New York-based freelance photographer Lucian Read, who was embedded with Kilo Company for several months and took the famous photos of the aftermath of the alleged killings in Haditha, reflected this week about his time with the Marines.

"It's real easy to come to like and feel for these guys," Read said of the Camp Pendleton company from the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment. "I would invite any of them to have lunch at my grandmother's on Sunday."

Read said that when he first learned that the same men he had lived with for months were under investigation -- men about his age with whom he had shared food, stories and harrowing experiences -- he felt "angry for a long time."

But months have passed.

"Now, it's been going on for so long that those kinds of strong feelings have sort of been dealt with," he said.

Although he had left the company temporarily on another assignment just days before the Haditha incident and returned the day after it occurred, Read said that he was interviewed by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service about his experiences with the unit.

After his photographs were published in magazines such as Time and Newsweek, Read said that a few senior-level officers in the Marine Corps got angry with him, "because they thought somehow I had been involved in breaking the story and that I was profiting from it, getting famous from it," he said. "But by and large, most of the guys in the company are still friendly with me."

He said he's not happy that the Marine Corps decided to file charges against the men just a few days before Christmas.

Read said he suspects the Corps may have timed the announcement for the week before Christmas in hopes that a bad news story would draw less attention from a distracted public.

"I find it callow and troubling because it doesn't just affect these guys, it affects their families and their communities," Read said.

He said he sometimes is haunted by the question of what if he had been with the squad that day in November. If he had been there with his camera, he might have been able to take photographs that showed what happened -- photographs that might have proved the men innocent of any improper actions.

Or, if the men were about to do something that day that they would later regret, "I could have said something that would have stopped them," Read said.

Contact staff writer William Finn Bennett at (760) 740-5426, or wbennett@nctimes.com.