Iconic Marine Is at Home but Not at Ease (LATimes)

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We've all seen the picture:


http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-na-marlboro19may19,1,2384936.story

Iconic Marine Is at Home but Not at Ease
Blake Miller's weary gaze hinted at the psychological pain to come
By David Zucchino, Times Staff Writer
May 19, 2006

JONANCY, Ky. — Growing up in Jonancy Bottom, where coal trucks grind their gears as they rumble down from the ragged green hills, Blake Miller always believed there were only two paths for him: the coal mines or the Marine Corps. He chose the Marines, enlisting right out of high school.

The Marines sent him to Iraq, and then to Fallouja, where his life was forever altered. He survived a harrowing all-night firefight in November 2004, pinned down on a rooftop by insurgents firing from a nearby house. Filthy and exhausted, he had just lighted a Marlboro at dawn when an embedded photographer captured an image that transformed Blake into an icon of the Iraq war.

His detached expression in the photo seemed to signify different things to different people — valor, despair, hope, futility, fear, courage, disillusionment. For Blake, the photograph represents a pivotal moment in his life: an instant when he feared he would never see another sunrise, and when his psychological foundation began to fracture.

Blake, whose only brush with celebrity was as a star quarterback in high school, became known as the Marlboro Man, a label he detests. That same notoriety has carried over into his post-Iraq life, where he is an icon of sorts for another consequence of the war — post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.