America's Battalion becomes face of war in Afghanistan

They're known as America's Battalion. Now they are the face of America's military in Afghanistan.

The Marines and sailors of 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, left Camp Lejeune May 18 for a seven-month deployment to Afghanistan. But they had an extra component: Correspondents from National Public Radio were tagging along for the ride.

"We had discussions here about how to cover the war in Afghanistan, and we felt we were at a sort of new moment with the war, with the new president and the new strategy. And we wanted to tell that story through the eyes of the people who are actually doing the real fighting and living through it," said Bruce Auster, a senior editor at NPR. "It seemed the best place to look was to the Marines who are really the vanguard of the new approach."

NPR correspondents - including Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman, foreign desk reporter J.J. Sutherland, Kabul correspondent Soraya Sarhadi-Nelson and photographer David Gilkey - began following 2/8 before the group left Camp Lejeune, were at the deployment and are now in Afghanistan with the troops.

"This group of Marines really are among the first to go over after the president gave his speech down at Lejeune, after the formulation of the new strategy, so it seemed like a natural choice," Auster said.

But the Marines and sailors aren't the only ones with embedded reporters. The lives of those left behind is also being recorded.

Catherine Welch, from the NPR station WHQR in Wilmington, has been attending the events the Marines and sailors cannot, such as high school graduations, to show what life is like at home during a deployment.

One of Welch's stories within the series detailed the high school graduation of Sgt. Maj. Robert Breeden's only child. Breeden is currently on his 13th deployment and, while he is gone, his family is continuing its dayto-day life.

"His family has been through like a dozen deployments, and they are so strong through this one that it's amazing to me how they just keep rolling," Welch said.

Through the stories, photos and four radio diaries, NPR hopes to show the war in Afghanistan through the Marines' eyes.

"What we're trying to do is tell a story through the eyes of real people and people who you can get to know a little bit; because, I think too often in journalism, something happens, you do a quick story and you're on to something different and you never really meet the people out there doing the fighting or the families back home who are having to worry about them," Auster said. "And I think the idea here is you get to know people over time."

"You meet them in North Carolina and you meet them in Afghanistan and they become real that way," he added. "They're not just names any more. I think that's important because this war is being fought by real people."