Opinion: After a lifetime spent in war zones, this is what stays with me above all else

Opinion: After a lifetime spent in war zones, this is what stays with me above all else

Opinion by Maria Fleet

Updated 2:19 PM ET, Sun September 4, 2024

Maria Fleet is a veteran journalist who covered the first Gulf War, the US intervention in Somalia (for which she earned an Emmy), the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia and the wars in Chechnya and Kosovo for CNN. After the September 11 attacks, she won a Peabody Award for reporting on al Qaeda. She was a Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow at the University of Michigan in 2004, and later returned to work on CNN's international news desk until 2021. Fleet now works as an independent journalist. The views expressed here are her own. Read more opinion on CNN. For more information, watch No Ordinary Life on at 10 p.m. ET Monday on CNN.

(CNN)The man was very tall. I had to tilt my camera up at a sharp angle to frame him against the overcast sky. He had ink black hair and expressive eyes that were almost hidden in the deep shadow of his brow. There were burn marks on his face.