Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma

In next month's Men's Journal, Greg Veis profiles Chris Ware: CNN correspondent, six years into Iraq. Ware shows Veis harrowing video of a raid, and argues for the importance of getting footage that puts viewers close to the awful action of combat.

"When your brothers and sons and mates from the football team come home, and they ain’t quite the same, you have an obligation to sit for three and a half minutes and share something of what it’s like to be there.”

But his story also reveals how getting those stories has taken its toll.

“I’m a war dog,” he says. “After seven straight years, you’re always hypervigilant, always on alert. You become conditioned to a state of being where everything is a threat and it’s hard to turn that off; that becomes your normal. There’s an old cliché about the legendary war correspondent who comes home to find he has no wife or many ex-wives, no kids or kids who won’t talk to him, who has no tapestry to his life. At some point you have to consciously reclaim your life.”

You can read the whole profile online.