John Monte embedded in Afghanistan

Filming for National Geographic Channel "Inside The Green Berets"

October, 28 2006

Began today with our lesson in Safety Proceedure in a Humvee Convoy, before heading out to stops in villages. We were shown where the ammo sits in the humvees and what to hand the gunners to reload if under attack. Our safety lesson.

I ended today eating a large spread of food cooked by the neighboring village for our soliders. I sat next to a young reserve solider, who asked what I did. And I told him about thefullmonte, and mentioned our film Vacationing In Afghanistan

He had watched it last week on Google Video. My crew and commrades immediatly joked he's making that up, and my amazement plummeted to embrassment at being had. Then he asked "What happened to the dog?' He had seen our movie. The young solider shared with me his dream - to write a travel guide to show the world the beauty of Afghanistan.

That is the media revolution - the heart to speak.

More on today in the morning - must sleep. Have pictures from today - but the infernal rain of dust has chewed up the small still camera, and we are left with a large camera - which I cannot shoot from the back of a Humvee clenching my gear.

More in the morning.

Filming for National Geographic Channel "Inside The Green Berets"

This Must Be Staccato

October, 27 2006

Have not slept since last blog entry.

Flew in the wee hours of the night to another major military base. Had a two am briefing by Special Forces commander.

What strikes me about this world - is the "got your back".

The military folks I have been with exude this ethic. When there is gear to hump, and things to throw ourselves into, they are there with us, beside us.

My first chopper ride ever across the Afghan Landscape into the outreaches of Afghanistan to be with the Special forces.

They took our blood types (I am A positive.) And tommorow out with the Special Forces.

They have internet. But I must sleep for the first time in many hours.

On My Way to Afghanistan

In Transit for National Geographic Channel "Inside The Green Berets"

October, 26 2006

I am told that I am now a Major in the US Army, and my traveling papers seem to agree. Though I've never been through basic training or received a commission, I am now to be treated as equivalent to a Major as long as I stay in Afghanistan. I received this impromptu field commission not for any services rendered to the US government, but because I am leading a film crew for National Geographic embedded with US Special Forces in their remote forward positions.

We left DC last Friday at 4 AM, and though I write this at 8PM on Wednesday, my calculations show that I've only been in-country for three days. You may infer from this that we've been doing quite a bit of traveling. For the first two days, we rested at a base in the Carolinas where our gear was loaded onto massive pallets for our Sunday night flight. Aboard the C-17 that night, we and about 40 soldiers tucked ourselves between dozens of pallets carrying all sorts of unknown equipment and supplies. The webbing that secured the gear looked sturdy enough, but it still made one wonder whether it would save lives if some emergency began to roll the gear around the fuselage. After too many hours of sitting on cushionless metal, we were finally allowed to lie down on the hard metal deck. I took my cues from the soldiers, who wrapped up with their feet placed on the seats. As I dozed off, the aircraft's interior reminded me of the Centre de Geroges Pompidou in Paris; all of the wiring, ductwork, and structural elements were exposed. Despite the constant, earsplitting roar of these enormous planes, our spartan beds proved unexpectedly restful, even comfortable.

Time and space smear into irrelevance from the absence of windows and the short-lived time zones. At some point, we landed in Germany, were rapidly shuttled to a place where we rapidly wait, for FOUR HOURS, in a military airport with reasonably efficient security (now we know where they hide it). We then reboarded our C-17 and repeated the above sequence. All in all, the trip was bearable, especially considering that we were able to get an early start on our work by catching some extraordinary footage of our C-17 executing its airborne refueling cycle. My only black mark for Uncle Sam's travel service is the food. We know how toxic standard airline food is, but what they've been giving us lately has been far worse. When they bring it out, I get scared...really. After eating the first "meal", I began to feel a deep pain for what our troops go through in their service. I was told everyone who eats this food develops such pain.

Now in Afghanistan, after such a long, unappetizing trip, we are naturally grateful for our current accommodations at this high walled base-within-a-base. I've been to plenty of bases before, and I'd have to classify this one as almost luxurious, even if curtains don't match the massive concrete walls with razor wire trim. Still, our mission hasn't yet begun to feel real. We're bored and growing restless as we sit sequestered in this necessary prison with no choice but to read and indulge in an abundance of rich food. Some of us even appear to be gaining weight, but we don't waste a bite, because once we leave this place, we can expect long days with often meager provisions. Moreover, eating is one of the few releases from the unavoidable boredom.

That's all about to change. Tonight, we're being flown to a remote forward base. Of course, our team is anxious to start shooting�er�filming what we came here to see, but I'm glad to have some time to note how things have changed here at Bagram airbase. The last time I came here was 2002. I stayed for exactly two financially rewarding days, during which we shot�um�filmed some footage for America's Most Wanted. Not exactly nouvelle vague, but think about it�Afghanistan is where most of them are, after all. Either way, it let me learn about the place and gave me some needed time off from my steady job filming Virginia William's Still Fighting.

Back then, when we rolled through the base's forbidding security gates after weeks in the dust-coated chaos of Kabul, I remember feeling shocked�no, positively freaked out� to find so many fellow Americans that had been here for months without ever having ventured past the fence separating them from Afghanistan. We slept and ate in frozen tents between our daytime excursions into the sea of dust that you never really manage to clean off entirely.

How things have changed. My current bed must be among the warmest, most comfortable ever to grace an Afghan night. Tents have been replaced by buildings, gravel replaced dirt, and concrete has replaced gravel. One can easily find a television here, and the entire base has reliable, fast Internet access. The sheer increase in equipment and supplies� weaponry, ammunition, electronics, generators, food, clothing, medical gear, people, everything� over the last four years is difficult to fully appreciate. They have built up a truly serious presence here� must be millions of tons, literally� and almost all of it was flown in on those massive, fuel-hungry C-17s just like ours. Every day�in and out, in and out.

For such a busy and dynamic place, we are being asked to do a lot of waiting. I grew used to this "hurry up and wait" phenomenon in the news film businesses, and now I'm finding it to be normal for the military also. I don't mind so much, really. I spent several weeks back home anticipating this experience many times each hour, especially during my Yoga classes, so a few more hours or days doesn't truly amount to much. And still I know that when the waiting is over, it will be almost without warning. Someone will come and tell us it's time to move out, and then, before anyone has time to think about it, we'll be in the dirt, in some inhospitable corner of the wilderness trying to keep up with a Special Forces unit. My team is ready and well equipped with high-grade body armor and helmets. I myself have had a weeks worth of "hostile environment training" through a Rory Peck Scholarship, and I find myself running though the lessons over and again.

For now, my biggest concern is the two dollars I now owe to our assigned Colonel, but I'm not going to let that endure. He may have drawn a few lucky hands on the flight from Germany, but I've got a strategy: I'm going to double it up at just the right moment, and take it all to the bank. It's a shame too, because I like the guy. He shares our sarcasm and his adaptable, roll-with-the-punches attitude is refreshing, energizing. No attitude is more useful in a place like this, doing jobs like these.

Last night we loaded onto a plane and sat with the engines on for well over an hour - long enough that I fell asleep like everyone on the plane. I woke up in utter confusion, not knowing whether we were flying or on the runway. To my vague disappointment, it turns out we were still on the ground. They shut down the engines, and we loaded off with every last one of our heavy packs of gear. And back to our major accommodations. And thank good the mess hall was open for a midnight dinner, our fourth meal of the day.

But this won't last much longer. Things change here in no time, and our change is coming soon...could be any minute now. I can feel it coming, and I know we'll miss these beds when we're out on the ground. When the action starts, we will work ourselves into exhaustion, and we'll crash into sleep pining for one of these huge meals. So it goes...

Bikram, Backs and Bullets

March, 15 2006

Mr. dodge-bullets in the third world was scared of YOGA: his voice squirmed on my voice mail. �Uh, John, I don�t know. We"re going to have to talk about this Yoga. My friends say "it's really intense, I am not sure I should go." The birthday gift - a week pass to Bikram Yoga - would go unused. My war photographer friend was scared to sweat in a roomful of mostly young ladies.

But he's right in a way: Bikram Yoga can be misery. During the hour and half class there are no candles, no incense, and no chants. In the minimum of 105-degree heat oxygen feels like a scarce commodity. A new-age drill sergeant (usually in a deceptively nice voice) commands a sweat -drenched class to move in unison into painful contortions. The founder Bikram Choudray, often says "you must suffer."

Why endure such I thing?

Well my business, the camera business, is strewn with broken backs. Years of shouldering electronic slabs of metal and glass, lugging cases of gear, standing through rain or snow, and slugging out twenty hour days registers in the strongest beast's back. Jim's got a crushed disk, Bruno has had his hip replaced, Rodney's got debilitating back spasms, and Gary's had a calcified chunk surgically shaved off his shoulder.

I keep going back to Yoga.

At the beginning, in a sea of limber bodies, I felt like a feeble wobbling drunk geriatric. With blurred vision I clenched around one thought "can I live to breathe one more breath?" But the stress toxins poured out, and some endorphins pulsed through me. And after a long three years, I'm taller and my back is changing.

This yoga practice emerged from injury. When he crushed his knee as an 18 year-old power -weight lifter, Bikram was told he would never walk again. Bikram arranged his own sequence (the positions are a millennium old). But, I'm not 18. Is the regenerative force of an eighteen-year old body and crushed knee easier that shifting the flesh and bone of decades of compacted -stress?

How does anybody loosen flesh viscously guarded by pain? While I lunged forth competently into a few positions and struggled with most positions, I still grinded against pain. Pain I did not remember having before doing Yoga. The constant instruction to "pull, push, loosen, tighten," bounced around my head in a jumble. Till one day, �form before depth, build your core strength," echoed in my hollow skull like a fog horn.

I changed my tact to avoid the rocks. Yes, sweaty grasshopper, the loosed strands, the gelatinous middle, and the painful lumps are all connected. I have started to tighten my core, and focus on my form. I am gradually pushing into the tightened pain. I have even relaxed on occasion.

Muscle memory is the foundation of demanding camera work and the basis of a strong yoga practice. It is thinking with your body. Both depend on micro adjustments. And both can keep you young. (The world unfolding in front of a camera lense is fascinating.) But there is a lot of swagger in the camera game. There are a lot more men than woman. Bikram's the opposite.

I bought five Bikram passes for male colleagues. Only two have been used. The last friend I offered a pass to has survived 25 years in the camera business. He often reminds people he was paratrooper in Vietnam before he was a cameraman.

Guess I am doomed to tough it out with the ladies. I'm in the business for the long haul. Bikram is the only game plan I have for a strong back on a long road.

January 18, 2006

I saw this ad in The New Yorker, a few weeks ago for Anderson Cooper. It's the kind of type face that makes me suspicious that thefullmonte may be having an influence. A friend who knows him pretty well sent him sent Anderson the link. I give Anderson Cooper credit for a moment I saw during Katrina, he was interviewing Senator Lott from Mississippi who was claiming what a good job the Government was doing, and Anderson Cooper responded " I am standing next to a dead body reality on the street is different. It was an impossibly rare moment though. A moment when power was not securely separated from reality. Power could not hide behind a press conference, or press event, Reality lay dead on the street.

January 16, 2006

I often work a weekend shift in the White House Briefing room, mostly doing live shots. A few of my colleagues in the White House Press Corps have been wearing thefullmonte hats. They like what we are doing.

A CNN Staff cameraman told me CNN made him take off a thefullmonte sticker he put on his CNN Video Camera. He told them to check out the website. Cameraman put stickers of rock band or sports team on their cameras. A generational distinction seems to be evolving around our name. Youth get the barbwire, and youth gets the "full" as in the full story. It's the old folks, stogy thinking that seems to think of something else.