Capturing experience of lifetime
I’D been with the Record for about six years when the picture editor asked me if I wanted to go to Iraq.
It was Christmas 2002 and media outlets were being given a chance to embed photographers and reporters with regiments as war seemed inevitable.
Other photographers had wives and kids but I was 26 and single, so I fit the bill.
I said yes straight away. I saw it as a unique chance to take great pictures and go an adventure. When you’re young, you don’t think much about what could happen.
The Record was to be embedded with the Royal Scottish Dragoon Guards tank regiment.
When the war started, the tanks rolled into Iraq, we ended up based in an old airfield near basra.
you learned to grab sleep when you could.
A lot of the fighting went on in the hours of darkness.
I remember troops from the regiment returning in late March after destroying 14 Iraqi tanks without losing any themselves.
They laid out on the ground next to their Challengers, exhausted.
Later, we ended up in basra. We were shaking hands and taking photos of locals when we came under attack from militia fighters.
I got separated from the regiment and ended up attaching myself to some Irish Guards I didn’t know.
There was RPGs being launched and small arms fire. I figured the Record would want some good pictures, so I managed to get a few shots off.
baghdad was captured on April 9. The locals were pulling down giant pictures of Saddam Hussein and throwing them in a river.
The whole thing was an adrenaline rush.
I’m 20 years older and I have a daughter but I’d still probably consider doing something like that again.
I’m still at the Record and, when I look at my career, I don’t think I’ll have another experience like it.