Welcome to Home of the Brave. I'm Scott Carrier. One morning back in November of 2001 I was standing next to the Amu Daria, the river that separates

Uzbekistan from Afghanistan. I was standing on the Uzbek side and I needed to get across to the Afghan side because the war was starting and I was a war correspondent.

The river was about a half mile wide with a swift current and deep enough for tug boats and barges.

The water was full of glacial silk from the Pamiers, among the highest mountains in the world. Across the river was

the Bactrian desert, home of the double-hump camel. To my left, upriver, there was a bridge of rusting steel, strong enough in 1988 for Soviet

tanks and retreat, but now it was closed because a new war was starting. No one going in or out, including me, which meant I was

fought. I'd come all that way and the door was shut and I was looking at a huge failure.

But then I went into a restaurant to have some breakfast,

and there was only one other customer,

a photojournalist named Alan Chin from New York City and he said have you heard

about the boat? And I said what boat? And he said there's a boat making a special

trip taking journalists across the river.

Do you want to go?

So I got into Afghanistan because of Alan Chin and then we together, along with about 15 other journalists covering

the beginning of the war, the first battle, the first U.S. casualty, and a grim scenario where Taliban prisoners were being killed, massacred by our allies, the

Uzbek militia.

Then we went our separate ways.

I stopped covering wars, but Alan kept going back.

Sometimes I'd see one of his photos in the New York Times, but I never saw Alan again

until recently, 18 years after we met. I talked to him in his apartment in New York City. I wanted to know what he'd seen and learned about war.

We're on the low east side here. We're very close to the Manhattan Bridge.

You grew up in New York. Yeah, I was born in New York. I was actually the first member of my family born in the United States. My parents were

...