The Troubled Homecoming Of The Marlboro Marine

Blake Miller can't stand cats. He didn't always hate them, but that was before Iraq; before he fought in the battle of Fallujah; before the first enemy soldier Miller killed lay rotting in the street for three days, his remains picked over by a hungry cat that had crawled inside the dead Iraqi's hollowed-out chest. Miller's life divides like that, into then and now. Before November 9th, 2004.

Before the photograph. On that day, as Miller paused for a smoke during a lull in the fighting, a photographer from The Los Angeles Times captured the battle-weary Marine with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Miller's face was smeared with soot and sand and blood and war paint, none of which could camouflage his bewilderment and exhaustion. The image was soon plastered all over the news, appearing in more than 150 publications worldwide and earning him the moniker "Marlboro Man." Overnight, the photo made Miller an unwitting icon, a symbol of the indomitable spirit of U.S. troops, the heroism and virility of the American fighter. The New York Post ran the shot — later nominated for a Pulitzer Prize — under a simple headline: SMOKIN'.

That was then. These days, Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller spends much of his time sitting on the floor of the run-down trailer he keeps as a residence behind his father's house in the tiny coal-mining town of Jonancy, Kentucky (population 297). This is his favorite spot in the trailer, where he reclines against an easy chair whose upholstery has turned a dingy nicotine brown. From here, Miller can anticipate any possible threat, keep an eye on all avenues of approach an enemy might take. As cigarette butts overflow in the ashtray and empty beer bottles collect around him, he silently cycles through procedures the Marine Corps drilled into his head: defend, reinforce, attack, withdraw, delay. He knows it's only seven steps to the front door, but he worries whether his truck has enough gas to make an escape. He wishes someone had told him that "there may come a time when all that shit you learned, you might not be able to turn it off."