R.B. Miller Stepping Off

Whenever I visited a new country, my goal was to get a letter published in the Dear Dotti column of the Weekly World News (1979-2007). Prior to enlisting, I'd had many letters published from the U.S., and one from France. The highlight of my literary career was getting this letter published in the run-up to Desert Storm: Okay, the letter wasn't actually true -- I'd kill any Saudi trying to take my Dotti picture -- but it prompted her to send me a picture, something I'd failed at many times previously. It's hard to articulate why I first enlisted, but the 1991-2019 portion of my career reflected my pride that Dotti was behind me, supporting what I did and wanting me to Kick Butt. One usage error that Marines rarely tolerate is being called soldiers. Marines aren't soldiers. Soldiers are in the Army. Whenever a newspaper -- even the Wall Street Journal , Washington Post , or New York City Times -- gets a picture of men in uniform, they label the...

People sometimes ask how this picture came about. Two weeks after taking Baghdad, we happened to be near Babylon, about 70 miles south. I was a longtime subscriber to the Weekly World News (RIP), but this was a copy a friend sent. Since I was in the Arena of Death anyway, I asked a friend to take this picture. Here's a picture of the Arena of Death from the top. The lion entrance is the partially obscured arch on the left. The Christian entrance is out of the picture to the right. When I was done with the newspaper, I gave it to some locals, who really enjoyed it. Here they're reading it on a stone table used for human sacrifice.