Matthew Heineman Quotes

I don't go to war for the adrenaline rush. I cover wars because that's what I've ended up doing.

I went to Vietnam; it was my first assignment as a reporter for the UPI, and I never could get away from the war.

I was a war correspondent in Korea. I did a book on it: 'This is War.'

When you're a war correspondent, the reader is for you because the reader is saying, 'Gee, I wouldn't want to be doing that.' They're on your side.

In Iraq, embedding allows us to put reporters in situations that would otherwise be too dangerous for them.

I was a foreign correspondent in Berlin in the mid-'90s.

There was a nuisance in the service known as the army correspondent.

Hair is also a problem. I remember once, when I was reporting from Beirut at the height of the civil war, someone wrote in to the BBC complaining about my appearance.

I have been to several wars to draw. I went to Vietnam. And made drawings in Vietnam during that period of the war there, and found that to be a very very sad situation.

I've never been embedded with American soldiers or British soldiers or Iraqi soldiers or any other.

The sad reality of war is that if you are going to be in day-to-day combat, there are going to be casualties.

Our mission is to report these horrors of war with accuracy and without prejudice

It seems a waste, to me, for the sake of getting more colorful news, to send these men, who are not in any way concerned with the war [Spanish Civil War] which is going on and the principles at stake, into such positions of danger. Three men, two Americans and an Englishman, have died, and with apparent pride a formal announcement is made to the effect that we should realize what dangers correspondents go through to give us the news. To be sure, these men, not only go willingly, but often are anxious for the assignment. Personally, I would prefer to have those three men alive and a little less accurate and colorful news, and I am quite sure the majority of the people in the United States feel the same way. If men must die, let it be for their own convictions, not because they are sent out so we may read or see something more startling in our newspapers and newsreels.

Initially, I tried to become an aid worker and someone who could help people, but I was unsuccessful in convincing anyone that I could be of any use. So I went and became a war correspondent without any experience in war or in being a correspondent. So that was daring.

I was no stranger to risk myself, having made documentaries in dangerous conditions in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Africa.

I was a war correspondent and journalist for a long time, and I was very near the towers on 9/11 and very shortly after in Afghanistan.

Having been in the military myself, there is an awful moment when you're in this moment of conflict.

Oh, go in anywhere Colonel, go in anywhere. You'll find lovely fighting all along the line.

I've covered a couple wars and a lot of breaking news and a lot of cops-and-robbers situations.

Here, in Cork district, you have in combination all the dangers which war can inflict.

As the knight of the quill never ventured into the fight, and only snuffed the battle afar, he knew nothing accurately of battles, but managed to pick up a few real or supposed incidents from the wounded and from stragglers.

For the most part, everybody who fights in war fights to survive.

Suddenly, at about ten o'clock, a dull thud sounded somewhere far away from us, and simultaneously we saw a small white round cloud about half a mile ahead of us where the shrapnel had exploded. The battle had begun.

While many people think that we as reporters are whining and that this is a time of war, we are really the conveyors of truth in a very critical time and people need to know that truth.

For a war correspondent to miss an invasion is like refusing a date with Lana Turner.