Posted on 03/28/2003 4:07:15 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
With Charlie Company near Najaf, Iraq -- The roof of the armored personnel carrier was slick with blood.
In places, it came over the sides in a cascade of dark red.
The blood was from two civilians who had been caught up in a short, vicious firefight at a key intersection. Now a third wounded civilian was being lifted to the roof for transport to a nearby aid station.
"Hold the drip bag," 1st Sgt. Jose Mercado shouted at me over the din of tank and small-arms fire and the wind whipping the dust into a thick orange cloud. "You have to go with him. I don't have anyone else."
Journalists are expected to be impartial observers. We are supposed to stand back, watch it all unfold and then tell what happened.
On Wednesday, reality changed the rules.
Journal-Constitution photographer Brant Sanderlin and I are among the hundreds of news media personnel embedded with military units to cover this war. We have been with Charlie Company, a tank unit that is part of Task Force 1-64, 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry Division (Mechanized) out of Fort Stewart, for more than two weeks.
On Wednesday, Charlie Company was ordered to hold a key intersection to stop Iraqi militia and Baath Party members from getting into areas to ambush American forces.
Another company of tanks from the 3rd Division went through the intersection first, shooting up a white pickup truck carrying several militia gunmen. Other militia members then commandeered a civilian bus and crashed it into a Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The armored vehicle sheared off the front end of the bus and kept moving.
It was chaos when Charlie Company arrived a few minutes later at the site. Civilian wounded and militia dead were scattered amid weapons.
Sgt. Mark Strunk, 39, of Windom, Minn., the Charlie Company medic, went to work immediately to treat the wounded. His assistant, Spec. Shawn Sullivan, 24, of Jacksonville, was pressed into service as a rifleman to help round up enemy prisoners and suppress small-arms fire directed at the intersection.
In a tank company, most of the soldiers are assigned to the 16 M-1A1 Abrams tanks. Few are available to treat the wounded or take in prisoners. On Wednesday, Charlie Company had only three such soldiers available because others were with vehicles in the rear.
Brant and I jumped out of the armored personnel carriers in which we were riding to do what we do: cover the story playing out before us.
But it was not long before Brant, photographing one of the wounded, was ordered by Strunk to "Hold this" and found an intravenous drip bag of saline solution placed in his hands. Later he helped lift the stretchers holding the wounded onto the personnel carriers for transport to the aid station.
About 30 minutes after we arrived, Sgt. Carlos Hernandez, 26, of Puerto Rico brought a wounded civilian to the temporary aid station. He had a gunshot wound to the left shoulder and a compound fracture of the right leg.
Hernandez was holding an IV drip bag in one hand, a 9 mm pistol in the other.
"You'll be OK," Hernandez kept assuring the Iraqi. "They are going to take care of you."
"Thank you," the man said weakly in broken English.
Then Hernandez looked at me as if to say: "Can you do this?"
"If you've got to get back, I can do that," I said.
Hernandez handed me the drip bag and said: "Keep him talking. Don't let him fall asleep."
He ran his hand through the man's hair and said: "You'll be OK. They'll help you."
"Thank you," the man replied.
For the next 15 minutes, I knelt by the wounded man's stretcher, trying to keep him talking, trying to reassure him that the doctors would come soon, that he would be OK. When he closed his eyes I said to him: "Look at me! Don't fall asleep! Look at me! Talk to me!"
The man indicated he was cold and his wounds hurt. I promised the doctors would be there soon.
"Do you have a family?" I asked.
"Three babies," he said. "I want to see my babies."
"You'll see your babies," I told him. "You'll be OK. The doctors will fix you."
When it came time to lift the wounded man onto the top of the armored vehicle, there was no one else available to ride with him to hold the drip bag.
I clambered onto the roof and sat next to him, holding the drip bag in one hand and a bungee strap with the other to keep from falling off. Sullivan, the assistant medic, checked with one hand to make sure the drip was flowing steadily. In his other hand he held his M-16. Inside the vehicle were three prisoners of war, their hands tied.
"My babies," the man said. "I want to see my babies.
"You'll see your babies. You'll be fine very soon," I said.
He closed his eyes and smiled.
We sped off through the gathering dusk and thicker dust, the wind whipping at the man's blankets. The aid station was little more than a few armored vehicles parked together in a muddy field several miles from the fighting. When we arrived, the wounded man was quickly carried into one of the vehicles for treatment.
At last report, he will survive his wounds.
He will get to see his babies again.
A truck is burned out after it was hit by U.S. Army artillery in an exchange of heavy gunfire with Iraqis in the south of the city of Najaf in central Iraq, March 23, 2003. A U.S. Army colonel announced that the truck was armed with a heavy machine gun and a mobile rocket launcher. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach
THIS JUST IN: "Americans who only watch CBS/ABC/NBC and CNN
are at risk for developing depression, shingles, and other DSM V symptoms and signs.
Rx : FREE REPUBLIC 1x q6h or prn"
They already are saying "we" and "us" when describing the units they are with, thus showing a bond with our troops.
What's more, our troops are not only the best trained and equipped in the world, they are by & large, decent, well-educated people- not the typical warrior-type some folks expect. They really are more like very well-armed, deadly technicians.
I believe this experience will open a lot of eyes in journalism, to the betterment of all.
It certainly will give them the education they didn't get in schools of journalism. Now, if only we could get embedded teachers and politicans.....
Cincy, you point out something I've harped on for years- the value of real-world versus ivory-tower education.
Not too long ago, reporters worked a beat, just like a cop, and saw things, and talked to real, ordinary people every day- things you simply don't find in a modern newsroom, which is basically a white-collar, corporate environment.
I really think the biggest problem with modern journalists is that they go from college ( a hothouse, artificial environment ) to a big news service- another artificial environment. They don't get down-in-the-dirt learning like they used to, and it shows with their airy-fairy "concerns" and "issues" that they take sooo seriously.
Journalists are expected to be impartial observers. We are supposed to stand back, watch it all unfold and then tell what happened.
The question the reporers need to ask after seeing the true face of war is not "Why must there ever be wars?" but, "What is it that resides in the very souls of these fine young men to be caring sons, husbands, fathers be able to do this, each time the nation asks that others don't have?"
Yes, indeed- the TV news is just one big Spin Cycle... let's hope it will be changed, and soon.
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