As foreign correspondents go, Terry Anderson of the Associated Press is an infantryman rather than a fighter pilot.
The glamorous jet-jockey journalists flit in and out of the hot spots, but grunts like Anderson dig in for the entire war.The grunts usually work for the wire services, which means they have a deadline every minute.
After the star byliners have filed their yarns and are relaxing in the bar, the grunts are still covering the news. That's why they are respected in this craft.
Few of them are more highly regarded than Anderson, who has been held as a hostage in Beirut for 1,826 days.
He first went to Lebanon in 1982 to help cover the Israeli invasion. In October of that year, the AP assigned him there permanently.
Eleven months later, when Anderson was promoted to chief Middle East correspondent, Beirut had become so dangerous some correspondents were pulling out. Not Anderson.
Don Mell, the AP photographer with Anderson on March 16, 1985, the day he was captured, remembers the former U.S. Marine as a man who took care of those who worked for him.
"He didn't worry about himself the way he worried about staff," Mell told The New York Times.
Max Desfor, who won a Pulitzer prize for the AP in 1951 for news photography in the Korean War, remembers Anderson in the 1970s as a hard-charging reporter in the Tokyo bureau who "couldn't be rattled."
Desfor was among Anderson's friends and family who solemnly marked the fifth year of his captivity in a ceremony Friday in Lafayette Square, across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.
I never met Anderson, but I knew him by his reputation, which was an enviable one.
Anderson earned the abiding respect of his competitors, such as our mutual friend Steve Hagey, who as the UPI bureau chief in Beirut competed with him for space in the world's newspapers to tell Lebanon's sad saga.
Precisely a year ago, I used the fighter pilot-infantryman analogy in covering a ceremony marking the fourth anniversary of Anderson's capture. It is one I hope not to have to dust off and use again.