photographers, which meant that we were on the road all the time.
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The press pass was a passport to adventure if you liked it, because things were happening wherever you went.
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I got to meet one-on-one all these movie stars and presidents.
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One of those presidents was Richard Nixon, who was on a visit to Berlin.
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And on the way from Tempelhof into the city of Berlin, I got to ride in a photo truck, an open truck.
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Standing next to me was Dan Rather.
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As we went through the middle of the city, some communists started throwing things,
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and a stone hit Rather in the forehead.
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And then he got it bandaged later and I took a picture of it.
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And I call it Nixon Gets Rather Stone.
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Along with Red and Dan Rather that day was former Stripes photographer John Olson.
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After returning from Vietnam, John became the youngest staff photographer ever at Life magazine.
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For Red, it wasn't long before he became chief photographer for Stars and Stripes Europe.
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I told the managing editor, I'll stay here if you let me build it into something worthwhile.
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At that time, the Associated Press, the AP, UPI, nobody ever used our pictures.
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They could care less.
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Nine years later, we were number one newspaper photo staff in the United States.
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You send your 20 best pictures in to Kent State University to be judged against all other newspapers.
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And those 20 pictures in 1960 are the ones that won us number one.
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During his career, Redd photographed the heroic, the beautiful, and the tragic.
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From his work documenting the terror of the Munich Olympics to his time spent with presidents, to be in the right place at the right time is
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best exemplified by the images he gave us during the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York.
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They had a terrible time in Lake Placid.
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It was very badly run.
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I wanted to cover the ice hockey game because they were doing so very well.
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So I went to the guy who hands out credentials.
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He wouldn't give me any.
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They let students control different sites.
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They didn't know what they were doing.
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Well, they were looking the other way.
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I walked in with a bunch of people around these dumb students,
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went down and sat by the goal on the cement floor of somebody's feet and shot the final goal.
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It went all around the world, this picture.
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Stars are front page everywhere.
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So I'm in competition with the whole world out there.
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And that was a challenge.
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Stripes journalists routinely gather images and stories from around the world.
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And each daily edition also includes national and world news off the wires.
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But it's the stories that directly affect and interest American service members the most
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that have made Stripes one of the unique publications in the world.
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But reporting those stories can be dangerous.
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It was highly dangerous.
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But you never think it'll be you.
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You know, there's a saying out there, don't worry about the bullet with your name on it, worry about those flying around that say to whom it may concern.
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When I went to Vietnam, there were, I would say,
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20 of us still photographers who went out on a regular basis.
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When I came back from Vietnam, there were seven of us left alive.
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Would I go back to being a combat journalist?
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No, I don't think so, because it's just...
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The probability that your number's gonna come up, that you're gonna get hit at some point, it's just too great, and it would be unfair to her.
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A lot of journalists have been killed in these wars, and others have lost their legs and been injured or wounded.
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I had a good friend killed last year.
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I mean, probably five really close friends, right?
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Fifteen friends.
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Having my own child has made me, you know, you kind of just have to trust your instincts.
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I had this sense that I had to get out.
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And I remember thinking, we just can't keep coming back to this.
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We're gonna get hit.
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It's gonna happen.
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On January 31st, 1968, 3 o'clock in the morning,
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70-plus thousand North Vietnamese and Viet Cong attacked over 100 cities and outposts throughout Vietnam.
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And this was the beginning of Tet.
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I went out, I made pictures.
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I spent a number of days in Hue with the first of the fifth Marines.
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When John Olsen entered the besieged city of Hue with a small unit of Marines, they were met by thousands of heavily armed and well-fortified North Vietnamese.
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Soon they were pinned down inside Hue's old citadel, where they took heavy casualties, even as Olsen continued to make pictures.
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Olsen's photographs for Stars and Strikes would end up at a memorable six-page spread in Life magazine.
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The first spread has a photograph of a Marine pointing aggressively.
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His name is Bob Toms.
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He was wounded six times during the Battle of Hue.
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He and seven Marines attacked this pile of rock called Dongba Tower.
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Once they secured it, they were ordered to hold it through the night.
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Nearly out of ammunition, Olsen and the Marines waited out the night.
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At first light, the enemy opened fire on the tower.
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And it blew six of the seven men off the top of this tower.
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One of the men was buried alive.
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Olsen's intimate and terrifying pictures from the Battle of Way, including the rescue of the buried Marine, ran in stars and stripes.
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John Olson would go on to win the prestigious Robert Capa Award for the pictures that ran in Life magazine.
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There is a photograph of a number of Marines being evacuated on a tank.
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The main focus on is a Marine who had a sucking chest wound.
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He was zipped into a body bag and left for dead by an actor God.
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A corpsman saw movement in the bag, unzipped the body bag, and he's alive today.
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Another great thing about working for Stars and Stripes is you have military orders
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that put you on essentially any military aircraft that's flying in Afghanistan or Iraq or the region.
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I think you're able to get to and from the war a little faster sometimes than other journalists that have to wait.
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The medevac's a great way to get to the war because they're flying to all the hot zones.
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They'll fly into hell to save a soldier or a marine or an airman or a sailor.
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They will fly into hell and not blink.
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They see the worst of the war because they just see it repeatedly.
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The medevac just keeps going back in.
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They go wherever it's hot.
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And they work very hard to push the life back in people.
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And that's why I wanted to tell their story, not just what they face, but how they reckoned with it.
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In a hot zone, in a helicopter, getting shot at on a mission, you're always trying to tell the story first.
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And when you lift that camera to your face, and somehow you have this full body armor,
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and it's not just a physical armor that you've sort of fooled yourself into thinking exists, but it's also an emotional armor that whatever unfolds before you,
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you're not going to be affected by it.
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You're gonna be able to continue to do your job and tell the story.
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But even for a seasoned journalist, sometimes the realities of war can tear that armor away.
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Maybe one of my toughest days in the war, in wars.
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A soldier had been shot, so it was a chest wound, so he wasn't getting air.
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You can see I'm wired.
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This is after it happened.
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They got him on the aircraft, the helicopter, and the medics started working on him.
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And I was in the back trying to stay out of the way.
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The soldier rolled over and looked me in the eye, and he couldn't speak, but he mouthed,
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you know, I can't breathe.
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And I made this eye contact with him, and I just dropped the cameras and the notebooks
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and got down as close as I could to him on my knees
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and right in his face and grabbed him and held his hand and looked him in the eyes and said, you will make it.
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You are going to make it.
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You will make it.
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I saw his wedding ring.
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And so I knew he had somebody that he needed to make it for.
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And I kept telling him and held him and looked into his eyes for the duration of the ride,
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I have to say that was one of the toughest moments of the war for me
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because I didn't think he was going to make it.
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I didn't...
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He had lost so much blood.
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When they landed, Laura pleaded with the surgeon to save the young man.
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She would find out the next day they had.
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That doesn't mean when you're back in your house with a glass of wine and a warm fire and you're remembering things,
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that it doesn't eat away at you, you know, things that you've seen or...
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And it does, it does. But...
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To be a good journalist, I think you have to be an empathetic human being.
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Rauch's thoughtful reporting and impactful photographs from her embeds with the Pathfinders,
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the Medivacs, and a combat team that returned home always highlighted the teamwork and cohesion of those units,
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but never shied away from the tremendous sacrifice that the men and women she met downrange made every day.
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I think maybe that's why being a war correspondent is so compelling, because you're just drawn into these primal moments,
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and, you know, and you have to go to war to see them.
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You don't see these things anywhere else.
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I'm not alone.
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Stars and stripes journalists like Laura Rausch
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and John Olsen have always risked their lives to get the stories and the images that move and inform its readership.
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But the risk doesn't stop there.
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Getting the paper to the troops has long been fraught with danger. In 2003,
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Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Norm Schaefer was given the job to
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bring the paper's printing capabilities to Iraq to better serve the troops there.
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And that was back when we were trying to airlift papers from Germany into the Middle East.
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Technology had evolved significantly since the first Gulf War.
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There has to be some better way to make this happen.
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What we need is a satellite operation somewhere to download the newspaper every day
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and then hand that over to a printing operation.
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They had a newspaper printing operation in Baghdad.
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We got the satellite dish set up and working, but simultaneously we were trying to figure out the distribution.
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My main mission in life was to try to get the paper in the hands of troops.
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But in a place as dangerous as Iraq, establishing a reliable printing source was one thing.
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Delivering the newspaper to troops on the battlefield was another thing entirely.
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I use a comparison with a basic commercial paper today.
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When they want to deliver the paper, what they worry about is snow and rain and traffic.
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Our most important customer and the most difficult to serve are those who are deployed in harm's way,
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where bullets are flying, where IEDs exist, where you have to go through checkpoints held by the enemy.
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That requires people being on roads that are not always guarded, not always in convoys with other trigger pullers to protect them.
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In Iraq alone, four Stripes contractors would be killed while working the world's most dangerous paper route.
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One of them was killed leaving a base where they delivered Stars and Stripes.
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This is the world in which we exist.
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It's what we did during the first Gulf War.
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It's what we've done in Kosovo, Bosnia, Vietnam.
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It's what we're doing in Afghanistan today and we have for the last 15 years.
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It is the core of what we do and makes us extremely different than any other newspaper I'm aware of.
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It's dangerous every day, even still in Afghanistan, when they're doing the delivery.
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They deliver and they have to go through Taliban areas.
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You know, they act like they're Taliban.
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That's the only way they can do it.
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Even the newspaper circulation manager is not immune to danger.
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In October of 2003, Bob Reisman was working on distribution logistics in Baghdad when his hotel, the Al Rashid, came under attack.
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A normal Sunday day, I was getting up, getting ready to meet with a paper delivery guy who gets there around 7 o'clock in the morning.
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As I was waking up, all of a sudden we were hit by rockets.
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Twelve rockets slammed into the hotel that morning.
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One American soldier was killed.
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Another 18 people were wounded, 11 of them Americans.
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It's believed that the Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was the intended target.
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After all the chaos and everything was over, he came down and gave a little speech and I did notice that he was as white as his shirt.
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It wasn't only the experience that was so dramatic, it's the smells.
390
I still remember the smells.
391
My father is a German immigrant and he came to the United States as he was a butcher.
392
Smell of blood, known since I was small.
393
And that's what you could smell.
394
You could smell the iron in the air and also the sulfur and from the like gun smoke from the rockets.
395
Undeterred, Reisman made sure the stars and stripes was delivered to the troops that day.
396
I'm working to get the paper to the soldier at the early times possible out in the field.
397
That's what I do.
398
I'm just a paper boy.
399
In 1861, Union soldiers published five editions of a newsletter they called The Stars and Stripes, and that was it.
400
During World War I, General Pershing wanted a way to get news and information to his troops, so he dusted off the name,
401
and for 72 weeks, Stars and Stripes was published out of a single location in Paris.
402
It resumed operation during the Second World War, with two independently-run editions that shared the stripes name, but very little content.
403
The European edition was initially printed in London, the Pacific edition in Hawaii.
404
By the time the war ended, the paper had been printed in more than 30 locations, and at its peak, 32 million copies were distributed a month.
405
During Vietnam and Korea, the Pacific edition rolled off presses in Tokyo, while the European edition made its home in Griesheim, Germany.
406
In 1998, new technology made it possible to centralize the editions out of a single office in Washington, D.C.
407
Today news is gathered from stripes bureaus around the world, and the pages of a European and Pacific edition, as well as an edition sent to forces in remote combat
408
and support areas are laid out in Washington
409
and sent digitally to 14 different print sites across the globe seven days a week.
410
From there, bundles of the paper are sent to distribution sites where they soon make it onto bases
411
and to distant outposts on the battlefield.
412
Today, between print circulation and its digital properties, Stars and Stripes reaches more than one million readers every day.
413
I think Stars and Stripes is a big deal.
414
It's a very big deal.
415
Again, what you're trying to do in combat sometimes is get a few moments of release,
416
distraction, something other than what you've been going through on patrol that day or the challenges of the battlefield,
417
the hardships, the separation, the sacrifices, and all the rest of that, and it gives you a bit of diversion.
418
That's very, very important.
419
Stars and Stripes has been a part of my military life, six and a half years on active duty.
420
I didn't get the paper, I don't remember reading it that much at Shaw Air Force Base, but when I went to Germany, it was a big deal when the paper came.
421
When you're in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was a really huge deal.
422
It's a morale booster for the soldiers to deploy.
423
We appreciate the news that's in there, we look forward to it.
424
When I see this and it's free and I don't have anything to read, if I've gone through all the books that are sent out to me, I'll always look for the Stars and Stripes.
425
For me it's important because of the sports, especially when I was deployed, getting some of the updates that I wasn't getting more thoroughly online.
426
I know there's online Stars and Stripes as well, but when internet connections go down, it was effective in spreading that information anyway.
427
The one page I always go to is the American Roundup.
428
You know, I like looking in there and looking for my hometown.
429
If I can see Maine, Massachusetts, or anywhere from New England where there's some updates on what's going on in those states, I'm happy.
430
We're here at Camp Arif John, Kuwait.
431
I read the Star Wars stories every day.
432
I like reading the paperback poem.
433
but you get to see the news that's most important, as opposed to your phone, in my opinion.
434
It's an unbiased newspaper.
435
So you're getting things from Stars and Stripes, AP, New York Times, Washington Times,
436
so it's a consolidation of a lot of different resources in one newspaper.
437
For me, it keeps me connected to what's important back home, what's going on in the world, what's going on, even some locally stuff.
438
And it's just, for me, I appreciate seeing, here's the top news stories.
439
It's the reason in these pages you find the reasons we're here.
440
You find the reasons that a lot of us have chosen to serve, are serving, that affect us in our mission.
441
So I want to read about that stuff.
442
This is a good way to get it.
443
I love the Stars and Stripes.
444
It provides news not just here, what's going on in the AOR, That's important to us guys that are here in Afghanistan and around Iraq,
445
all the other countries, but it provides news that's going on back in the States.
446
It's able to keep us close to the families and know what's going on back home.
447
I've been in the military for coming up on 16 years
448
and I was talking to guys that started deploying back in 2001 right before I got in.
449
And every time they talk about the fact
450
that we weren't able to get stars and stripes or weren't able to talk to people back home and communicate, so it was all by letter.
451
So the fact that we're able to get real news real time is huge out here.
452
My dad was in the Air Force as well, and so I've seen it since I was a kid.
453
Really important to have that independent voice that really reports what everybody else has seen and gives the whole picture.
454
Over a year, I got to know the pilot of that medevac unit, and he and I became pretty good friends.
455
He mentioned that he had an Uncle Mike that I really should meet one of these days.
456
You know, I just sort of dismissed that thinking, yeah, I don't really want to meet anybody's Uncle Mike, but thanks anyway.
457
And then I happened to meet Uncle Mike, and we've pretty much been together ever since.
458
So in a way, she's kind of the Stripes baby.
459
Had I not gone to work for Stars and Stripes, she would not be here.
460
And I wouldn't have my husband, my really great husband.
461
Yeah.
462
You wouldn't have your daddy.
463
June 15, 2011, started as a typical day for Uncle Mike's nephew, Captain Chris Morisoli, and the medevac team under his command.
464
Then the call came to evacuate another seriously wounded soldier from the battlefield.
465
Most of the time they will say, you know, an amputee, you know, or a double amputee, and I think they may have had that information.
466
So, you know, there was a sense that this guy was really going to need some help.
467
The doors open, and the soldiers on the ground, you know, bring him, bring him up,
468
and it's really tough for soldiers to let go of their guy.
469
They don't want to let go.
470
A lot of times, the medics will have to push them away because they want one last touch, or they want to say one last prayer over them,
471
or they don't want to let go.
472
And it's really hard to watch.
473
And so anyway, they got this young man on there, and he'd been hit really hard.
474
He lost both his legs and an arm in an IED attack.
475
And they started cutting his clothes away, and I was sitting at the back of the bird,
476
and this tattoo emerges on the side.
477
I'm the first one to see this tattoo, and I read it. And, you know...
478
Sorry.
479
Okay.
480
His tattoo says, For those I love, I will sacrifice.
481
I couldn't believe it.
482
My jaw sort of dropped, and I began trying to...
483
While I was still making the picture, and, you know, doing my job as a journalist, I began trying to sort of get the camera placed where you could see...
484
You could see that tattoo.
485
As you can see, he's really holding on to life.
486
I think they ran out of tourniquets because, you know, he'd lost so many limbs and they'd used a belt.
487
I had to find out what happened to this young man
488
because that would affect whether or not we would use this image and how we would use the image.
489
And so when I, you know, found out he had made it, that was a pretty great day.
490
Rauch's photograph of the grievously wounded 19-year-old Kyle Hockenberry became the cover image of one of her stories on the medevac unit.
491
Soon, the picture was picked up by other news outlets and the young soldier's sacrifice quickly spread on social media.
492
When people see that image, they're moved by the sentiments of this young soldier who really, truly sacrificed nearly everything for his country.
493
When I started at Stars and Stripes in 2007, it was a very, very different newspaper.
494
It was right in the middle of the transition from the old-style paper distribution to the Internet.
495
And they brought in a whole new crew.
496
And we went from this hyper-local kind of journalism to a more global approach to what we reported on, how we reported it.
497
It brought the paper back to life.
498
These days, Travis Tritton reports on national security for the Washington Examiner.
499
But in 2007, he was a young reporter gaining valuable experience when an old editor friend reached out.
500
He said, hey, we got a job opening in Japan.
501
Would you like to be a foreign correspondent?
502
I said, hell yeah.
503
Travis would spend the next eight years at Stars and Stripes reporting on stories all over Asia and even Iraq.
504
I was there in winter 2008, after the surge.
505
There was a significant amount of danger that still existed, but things were getting much So it was an opportunity to kind of report on
506
that progress that we were seeing at the time.
507
I went on an assignment to the Philippines multiple times, covering the insurgency there, and the 500 or so US troops that were there advising.
508
I covered the Japanese tsunami and earthquake in 2011.
509
2011 I spent a couple weeks there covering that immediately after it happened
510
Most of the time I came up with my own story ideas
511
and I would pitch them to my editor and I would write them
512
but in January of 2015 Triton would be offered a story
513
that would alter the course of his career and
514
that of another more celebrated Journalist I was in Bob Reed the managing editor's office
515
and we were talking about this lead that we had with these veterans who had been in Iraq with Brian Williams.
516
And he was saying, I want you to pursue this story.
517
And I was looking at it, and I said, sure thing.
518
I said, you know, I think this is a home run.
519
For years, NBC News anchor Brian Williams claimed that in 2003,
520
the Chinook he was flying in over a rock was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade and forced to land, stranding him and the crew in the desert.
521
Desert.
522
Service members who were there disputed what they considered to be a fabricated war story.
523
You had a famous person who was widely trusted.
524
At that time, he was one of the most trusted people in the United States, I believe.
525
And you had veterans who felt that they had been wronged, not just wronged once, but over years.
526
So all the elements were there for a great story, but I don't think I fully comprehended how big of a story it was going to be.
527
What we're about to hear is the first and only time Brian Williams has answered questions on this issue.
528
Stars and stripes, as you say, releasing the audio of what the news anchor had to say just before they broke the story.
529
We had gotten these veterans to talk with us on the record.
530
These veterans were saying what Brian Williams was saying was untrue, that he was not on the Chinook helicopter when it came under fire.
531
I reached out to NBC and I said, look, we've got this information.
532
These veterans, they've told me the entire story.
533
It doesn't fit.
534
They're saying that what Brian Williams is saying is untrue.
535
I want to talk with Brian.
536
And I assumed that they would blow me off and they would issue some type of a statement.
537
And NBC said, okay, see what we can do.
538
Maybe an hour later, they got back to me and said, okay, Brian wants to talk with you.
539
I said, fine.
540
Over the phone, Tritton insisted that Williams go on the record.
541
What followed became one of the biggest scoops in Stars and Stripes history.
542
Speaking to Stars and Stripes reporter Travis Tritton,
543
Brian Williams sought to set the record straight about what really happened during that March 2003 helicopter mission in Iraq.
544
I did not set out to in any way change the chronicle of what happened to us.
545
We spoke, and he was very open and forthcoming.
546
And at that point, we really had something.
547
The flight crew of the Chinook that did take a rocket-propelled grenade to the tail rotor
548
called the news anchor out for a recent report on NBC Nightly News
549
claiming that the chopper Williams was traveling on was hit.
550
Williams has since apologized and taken himself off the air.
551
It went beyond being a news story.
552
There was something about that story that just resonated with people, just resonated with them in a way that is very rare, I think, with a news story.
553
When I meet people, they always say, you're the guy who took down Brian Williams.
554
I don't get any joy out of taking one of my own down.
555
I look at it as more of kind of policing our profession and make sure that we stay honest, that we're honest with the American people and that we treat our subjects, the people we write about,
556
fairly, especially veterans and people who have served in the war.
557
The day I was injured, like I don't remember any of that day.
558
From what I'm told, I was moving up the side of the grape row
559
and the guy that was going overwalk said
560
that he just seen like a cloud of smoke
561
and then seen like a body like flying like 30 feet in the air.
562
I stepped on a pressure plate IED.
563
They thought I was dead obviously.
564
So they started to pick me up
565
and put me actually put me in a body bag
566
and as they were putting it as they got me laid
567
in it like they said I tried he said I tried to get up.
568
I was actually still in the ICU
569
And they were doing my Purple Heart ceremony and this soldier walked up to my parents and he had this blue folder.
570
And he came up to my mom and dad and he was like, I really think that you guys should see this.
571
And he opened it up and it was this picture.
572
The tattoo is what makes this picture.
573
And you take the tattoo out of it, this picture is just a picture of somebody on a medivac.
574
I got it three weeks before deployment.
575
I wanted to get something meaningful.
576
I didn't want something that I would regret later on down the road.
577
You'd be surprised, too, how many people think that this is Photoshopped.
578
I mean, I'm telling you, like...
579
I lived it, and I have it on there every day.
580
I can show you that it's real.
581
For those I love, I will sacrifice.
582
Kyle spent six months in the hospital recovering from his wounds
583
as the photograph was shared over and over again on social media.
584
I was in the hospital one day and a nurse came in
585
and said that Gary Sinise had tried to call
586
and he told me that one of his friends had seen this picture in a magazine
587
or something and that they wanted to build me a specially adapted smart home.
588
At the time I was still trying to get better in the hospital
589
so I didn't really grasp what that meant the banner that they had up the day they gave us the keys.
590
But after the fact, I realized how life-changing this house was gonna be.
591
And then later to find out that this picture kinda led to that, so.
592
They come over the feed.
593
I am walking.
594
Just as an example to how wide-reaching this was, I had a general that was stationed in Korea that had seen the picture.
595
and he just wanted to come meet me, so he flew in, came visit me in the hospital.
596
But not everyone can just jump on a plane to go meet Kyle Hockenberry.
597
So when Laura Rauch found out our crew was with Kyle, she called in.
598
It was the first time that photographer and subject had ever spoken to each other.
599
Yeah, he's jumping around being crazy right now, so.
600
How are you doing now?
601
I'm not doing too bad, doing pretty good.
602
I am too.
603
I've been following you on your Facebook page.
604
I don't know if you ever saw me on there.
605
And I know some of the crew follows you too.
606
I would love for you to meet the crew, the helicopter crew, that flew you that day.
607
Yeah.
608
It would be nice for me to kind of get to talk to everybody because that was a pretty life-changing day.
609
So congratulations on all your success, and your family and your,
610
it's just a great day.
611
I heard that you were gonna, you were gonna pull through.
612
Well, thank you.
613
I mean, you know, the picture that you got that day has a lot to do with
614
a lot of the luck that we've had, so, you know, we appreciate it.
615
I'm so happy you feel that way.
616
It's tough and so much I, you know, it's so tough to talk to you this way because there's so much I'd like to talk to you about,
617
so we have to resolve to meet in person sometime.
618
Would that be okay?
619
For sure, we'll have to figure something out.
620
Well, give my best to your family, and thanks for letting us tell your story.
621
I think it mattered to a lot of people.
622
I doubt if any paper anywhere in the world has covered the American warfighter any better than Stars and Stripes, to tell their story, what they go through,
623
how they live, what they need, what they're thinking, as well as a little touch of home in a faraway place.
624
No other military in the world can report on itself the way Stars and Stripes does.
625
As a newspaper, it's unique, because of the power to champion its own readership, while at the same time having the license to call it out.
626
And like a hometown daily, it continues to connect and inform the men and women charged with keeping us safe.
627
For me, Stars and Stripes was the place where I discovered who I was and who I could become.
628
Stripes was my rite of passage.
629
The photographs I made for Stars and Stripes in 1968 launched a career that took me everywhere, gave me access to people and places that few people have.
630
In hindsight, working for Stars and Stripes was probably the best job I ever had.
631
It was a time in my life that made me who I am.
632
I would never give it up for anything, and after everything I've done, after that, still the most exciting time in my life.
633
Stars and Stripes is unique.
634
It's a badge of honor.
635
It really is.
636
It's not like working for a big news station or New York Times or in terms of notoriety.
637
But the people who work for it are so proud and they're so loyal.
638
They spend a lot of time in really dangerous places.
639
But they do it to serve America's military families and it is a real duty.
640
All right,
641
so there's an indirect fire hit somewhere on base.
642
They're telling us to take cover.
643
So I'm going to start putting on my protective gear, I guess, and find a bunker.
644
I think that's what I'm supposed to do. So, uh...
645
I was pleasantly surprised that working for Stars and Stripes was not hugely different than working for a civilian newspaper.
646
Been deployed to Iraq, been deployed to Afghanistan, and then here now in Kuwait, that newspaper is critical and something I think soldiers look for in the dining facilities.
647
So one of my favorite things with the Stars and Stripes is go get a cup of coffee, sit down with the paper, just like you do at home, and drink your cup of coffee and kind of flip through the paper leisurely.
648
Not quite the same as sitting on your front porch or sitting out back, but it does provide that linkage back to the home feeling of, okay, here's my sense of normalcy,
649
I'm having my coffee, I'm having a paper, I'm flipping through, you know, And that thing is, it's, that practice is relaxing, just like it is relaxing back home.
650
And that's what the benefit of the Stars and Stripes to me.
651
What we're doing is really aiding them to have that information that's really necessary, just to keep them informed of what's going on.
652
Whether you, and then Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, or you're a coalition partner, it counter-caters to that need or appetite of information.
653
I've never heard a journalist say a bad thing about Stars and Stripes,
654
and I think most of the journalists who are professionals understand
655
that First Amendment mission that we have and are glad that we're there doing it.
656
Half of these soldiers are outside the wire, and when they come in, they're tired, they're beat, they want to get something to eat.
657
So they grab a Star and Stripe, they know what's going on back in the world, you know?
658
I think it's all in the body suit.
659
I definitely think they should be recording this conversation.
660
Thank you.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “World's Most Dangerous Paper Route”. This video has 660 sentences and 8797 words to shadow. The speech runs for 58:06. The speaker talks at a natural 151 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 83% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| stripe noun | /stɹaɪp/ | A long region of a single colour in a repeating pattern of similar regions. |
| battlefield noun | /ˈbætəlˌfiːld/ | The area where a land battle is fought, which may not necessarily be a field. |
| helicopter noun | /ˈheliːˌkɔptə(ɹ)/ | An aircraft that is borne along by one or more sets of long rotating blades which allow it to hover, move in any direction including reverse, or land; and… |
| tattoo noun | /tæˈtuː/ | An image made on a body part, usually the skin with ink and a needle. |
| deploy verb | /dɪˈplɔɪ/ | To prepare and arrange (originally military unit or units, i.e., to array troops) for use. |
| hometown noun | /ˈhoʊmˌtaʊn/ | An individual’s place of birth, childhood home, or place of main residence. |
| downrange adjective | In the horizontal direction away from the launch site of a rocket or projectile in the direction of its travel. | |
| medevac noun | /ˈmɛdɪvæk/ | The emergency transportation, usually by air, of patients to a medical facility. |
| armor noun | /ˈɑːɹ.mɚ/ | A protective layer over a body, vehicle, or other object intended to deflect or diffuse damaging forces. |
| cartoon noun | /kɑɹˈtun/ | A humorous drawing, often with a caption, or a strip of such drawings. |
| embed verb | /ɪmˈbɛd/ | To lay (something) as in a bed; to lay in surrounding matter; to bed. |
| correspondent noun | /ˌkɔɹ.ɪˈspɑn.dənt/ | Something which corresponds with something else; counterpart. |
| circulation noun | /ˌsɝkjʊˈleɪʃən/ | The act of moving in a circle, or in a course which brings the moving body to the place where its motion began. |
| anchor noun | /ˈæŋ.kəː/ | A tool used to moor a vessel to the bottom of a sea or river to resist movement. |
| independently adverb | /ˌɪndɪˈpɛndəntli/ | In an independent manner. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| set up verb | /ˌsɛt ˈʌp/ | To make ready for use. |
| come back from verb | To become successful, confident or effective again after an injury, setback, failure, embarrassment, etc. | |
| come over verb | To affect in a sudden, unprecedented or surprising manner; to overwhelm a person's ordinarily contrary impulse. | |
| come under verb | To come underneath (something). | |
| flip through verb | Synonym of thumb (“to turn the pages of (a book) in order to read it cursorily”). | |
| get up verb | To move in an upward direction; to ascend or climb. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Am I a brave guy?
- You said you having fun with daddy?
- Just, how could you not write that story?
- Would I go back to being a combat journalist?
- Would you like to be a foreign correspondent?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | you've been going · I've been following |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has helped · has kept · has often been met |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | been met · have been killed · has been printed |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | time, which was · guy who hands · those who are |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 165 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, you're, they're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: circulation /ˌsɝkjʊˈleɪʃən/, censorship /ˈsɛnsɚʃɪp/
- Long words — get the stress right: helicopter /ˈheliːˌkɔptə(ɹ)/, correspondent /ˌkɔɹ.ɪˈspɑn.dənt/, circulation /ˌsɝkjʊˈleɪʃən/, independently /ˌɪndɪˈpɛndəntli/, interference /ˌɪntəɹˈfɪɹɪns/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like stripe, battlefield, helicopter.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.