Misratah Libya April 20, 2011: A libyan rebel fighter runs up a burning stairwell during an effort to dislodge ensconced troops loyal to Moammar Gaddafi during house-to-house fighting on Tripoli Street in downtown Misratah, Libya.Chris Hondros—Getty Images
War photographers are the bravest people I know. In many years of covering conflict, from Kashmir to Palestine to Iraq, I’ve had the honor to befriend and work with some of the finest, and bravest, of the breed. Few were in the league of Chris Hondros. I am heart-broken by the news that he and Tim Hetherington, another photographer, have been killed in Misratah, Libya.
Chris and I hung out at TIME’s Baghdad bureau, in a wide assortment of military bases, in Baghdad’s Green Zone, and on one especially memorable occasion, stuck in a small plane on the tarmac of the airport in Amman, Jordan. We were meant to be flying into Baghdad, and the flight was delayed over and over again by sandstorms. To kill time, Chris and I made a deal: He’d explain baseball to be, and I’d help him understand cricket. When he was about halfway through his disquisition on America’s favorite sport, another passenger chimed in to question his interpretation of some arcane rule. (At least, it seemed arcane to me.) Then another passenger interrupted, with a variation of his own. Pretty soon, half the plane was consumed in a heated discussion on the finer details of baseball rules.
The conversation never ended, and thereafter, whenever I saw Chris he reminded me that I owed him an explanation of cricket.
It became a running joke between us, but also served as a coping mechanism, a distraction from the misery we often confronted in our line of work. At a Baghdad hospital one sweltering summer’s day, we watched as several dozen dead and injured — victims of a suicide bombing — were unloaded from ambulances. There was blood everywhere, people were screaming in pain. Chris and I were overwhelmed. Then he took his tearing eyes away from his camera for a moment and muttered, “When we’re done here, can you show me how to do a googly?”
That, in turn, became our inside joke. Every time we met, one of us would simply say, “googly,” and then break out laughing.
All of us who’ve been fortunate to know Chris will miss his incredible talent, his bravery and his generosity. Most of all, I’ll miss that big guffaw, the sound of reassurance.
Misratah Libya April 20, 2011: A libyan rebel fighter runs up a burning stairwell during an effort to dislodge ensconced troops loyal to Moammar Gaddafi during house-to-house fighting on Tripoli Street in downtown Misratah, Libya.Chris Hondros—Getty ImagesPaktika Province, Afghanistan, October 15, 2009: US Army soldiers in the 1/501st of the 25th Infantry Division shield their eyes from the powerful rotor wash of a Chinook cargo helicopter as they are picked up from a mission October 15, 2009 in Paktika Province, Afghanistan. Chris Hondros—Getty ImagesBaghdad, Iraq, May 16, 2008: In the orange fog of an Iraqi sandstorm, PFC. Joshua Guerrero (L) and Private Aaron Livas, US troops of the 2nd Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division carry a wounded Iraqi man who started running from their platoon during a routine morning patrol and was shot.Chris Hondros—Getty ImagesAl-Kut, Iraq April 16 2003: A U.S. Marine pulls down a picture of Saddam Hussein at a school. A combination team of Marines, Army and Special Forces went to schools and other facilities in Al-Kut looking for weapons caches and unexploded bombs.Chris Hondros—Getty ImagesHerat, Afghanistan ,October 24, 2010: An Afghan National Policeman from the series “Iraq and Afghanistan through a HumVee window”. A body of work Hondros was particularly fond of.Chris Hondros—Getty ImagesHerat, Afghanistan, June 26, 2010: Afghan schoolgirls wave to a passing American convoy. From the series “Iraq and Afghanistan through a HumVee window”.Chris Hondros—Getty ImagesBaghdad, Iraq, February 13, 2007: Iraqi children are seen through a window of a U.S. military Humvee, the main vehicle used for transport of U.S. troops in Iraq. From the series “Iraq and Afghanistan through a HumVee window”.Chris Hondros—Getty ImagesBaghdad, Iraq, July 13, 2007: Pft. Daniel Sims of Clemson, South Carolina of the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment of the U.S. Army sits during watch duties in a partially destroyed building that's being converted to an Army field post in the tense Amariyah neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq. Chris Hondros—Getty ImagesFallujah, Iraq, June 24, 2005: Marines of the Third Battalion, Fourth Marines, process a detained man near Fallujah, Iraq after a midnight raid in the rural suburbs.Chris Hondros—Getty ImagesTal Afar, Iraq, January 18, 2005: Samar Hassan, 5, screams after her parents were killed by U.S. Soldiers with the 25th Infantry Division. i The troops fired on the Hassan family car when it unwittingly approached them during a dusk patrol in the tense northern Iraqi town. Parents Hussein and Camila Hassan were killed instantly, and a son Racan, 11, was seriously wounded in the abdomen. Racan, paralyzed from the waist down, was treated later in the U.S. Chris Hondros—Getty ImagesAjdabiyah, Libya, April 14, 2011: A rebel fighter celebrates as his comrades fire a rocket barrage toward the positions of troops loyal to Libyan ruler Muammar Gaddafi west of Ajdabiyah, Libya. Chris Hondros—Getty Images
