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Anchor Jeb Sharp speaks with New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins about the many young soldiers he’s met while covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Filkins has written a personal essay on young soldiers at war for this weekend’s New York Times Magazine.

• “Lost Soldiers” by Dexter Filkins
• Slideshow: the shrine down the hall

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JEB SHARP:  New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins has covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  He’s met many of the young men and women who serve this country by putting their lives in danger half a world away.  And he’s seen some of them die.  Dexter Filkins, you’re in Kabul right now, you’ve written a moving essay for this weekend’s New York Times magazine.  There’s also an accompanying photo essay by Ashley Gilbertson.  Dexter, your essay focuses on these young solders, just kids, you call them.  What brought home for you just how young some of these troops are?

DEXTER FILKINS:  Well they really are.  You go into, you step into a military barracks, I’m not a soldier, I’ve never been, expecting big burly guys with deep voices and all that, and they’re not.  They’re chubby faces and voices that are still cracking and little ghost mustaches that they have.  And they’re wrestling over their M&Ms.  And then the bell rings and everybody grabs their guns and goes out.  So it’s a very strange paradox to see in any war zone, in any war, frankly, how young soldiers are.  So on one hand they’re just babies, really, and on the other hand, they’re killing people.  So it’s a thing that you can never really quite get over.

SHARP: And you’ve been in these wars for a lot of years now, and presumably you’ve seen some individual soldiers aging over time.  Did they become adult really fast?  Or what do you see happen there?

FILKINS: Well, yeah sure.  I think the strangest thing when you’re say, on patrol with these guys, and then something terrible happens.  Say, somebody steps on an IED or a mortar shell comes in and kills somebody.  I’m thinking of one moment in particular, nobody talks about it after it’s done.  And again, this is a bunch of 19-year-olds, for the most part.  Nobody says a word.  But nobody runs off and cries, that’s for sure.  Nobody really gets into it and talks about it and what does it mean, and is it going to happen to us, nothing like that.  They kind of tuck it away and put it in a box.  I think they open the box up later, when they get home or else it comes open on its own.  But I think that’s how they, I don’t know if aging is the right word, but that’s how they deal with it.

SHARP: What has it meant for your reporting to be living and interviewing youth?  What does it mean for what you’re actually gleaning and what you’re talking about and telling people about the war?

FILKINS: Well that’s a really good question.  I think most people, at least in my experience, when you go home to the United States; everybody has an opinion about these wars.  Either they’re really, really for them or they’re really, really against them and there’s not a lot of room for ambiguity on these things.  And in my experience it’s kind of, I don’t know, I have a hard time summoning up an opinion in the face of all this.  It’s all very ambiguous to me.  I think one of the most ambiguous and grayish things about it all is just this, what we’re talking about.  Does a 19-year-old really know what he’s doing when he’s in a war zone and he’s following orders?  Sure, he’s responsible for his actions, of course, and they all have rules of engagement and they’re very well disciplined.  And sometimes that breaks down, but it’s a strange thing because you think back when you were 19, and I don’t know, when I was 19 I was just riding my bike around.  These guys are in a war zone.  Yeah, it just makes everything pretty hazy.  It’s hard to judge that, up or down.

SHARP: And Ashley Gilbertson’s photographs in this essay are the bedrooms of young people who’ve died in these wars.

FILKINS: Yeah.  Let me just say something about Ashley’s photos, because they’re just extraordinary, they’re just arresting if you open the magazine or go to the website.  Ashley, he discovered that many parents, particularly of the younger soldiers who were still living at home for the most part; either just graduate from high school or wherever, that they leave their bedrooms in tact.  They preserve them as they were when they were still alive.  And so in some cases, you can see from the photos, these kids have been, they were killed in 2004, 2005 and their bedrooms are absolutely as they left them, with the high school photos and the pennants and the sports trophies and the bedspreads and in some cases, stuffed animals.  It’s really, really moving to look at.

SHARP: Is there a kind that you’ve kept in touch with who is back home safe and going on to other things?

FILKINS: Well I’m thinking of one guy in particular in Ramadi, Iraq in 2006.  In the middle of the night I went up to the rooftop where the Marines used to stand post.  I got to talking to this one guy that was there and he was from Georgia and he had a really heavy accent.  He was a super nice guy.  And he was very young, he was probably 20 or so, actually younger because I remember he said I graduated from high school on Friday and I was in the Marines by Monday.  We talked for a long time.  He told me about his girlfriend and I think his girlfriend had just broken up with him, and we talked about hunting and we talk about other stuff.  He was a great guy and when I was home in the States and I was writing the book I would think of these people who I met and for reasons I can’t remember, I tracked him down and I called his family home in Georgia or Alabama wherever it was.  I got the mother on the phone and the mother said to me, I said how’s your son?  And she said well he’s okay, he’s on a ship somewhere.  And I said how’s he doing?  She said you know when he came home, he had these terrible, terrible nightmares and his nightmares were so intense that I used to get into bed with him and hold him as he went through these nightmares.  That’s kind of all of it right there.  They’re just kids at some level and they’ve seen this extraordinary violence and I remember talking to the mother.  She was almost kind of embarrassed for telling me that, anyway.  That’s one.

SHARP: That says it all.  Can I get you, Dexter, to read a little bit of your essay?  Just the last two paragraphs?

FILKINS: Sure.  Sometimes, right after a guy is killed, you feel as if you are in possession of a terrible secret.  He’s there on the ground, alive only a minute ago, and the only people who know he’s dead are standing right there with him.  The rest of the world thinks he’s still alive, as alive was he was when he climbed out of bed that same morning only a few hours before.  And at that moment you think about how the word of his death will travel.  How it will depart Iraq or Afghanistan and move across the ocean and into the United States and into the town where he lives, Corinth, Mississippi, say, or Benwood, West Virginia, and into the houses and the hearts of the people who love him most in the world.  And at that moment, standing there, looking down on the dead man, you can wonder only what the family will do when the terrible news finally arrives, how they will resist it and wrestle with it and suffer from it and how they will cope and how they will remember.

SHARP: New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins in Kabul.  For a link to his piece in Sunday’s New York Times magazine, The Shrine Down the Hall, and the accompanying photo essay by photographer Ashley Gilbertson, go to our website the world dot org.  Dexter thank you.

FILKINS: Thanks so much.

JEB SHARP:  New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins has covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  He’s met many of the young men and women who serve this country by putting their lives in danger half a world away.  And he’s seen some of them die.  Dexter Filkins, you’re in Kabul right now, you’ve written a moving essay for this weekend’s New York Times magazine.  There’s also an accompanying photo essay by Ashley Gilbertson.  Dexter, your essay focuses on these young solders, just kids, you call them.  What brought home for you just how young some of these troops are?

DEXTER FILKINS:  Well they really are.  You go into, you step into a military barracks, I’m not a soldier, I’ve never been, expecting big burly guys with deep voices and all that, and they’re not.  They’re chubby faces and voices that are still cracking and little ghost mustaches that they have.  And they’re wrestling over their M&Ms.  And then the bell rings and everybody grabs their guns and goes out.  So it’s a very strange paradox to see in any war zone, in any war, frankly, how young soldiers are.  So on one hand they’re just babies, really, and on the other hand, they’re killing people.  So it’s a thing that you can never really quite get over.

SHARP: And you’ve been in these wars for a lot of years now, and presumably you’ve seen some individual soldiers aging over time.  Did they become adult really fast?  Or what do you see happen there?

FILKINS: Well, yeah sure.  I think the strangest thing when you’re say, on patrol with these guys, and then something terrible happens.  Say, somebody steps on an IED or a mortar shell comes in and kills somebody.  I’m thinking of one moment in particular, nobody talks about it after it’s done.  And again, this is a bunch of 19-year-olds, for the most part.  Nobody says a word.  But nobody runs off and cries, that’s for sure.  Nobody really gets into it and talks about it and what does it mean, and is it going to happen to us, nothing like that.  They kind of tuck it away and put it in a box.  I think they open the box up later, when they get home or else it comes open on its own.  But I think that’s how they, I don’t know if aging is the right word, but that’s how they deal with it.

SHARP: What has it meant for your reporting to be living and interviewing youth?  What does it mean for what you’re actually gleaning and what you’re talking about and telling people about the war?

FILKINS: Well that’s a really good question.  I think most people, at least in my experience, when you go home to the United States; everybody has an opinion about these wars.  Either they’re really, really for them or they’re really, really against them and there’s not a lot of room for ambiguity on these things.  And in my experience it’s kind of, I don’t know, I have a hard time summoning up an opinion in the face of all this.  It’s all very ambiguous to me.  I think one of the most ambiguous and grayish things about it all is just this, what we’re talking about.  Does a 19-year-old really know what he’s doing when he’s in a war zone and he’s following orders?  Sure, he’s responsible for his actions, of course, and they all have rules of engagement and they’re very well disciplined.  And sometimes that breaks down, but it’s a strange thing because you think back when you were 19, and I don’t know, when I was 19 I was just riding my bike around.  These guys are in a war zone.  Yeah, it just makes everything pretty hazy.  It’s hard to judge that, up or down.

SHARP: And Ashley Gilbertson’s photographs in this essay are the bedrooms of young people who’ve died in these wars.

FILKINS: Yeah.  Let me just say something about Ashley’s photos, because they’re just extraordinary, they’re just arresting if you open the magazine or go to the website.  Ashley, he discovered that many parents, particularly of the younger soldiers who were still living at home for the most part; either just graduate from high school or wherever, that they leave their bedrooms in tact.  They preserve them as they were when they were still alive.  And so in some cases, you can see from the photos, these kids have been, they were killed in 2004, 2005 and their bedrooms are absolutely as they left them, with the high school photos and the pennants and the sports trophies and the bedspreads and in some cases, stuffed animals.  It’s really, really moving to look at.

SHARP: Is there a kind that you’ve kept in touch with who is back home safe and going on to other things?

FILKINS: Well I’m thinking of one guy in particular in Ramadi, Iraq in 2006.  In the middle of the night I went up to the rooftop where the Marines used to stand post.  I got to talking to this one guy that was there and he was from Georgia and he had a really heavy accent.  He was a super nice guy.  And he was very young, he was probably 20 or so, actually younger because I remember he said I graduated from high school on Friday and I was in the Marines by Monday.  We talked for a long time.  He told me about his girlfriend and I think his girlfriend had just broken up with him, and we talked about hunting and we talk about other stuff.  He was a great guy and when I was home in the States and I was writing the book I would think of these people who I met and for reasons I can’t remember, I tracked him down and I called his family home in Georgia or Alabama wherever it was.  I got the mother on the phone and the mother said to me, I said how’s your son?  And she said well he’s okay, he’s on a ship somewhere.  And I said how’s he doing?  She said you know when he came home, he had these terrible, terrible nightmares and his nightmares were so intense that I used to get into bed with him and hold him as he went through these nightmares.  That’s kind of all of it right there.  They’re just kids at some level and they’ve seen this extraordinary violence and I remember talking to the mother.  She was almost kind of embarrassed for telling me that, anyway.  That’s one.

SHARP: That says it all.  Can I get you, Dexter, to read a little bit of your essay?  Just the last two paragraphs?

FILKINS: Sure.  Sometimes, right after a guy is killed, you feel as if you are in possession of a terrible secret.  He’s there on the ground, alive only a minute ago, and the only people who know he’s dead are standing right there with him.  The rest of the world thinks he’s still alive, as alive was he was when he climbed out of bed that same morning only a few hours before.  And at that moment you think about how the word of his death will travel.  How it will depart Iraq or Afghanistan and move across the ocean and into the United States and into the town where he lives, Corinth, Mississippi, say, or Benwood, West Virginia, and into the houses and the hearts of the people who love him most in the world.  And at that moment, standing there, looking down on the dead man, you can wonder only what the family will do when the terrible news finally arrives, how they will resist it and wrestle with it and suffer from it and how they will cope and how they will remember.

SHARP: New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins in Kabul.  For a link to his piece in Sunday’s New York Times magazine, The Shrine Down the Hall, and the accompanying photo essay by photographer Ashley Gilbertson, go to our website the world dot org.  Dexter thank you.

FILKINS: Thanks so much.

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