For much of his life, Carlos Boettcher hardly saw his dad. As a longtime NBC and CNN correspondent, his father Mike was traveling the world covering wars. He has a Peabody and lots of other awards to show for it, but he lost out on the opportunity to see his only son grow up.
Now, the very thing that separated Carlos and Mike has brought them together. The father-son duo is embedded with U.S. troops on the front lines of Afghanistan. They’re telling multimedia stories for ABCNews.com and also transmitting them to the University of Oklahoma as part of a collaborative project called Afghan 101, which Mike helped start as a visiting professor at the university.
Mike and Carlos’ work in Afghanistan began in 2008, shortly after Mike proposed that NBC News start embedding its reporters full-time with the military rather than centering its efforts on sustaining brick and mortar bureaus in Baghdad. NBC decided the plan was too dangerous, so Mike opted out of his contract and decided to pursue the idea on his own. He was going to go to Iraq and Afghanistan alone — until Carlos asked if he could join him.
“I worried about having my son exposed to the hazards of the battlefield, but I remembered that I was his age when I began reporting in war zones for CNN in 1980, beginning in El Salvador,” said Mike, who e-mailed me from Afghanistan.
In the fall of 2008, he and Carlos headed to Afghanistan and filed blog posts and multimedia stories to a website they had created. The following spring, ABC News asked to partner with them. Mike and Carlos agreed and, after spending some time in the states, returned to Afghanistan two months ago for a year-long stay.
In some ways, they’re making up for lost time. They’re always together — hiking along the terrain, hiding from insurgents and telling stories. They report, shoot and edit, collaborate on scripts, and take turns doing interviews.
On rare occasions, they’re forced to split up. In the summer of 2009, Mark and Carlos found themselves in the middle of intense combat after the Marines made their first big push into the Helmand River Valley, a hostile area in the southern part of the country. They were separated for two weeks.
Everything in Afghanistan, Mike said, is designed to kill you. “A hike up thousands of feet can kill you, especially if you’re 56 like me. Your footing can give way and you can plunge to your death,” he said. “The terrain is perfectly suited for insurgents who have been fighting in these mountains for generations.”
And yet despite the danger, he continues to pursue stories there because he said Americans need to know what’s happening on the front lines.
The physical and mental exhaustion that accompanies this kind of experience has tested Mike and Carlos’ stamina. Each day, they put their lives at risk as they patrol the front lines with soldiers who are on their third, fourth, and in some cases fifth deployments. At the end of the day, they head to their computers and figure out what the story is.
“We often feel like we work two jobs, which can quickly take a toll,” Carlos said via e-mail. “Putting the exhaustion aside and saying, ‘We have a job to do, no excuses,’ not just once but for months on end, is the greatest challenge we face. Also: not getting shot. That’s a big one, too.”
Despite all the chaos on the front lines, they’re able to restore a sense of calm when they’re together telling stories.
“Our relationship is on the same standing it has been since we did our last yearlong embed: good, and quiet,” Carlos said. “People always expect some sort of drama between us considering the work we do and where we do it, but as a rule things are calm and we work very, very well together.”
Mike said Carlos brings a young eye to the war and has helped him tell stories from a fresh perspective. Working with Carlos has also given Mike a chance to be a mentor to his son.
Carlos knew how to shoot and edit video, but didn’t have any journalism experience before going to Afghanistan. Thanks to his dad, he’s learned how to tell stories, report in front of a camera and find his voice as a writer. And he’s come to appreciate his dad’s passion for war reporting.
“My father played a huge role in my decision to pursue this path, and I have no regrets about it, difficult as it may be,” Carlos said. “I can’t think of many fathers and sons who are able to sit down after a firefight and say, ‘OK, we almost died, let’s get to work,’ but that’s how we exist, and sharing these experiences that are so completely out of the norm is something I’m very thankful for.”
Mike, who is divorced from Carlos’ mom, thrives on these experiences; they have shaped his life throughout the past 30 years. But he misses his wife Katherine and his 15-year-old daughter Isabella, who is Carlos’ sister. Christmas, he said, is the hardest time to be away.
On the toughest of days, Carlos keeps him going.
“After all these years I am finally getting to know my son,” Mike said. “I can’t make up for the past, but I can make the most of my time with him now.”
Comments