KEY POINTS:
It's a job that has killed 416 men in the past four years, three of them Kiwis.
But it's not enough to deter former soldiers from taking security contracts in Iraq, where they can make up to $1000 a day. More than 500 New Zealanders are believed to
be working as close protection agents in the sectarian war zone.
In tonight's Inside New Zealand documentary, Soldiers of Fortune, one man opens up about the job and why he quit.
The doco follows former Kiwi serviceman Barrie Rice back to Iraq and reveals the realities of life in Baghdad - the checkpoints in and out of the American controlled Green Zone, the roadside bombs and boredom inside the compounds. It's a job few will talk about, hence the blanked-out faces in the film.
That made life tough for producer and writer Matthew Metcalfe, who spent 10 days in Baghdad in October last year filming the doco for TV3. It's fair to say most of the work was done long before he even landed in Iraq.
Aside from the FBI background checks and the process of embedding himself with the US military and the CBS network, it took a long time to convince anyone to appear on camera.
There were a few grumbles when Rice, a former SAS commando who had appeared on the reality series Treasure Island Extreme decided to speak out. A culture of silence pervades the contractors. And not everyone wants their new neighbours to know that they once drove up the road with a gun out the window.
"But I think if you meet Barrie you very quickly change your tune," says Metcalfe. "People respect him. Barrie keeps people alive. The simple truth is, he's really good and I put my life in his hands without hesitation.
"Barrie had got to a certain point in his life. He's in his mid-40s, he's been there, done that. He's moving to another place in his life, he's very focused on his family.
"And I suspect in part he wanted a bit of a record he could show his children when they were old enough to understand. He did it because he wanted to tell the story."
Metcalfe was just as aware that some people felt he shouldn't have put himself in a war zone. But he says it was a story that had yet to be told.
"I think the average New Zealander feels Iraq'ed out. It's on the news every day. It's a war that's over four years old. But without wanting to sound like a cliche there are human beings behind the carnage."
Metcalfe is a former soldier himself, known for his war docos including one on his father, war veteran Frank Metcalfe and TVNZ's 10-part series, Air Force. In April he returned to Iraq to make another documentary about the refugee crisis.
But it's his latest project - as producer on the local horror film, The Ferryman - that begs a question relating to the manipulation of fears.
"The appeal of a horror film is exploring that which keeps us awake at night," he says. "And in the same way, going into Baghdad kept me awake at night. You have to make your peace with the fact that you may be killed. There's gunfire constantly, mortars going off, helicopters firing. There are now just under 3800 Americans dead, 416 contractors dead. There's nothing manipulated about that. That's real death, real suffering."
