Reporter embedded on front lines `Bonnie with 1,000 Clydes'

BAGHDAD, Apr 18, 2003 (Knight Ridder Newspapers - Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service via COMTEX) -- At times, I felt like Bonnie with 1,000 Clydes.

Traipsing some 500 miles all over Iraq with the First Battalion, Fourth Marines, and stepping, deliberately or accidentally, into one gunfight after another, I might well have been.

The Marine unit I was with was on or very near the front lines for three weeks during the U.S.-led charge to Baghdad. It set off from a tent city in northern Kuwait in mid-March and settled at a cigarette factory in east Baghdad on Wednesday.

The road to Baghdad was paved with dirt, and home was usually a bug-infested mud hole. Most nights it was a different hole because the battalion, like nomads or gypsies, was constantly on the move. If it stayed in one place too long, it became a target of a ragtag but bravely persistent force of Iraqi solders and irregulars.

It was at Camp Matilda in northern Kuwait, where journalists embedded with U.S. forces linked up with their units, that I had my first doubts about what I was getting myself into. During yet another briefing about chemical and biological preparedness, a Marine spokesman advised us to write our blood types and Social Security numbers on our body armor and boots.

When we left for Iraq, less than a week later, calm and focus prevailed. The Marines had a buoyant sense of American optimism, mixed with the kind of confidence that sometimes turns to arrogance. There was also a sense that history was being made and, as a journalist, I viewed it as my job to turn in the proverbial "first rough draft." What would be the price?

The first leg, a 30-hour trip in an amphibious assault vehicle, was about as difficult and bone-jarringly uncomfortable as travel can be. By the time we reached our destination in southern Iraq about 100 miles from our start, known as Assembly Area Spartan, my back was sore and aching, a feeling made worse by the extra 30 pounds of body armor and Kevlar helmet I carted around. We had passed nothing more menacing than Bedouins and their camels, but the breakdown of 20 percent of the battalion's amphibious fleet put everyone on edge. The battalion commander did not like the idea of taking these land-challenged amphibious vehicles into a combat area.

At the next stop in Nasiriyah on March 23, war's bloody cost suddenly filled the air above us and changed the relaxed and confident mood. A steady stream of helicopters went clattering back and forth over our post. They were carrying more than 30 dead and wounded Marines who had encountered surprisingly strong Iraqi resistance. Eleven Marines had been taken prisoner.

Officers now berated young Marines who had been hanging off the tops of their vehicles, like surfers cruising the beachfront in convertibles. Suddenly the war seemed to be going very badly.

The next day it was our turn to make the run through Nasiriyah and what came to be known as Ambush Alley. Even before we got to that notorious stretch of road, the rear of our convoy was ambushed by gunfire. It happened just as I was transmitting a story about the Marines' reaction to the bad news of the casualties of the day before. I was lying prone in the back of a moving humvee, juggling my satellite phone and computer keyboard.

We hurried to a garbage dump that was the staging area for the trip through Nasiriyah. A feeling of dread pervaded the air, and flies by the hundreds buzzed around the inside of our amphibious assault vehicle. As the convoy crossed through the hostile town and paramilitary forces opened up on us, the drivers had their gas pedals hard to the floor.

With bullets whizzing overhead, I tried to work out the best angle to position myself so that if a round came through the vehicle's light armor, it would either miss me or hit one of the plates in my protection vest.

Then I realized that it was impossible to predict where a bullet might come from. I took a few deep breaths and hoped for the best. I understood better why so many Marines had gotten baptized during their last Sunday church service before the war.

That day's drive was frightening and exhausting. Wherever we went, we seemed to go for a short while, then stop and wait.

Doing that in the middle of Nasiriyah did not seem like a good idea to me, but we did it several times. Another vehicle had broken down in the heat of the battle and ours had to stop and tow it, to the intense relief of the occupants of the ailing vehicle.

Along the way to Ash Shahtrah, our next destination, we saw the bodies of Iraqi fighters and unlucky civilians caught in the cross fire by the roadside. Some were still alive, if only barely, and there was not much that a running band of invaders could do for them other than request a local ambulance. The full awfulness of war lay before our eyes.

Sleep-deprived and perhaps still shocked by the sight, I was startled when a senior enlisted man decided our next stop was a good occasion to shift two of my bags from his humvee to the vehicle in which I was riding. When the new driver told me to mount the bags on the outside of "his" vehicle because he didn't want them inside - even though the vehicle was half-empty - I refused to do it until we reached a safer place. I didn't want to get killed making myself a choice target.

I am glad I had refused his request. It was at that stop that four enlisted men captured an Iraqi hiding in tall grass and carrying a sniper's rifle.

As we stepped out of the vehicle at Ash Shahtrah a few hours later, the local Iraqi militia welcomed the battalion with the sound of "pop, pop, pop" and little puffs of white smoke rising from the grass in an adjacent field. I had just gotten on the phone with an editor in Washington, whom I and a photographer called after deciding that the war was too dangerous to cover and it was time for us to leave, even if only a week had passed. Fortunately, nearby gunfire and the abrupt end to our conversation sounded persuasive if he begged to differ.

The battalion's executive officer, Philadelphia native Maj. David Holahan, told us that he couldn't guarantee anyone's safety in a war zone, but we weren't yet facing a hopeless situation. We told Holahan we wanted to get on the next helicopter out. One was due to arrive shortly to pick up some injured refugees.

I really didn't want to leave, even if staying meant sacrificing my safety. As the war grew more intense, it seemed more important to cover it, and I didn't want to abandon my post. I knew the risks now more than ever, and I felt defeated either way. Before leaving home in February, I had gotten my affairs in order, taken an inventory of my assets and life insurance and written a will for the first time. At the time I didn't think it would be useful to anyone for many years. Now I wasn't so sure.

Sitting on a bare dirt slope, I used my satellite phone to call my fiance, who I knew would be home in London glued to the news. I couldn't bear to punish him any longer, but I couldn't bear to leave. The conflict was tearing at me. If I stayed and died, would he hate me for my decision?

No, he said, he wouldn't. He told me he had been checking my e-mail and had read the messages pouring in from the parents, wives and siblings of men with the First Battalion, Fourth Marines. He said they appreciated the journalists' presence and that people out there were counting on me. I should leave if I thought it best, he said, but he would understand and respect my decision if I stayed.

My head was still telling me to leave, my heart to stay. I am the kind of rational thinker who usually listens to her head, but in that moment I took a leap of faith and listened to my heart. The helicopter failed to arrive and the next day, after we came through the mess that was Ash Shahtrah following an all-night battle, I told Holahan to cancel my request for the helicopter.

It was likely to get worse, the major told me at regular junctures. In some ways it did, but it never seemed as bad as that first series of firefights. The battalion began to realize that it could handle conventional warfare with the Iraqis pretty effectively but guerrilla tactics were more challenging. Most of the second half of our march north turned on reducing the unconventional threats from such paramilitary tactics as ambushes, small-arms fire, stray rocket-propelled grenades, and mortars. As March turned to April, we traveled through marshy eastern towns, and, in the growing heat, insects joined the attack on us, vicious and unrelenting. Though Saddam Hussein's regime possessed little in the way of airplanes, one of the corpsmen dubbed the attacking horde of gnats, flies and mosquitoes the Iraqi air force. The force of bloodsucking bugs was overwhelming; nothing repulsed them. Hygiene was another American vulnerability. We were living in the dirt without running water, a recipe for disease and infection, despite having been prescribed prophylactic doses of the antibiotic doxycycline. We washed our hands and faces and brushed our teeth with water from canteens, supplemented by hand wipes and antibacterial hand cleanser. But we never felt clean. The morning before we entered Saddam City, I was lucky to have my first shower in nearly four weeks, using a five-gallon shower bag that one of the battalion doctors had brought. For a few hours, the dirt, sweat and dead skin were gone.

As the only woman with this battalion of 1,000 men, I encountered particular difficulty in one aspect of hygiene: answering the call of nature with some privacy. In the open desert, this was often impossible. I would scout for a shrub or natural obstacle, though in some environments, such as areas with land-mine risks, I didn't want to wander too far. My worst nightmare was lived out by one unfortunate Marine in the battalion, who was evacuated by helicopter after shrapnel from a live round struck him in the buttocks as he was tending his business in the field.

Over time, I learned to find a young private or corporal on guard duty near a good obstacle and consult him about my choice of location. If anyone should disturb me, I asked, "Please shoot them." Unfailingly polite, the young Marines always responded with an enthusiastic, "Yes, ma'am!"

As a group, the young infantrymen - a word that officers point out derives from "infant" - were a delightful mixture of capability and immaturity. A few of them enjoyed playing jokes on me when they discovered that I was still learning to distinguish incoming artillery and mortars from outgoing. Since I had superior access to information about troop movements, I could retaliate by telling them to pack up because we were leaving in 15 minutes. They believed me as many times as I believed them, and word spread among them like wildfire.

Most Marines get their news from what's known as the "Lance Corporal Underground," a group of privates and corporals who trade and embellish the latest gossip.

Word had spread on the underground that Jennifer Lopez was dead. Not true, I said. Bet you didn't know, soldiers confided back, the late Mr. Rogers had been a Marine sniper. They had heard that on the underground as well. Back home checked for me: No truth to that one either.

Yes, pretty ego-centric. But this is precisely the sort of reporter who needs to spend time with the troops, and it does seem to have opened her eyes in some respects and to some degree.

Sorry Andrea, if you want to write a book about YOUR experiences, I might appreciate this type of writing. This is not reporting.

"surprisingly strong Iraqi resistance. Eleven Marines had been taken prisoner.

Officers now berated young Marines who had been hanging off the tops of their vehicles, like surfers cruising the beachfront in convertibles. Suddenly the war seemed to be going very badly. " <-- As if you knew. Please.

It was all about her. Content-free journalism -- what a concept!

Yes, but she learned soldiers are human and to respect them. That will be important in the future. This will not be the last battle of the War on Terrorism.

SO9

A bunch of sniping comments about possible arrogance, infants, peddles to the metal. Not much about bravery etc.......Sounds to me like she would have been a real stinker if she hadn't been embedded.

At least she got a dose of the real thing and might be a little less arrogant herself when she asks a question at some future press conference.

When the new driver told me to mount the bags on the outside of "his" vehicle because he didn't want them inside - even though the vehicle was half-empty - I refused to do it until we reached a safer place. I didn't want to get killed making myself a choice target.

When we she start claiming to have been an equal to any of the Marines in combat...she was jepordizing the unit the entire time she was there...having to been catered to...talking back..causing them to have to make extra accomadations for her...being a pain in the arse.. and needy to boot... she is just another using jerk...and a good example of how effeective having women in combat is in reality..

It was all about her. Content-free journalism -- what a concept!

There were 54 references to "I" in this short piece. Some might call that self-involved.

That's what I was thinking. I don't think Ernie Pyle wrote about how bad he had it.

It's unfortunate when the journalists have the courage to go there but not the ego to keep their writing confined to the troops.

It was all about her. Content-free journalism -- what a concept!

Well, let's be fair, guys. Now that the war is over, she wrote one article about what her experience was like.

Prior to the end of the war, she was writing articles about what the Marine's experience was like such as :

A good day for Marines: Local welcome and no wounded.




Andrea Gerlin