Serious professionals just doing their jobs
Cameraman Doug Vogt had it all figured out. He was set, settled, snug. Doug looked relaxed as we were having a drink at our bureau in Baghdad a few months ago.
He told me how much he loved his house in southern France and that he was working less and spending more time with his family, finally.
Doug had arrived at that elusive place in his life where he wanted to be, spending about half the year as a gentleman farmer (fixing his house, playing with his kids), and the other half paying for it by working in the worst war zones in the world.
There’s a deplorable tendency among those of us who report in Baghdad to blame the victim. I think it makes us feel better to say, "They took too many risks." But that’s impossible to do this time.
Bob Woodruff and Doug are serious, well-prepared and disciplined professionals. I have worked with both of them. They were just doing their job, and were unlucky.
I have been on dozens of similar patrols over the past three years in Iraq. As your rumble along in Humvees, APCS (armored personnel carriers), Bradleys or other loud, uncomfortable war machines, the helmet pulls your hair as it slides and rattles on top of your head.
The plastic safety goggles (designed to block small bits of shrapnel) fog up from the sweat that builds up where the foam-rubber edges touch your face.
The metal tracks crunch over concrete roads, creaking and grinding.
The flak jackets we wear are heavy, but oddly comfortable; tight, like a hug. Body armor.
Everything inside a military vehicle is hard, sharp and unforgiving: metal doors, levers and cables, ammo boxes and guns. If you bump your elbow against anything it hurts.
The soldiers chatter on the radios, exchanging coordinates and code names.
There’s always tension, a lingering fear of that white flash coming from the cardboard box or dead dog you pass in the road.
The tension pushes in as if you are under a hundred feet of water. Sometimes, I catch myself putting my fingers in my ears as we drive past parked cars. (In my opinion, the prolonged exposure to this tension explains why so many of us - soldiers and journalists alike - don’t like being passed in traffic when we’re out of Iraq.)
The streets always look deceptively quiet. Kids sell fruit by the side of the road. Markets are open. Military convoys pass KIA mini-buses taking kids to schools. But as Bob and Doug found out, it can all change in a flash.
I know what it’s like when that blast comes. I was in a convoy in Mosul about a year ago that was hit by an improvised explosive device (IED).
Like Bob, I was with a crew (cameraman Kevin Burke and audio technician Martin Francis) in an armored APC. I remember I was exhausted and half-asleep, lulled by the rhythmic noise and movement.
Suddenly, there was a flash and the vehicle filled with smoke. I heard screaming as we poured out the back - journalists and soldiers together - to help pull bodies out of the flaming vehicle that had been hit.
The Iraqi soldiers inside were in bad shape. One had his head blown off. Another was so burned that when I tried to pull him out of the truck, his arm came off in my hand. We managed to drag two out. Their uniforms were on fire. The soldiers were trying to give them first aid when insurgents started shooting at us - a secondary ambush. It was a mess.
But I was lucky. The bomb didn’t hit the vehicle I was in. Just dumb luck that Bob and Doug didn’t have.
I hope they recover fully and quickly, along with the more than 16,000 U.S. troops injured while serving in Iraq.
Thinking of our own
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