A smoke break creates icon of the war; now groupies seek out the weary Marine
By Patrick J. McDonnell
Los Angeles Times
FALLUJAH, Iraq — The Marlboro man was angry: He has a war to fight, and he's running out of smokes.
"If you want to write something," he tells an intruding reporter, "tell Marlboro I'm down to four packs, and I'm here in Fallujah till who knows when. Maybe they can send some. And they can bring down the price a bit."
Those are the unfettered sentiments of Marine Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller, 20, a country boy from Kentucky who has been thrust unwittingly and somewhat unwillingly into the role of poster boy for a war on the other side of the world from his home on the farm.
"I just don't understand what all the fuss is about," Miller drawls yesterday as he crouches — Marlboro firmly in place — inside an abandoned building with his platoon mates, preparing to fight insurgents holed up in yet another mosque.
"I was just smokin' a cigarette, and someone takes my picture and it all blows up."
Miller is the young man whose gritty, war-hardened portrait, shot by Luis Sinco, a Los Angeles Times photographer, appeared Wednesday in more than 100 U.S. newspapers, including The Seattle Times. In the full-frame photo, taken after more than 12 hours of nearly nonstop deadly combat, Miller's camouflage war paint is smudged. He sports a bloody nick on his nose. His helmet and chin strap frame a weary expression that seems to convey the timeless fatigue of battle. And there is the cigarette, of course, drooping from the right side of his mouth in a jaunty manner that Humphrey Bogart would have approved of. Wispy smoke drifts off to his left.
The image has quickly moved into the realm of the iconic.
More than 100 newspapers printed it, although it took the New York Post to sum it up in a front-page headline: "Marlboro Men Kick Butt in Fallujah." The fact that Miller's name was not included in the caption material only seemed to enhance its punch.
The Los Angeles Times and other publications have received scores of e-mails wanting to know about this mysterious figure. Many women, in particular, have inquired about how to contact him.
"The photo captures his weariness, yet his eyes hold the spirit of the hunter and the hunted," wrote one e-mailing admirer. "His gaze is warm but deadly. I want to send a letter."
Maybe it's about America striking back at a perceived enemy, or maybe it's just the sense of one young man putting his life on the line halfway across the globe.
Whatever the case, the photo seems to have struck a chord, and top Marine brass are thrilled. Lt. Gen. John. Sattler, commander of the I Marine Expeditionary Force, dropped in on Charlie Company yesterday to laud the Marlboro Men.
"That's a great picture," echoed Col. Craig Tucker, who heads the regimental combat team that includes Miller's battalion. "We're having one blown up and sent over to the unit."
Miller, 20, is from the little hamlet of Jonancy, Ky.
Miller, though, has been oddly absent from the hoopla. Sattler did not single him out during his visit. In fact, Miller only heard about it from the two Los Angeles Times staffers embedded with his unit. He seemed incredulous. "A picture?" he asked. "What's the fuss?"
And what does he think about the Marines, anyway? "I already signed the papers, so I got no choice but to do what we're doing."
The photo was taken on the afternoon after Charlie Company's harrowing entry into Fallujah under intense enemy fire, in the cold and rain. Miller was on the roof of a home where he and his fellow First Platoon members had spent the day engaged in practically nonstop firefights, fending off snipers and attackers who rushed the building. No one had slept in more than 24 hours. All were physically and emotionally drained.
"It was kind of crazy out here at first," Miller says. "No one really knew what to expect. They told us about it all the time, but no one knows for sure until you get here."
In person, Miller is unassuming: of medium height, his face slightly pimpled, his teeth a little crooked. He takes his share of small-town-hick ribbing from a unit that includes Marines from big cities as well as small towns.
And it has only increased as word of the platoon radio man's instant fame has spread among his mates.
"Miller, when you get home you'll be a hero," Cpl. Mark Waller, 21, from Oklahoma, said yesterday. "They'll put out a big sign: 'Welcome home, Marlboro Man.' "
Miller is now obliged to provide smokes to just about anyone who asks. It's just about wiped out his stash in a town where Marlboros aren't available just yet.
"When we came to Fallujah, I had two cartons and three packs," Miller explains glumly, adding that his supply has dwindled to four packs, not much for a Marine with a three-pack-a-day habit. "I don't know what I'm going to do."
Even in the Marines, where smoking is widespread, the extent of Miller's habit has raised eyebrows.
"I tried to get him to stop — the cigarettes will kill him before the war," says Navy Corpsman Anthony Lopez, a medic. "I get on him all the time. But this guy is a true Marlboro man."
Miller, who was sent to Iraq in June, is the eldest of three brothers from the hamlet of Jonancy, Ky., in the heart of Appalachian coal country.
Never heard of Jonancy?
"It's named after my great-great-great-grandparents: Joe and Nancy Miller," the young Marine explains. "They were the first people in those parts."
His father, James Miller, is a mechanic and farmer, and Miller grew up working crops: potatoes, corn, green beans.
His mother, Maxie Webber, is a nurse. She last talked to her son briefly on Sunday via a satellite phone. He could speak for only a few minutes, enough time to say hello and reassure his family. After the U.S. attack on Fallujah began Monday, family members waited for some message that he was still alive. Days later, they sat in shock as newscaster Dan Rather talked about the photograph. Who is this man, Rather asked, with the tired eyes and a look of determination?
"I screamed at the TV, 'That's my son!' " Webber said.
Others in Jonancy, including his own father, didn't recognize the camouflaged and bloodied man as the boy they knew.
"He had that stuff on his face. And the expression, that look," said Rodney Rowe, Miller's high-school basketball coach. "Those are not the eyes I'm used to seeing in his face."
Back in high school, Miller was an athlete, joining every team that played a sport involving a ball. The school, Shelby Valley High, is located in Pikeville, Ky., the nearest town of any consequence and the home of an annual three-day spring festival called "Hillbilly Days."
Miller was adrift after high school, wondering what to do with himself. His father never wanted him to work in the mines. "He would have been disappointed if I did that," Miller says. "He told me it was awful work."
So Miller enlisted in the Marines in July 2003 after a conversation with a recruiter he met at a football game. His road to fame was paved in Marine khaki.
"What I really wanted to do was auto-body repair," he says. "But before I knew it I was in boot camp."
Now, he says he's just trying to get through each day. His predecessor as platoon radio man was sent home after being injured in a car-bomb attack.
Miller has three years to go in active duty, but he appears disinclined to re-enlist.
And he shrugs off suggestions he may cash in on his fleeting stardom. He has no plans to hire an agent.
"When I get out, I just want to chill out a little bit," he explains. "Go back to my house, farm a little bit, do some mechanical stuff around the house and call it a day."
Oh, and one more thing: "I'll just sit on my roof and smoke a cigarette."