Lindsay Addario

And I had never had such a near-death experience and I was kind of in shock.

I'm just standing there and all I can think of is I just – I don't know if I can do this.

Like that was really scary.

And suddenly a taxi pulled up.

And this taxi driver said, is there a journalist around?

And I said, yeah.

And he said, can anyone help me?

I have the body of a journalist in my trunk.

And I sort of doubled over and I felt like I was going to throw up.

And I started sobbing and said like,

I just want to go home.

I don't want to end up in the back of a trunk one day.

Like, I don't want to die doing this job.

You know, I don't think I have it in me to be that brave.

How did one transfer the body of a friend out of a country we all snuck into illegally when there were no functioning embassies, no police, no diplomats, and the only open border accessible from northern Iraq was Iran?

It seems so obvious, but I didn't know that war meant death, that journalists might also get killed in the war.

I hid behind the hospital, ashamed of my weakness, my tears, and my fear, wondering if I had the strength for this job, and wept inconsolably.

The war had begun.

You know, it's so interesting to read that passage now, 20-plus years later, because, of course, war means death.

And when war—you know, now we're in an era where journalists are routinely targeted and routinely killed—