On the night the war began, Macor was stationed as an embedded journalist with the Marine 18th Combat and Service Battalion in Camp Coyote, arrayed along the Iraq-Kuwait border.

“It was pretty tense,” he remembers. “That first night, we must have had seven or eight gas warnings. Whenever there was word of an incoming missile, we had to run across camp in all our chemical gear” – rubber boots, sealed chemical suits, gas mask and helmet. The men then dove into pits that had been opened with bulldozers. The only thing Macor noticed in the sky that night were the streaks of Patriot missiles returning fire. Fortunately, no Iraqi missiles landed near the camp.

When orders came to move out, Macor boarded into the back of a canvas-topped truck, home for 18 marines plus Macor, with his 110 pounds of equipment. The 100-mile journey took 22 hours.

“We kept hitting major bumps in the road, when I would see my cameras and computers flying a couple of feet in the air,” he says. “I thought for sure that my equipment was going to be damaged, but amazingly, everything made it through.”

Macor’s first glimpses of war were indirect: caring for wounded soldiers at a series of makeshift camps. After arriving at Camp Anderson, Macor and his unit discovered that most of the camp had already dispatched north, following the fast-moving war. Since their unit was tasked with combat support, they quickly moved on to Camp Chesty. Macor had still not made it to the “real war.” But on the way to Camp Chesty, the war came to him.

Traveling with fellow embed Paul Thompson, a writer for the London Sun, Macor was riding in a HumVee filled with mail when he saw streaks of light – machine-gun tracer fire – passing between his vehicle and the trucks behind.

“Then all the machine gunners behind us started to open fire. It pretty much looked like the Fourth of July,” he says. ”We had no defense other than trying to get as low as possible, to put some steel between us and the gunfire. There was hardly any room, because the place was totally filled with mailbags. So I was just lying there, getting low and praying hard.”

The drivers got out of the ambush zone as quickly as possible, without injury to their soldiers or accompanying journalists.

Life in the camps was simple. Macor always set up near the communications tent, to be near vital electricity. Other creature comforts were more elusive. “The Marines were providing us with food and water,” he says. “Other than that, it’s amazing how little you do need, to survive.”

A two-man tent. Baby wipes for bathing. Once a week – with luck – some water to wash your hair. (“The last two weeks, I couldn’t even get a comb through it.”) And in seven weeks in the Iraqi desert, not a single cube of ice. (Macor may never look at his refrigerator the same way again.)

Seeing Bedouin farmers – for whom tent life is normal life – taught Macor a lesson he will not soon forget.

“You don’t appreciate what you have in this country until you go to a place like Iraq,” he says. “I'd see women washing their clothes in dirty streams, and I’d think, Wow, I've taken a lot for granted back home. We lived in tents for a few weeks, but they live in tents most of their lives.”

Just five miles from the scene, Macor listened over shortwave radio to coverage of Saddam’s statue falling.

The next morning, Macor and Thompson decided to “jump the embed.” Hooking up with a group of “unilaterals,” as independent journalists were called, they traveled north into Baghdad.

“We were seven or eight vehicles flying down a six-lane freeway,” he recalls. “It was eerie. Not a soul in sight – totally deserted.”

By the time they arrived at the area containing Saddam’s statue, four Abrams tanks covered the square. The statue was still on the ground, missing the head and one arm. Acting on a tip, Macor crossed the square to find his most famous photo from the war – a man carrying the statue’s head in a shopping cart. Only minutes later, a sniper took two shots, missing the man and his prize.

“Once we got into downtown Baghdad, we would hear constant gunfire. Every 15 or 20 seconds, you would hear weapons going off somewhere. You heard it all day and night.”

By the second day in Baghdad, it was getting so hot that Macor decided to remove his bulletproof vest, despite the constant sound of gunfire. “I finally just said, ‘Forget this. I’ll take my chances.’ That vest would not have stopped an AK-47 round anyway.”

But even as things showed some signs of getting back to normal, the threat never seemed far away. While photographing kids playing a makeshift game of soccer, Macor was confronted by an armed man.

“I saw this guy coming up in the background with a gun in his hand,” Macor recalls. “He kept gesturing at me with his gun. I put my camera down and motioned with my hand – no picture, no picture. But he was still gesturing at me. I felt, Oh, great, is this guy going to shoot me, or what?

“After a couple of minutes, he finally just kind of posed and pointed to himself: Hey, take a picture of me. So I took a couple of pictures of him and showed him the picture on the back of the camera. He started laughing and grabbed his friend for a few more photos. They were amazed when I showed them the photos. I was just happy they didn’t shoot me.”

As conditions stabilized, control of the area transitioned from Marines to the Army, which meant that most of Macor’s official contacts would be lost. He managed to catch one of the last Marine transport helicopters out of the area, and within a day he was on his way back to his family and his normal life as a staff photographer at The San Francisco Chronicle. Normal, but in a different color now.

“I think the experience has made me more patient,” Macor explains. “At first, over there, it was very slow. I had to take my eyes off myself and remember that it was not in my time but in God’s time. But as things progressed, God kept putting people into my path. I finally realized that I could not have scripted it any better myself. I realized that He is the best director for my life.

“Over there, I kept going back to, ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ I learned that He’s got it more under control than I ever could.