adrenaline was followed by fatigue and frustration when the âall clearâ signal came. It wore on everyone.
I went from fear to anger; from not wanting to mask-up at all to reminding myself there could be chemical weapons in one of those warheads, which, while falling harmlessly in the desert, could be blown into our camp with lethal consequences.
My producer, who had decided to stay in the bunker, told me she saw one young soldier, tears visible through the gas mask eye pieces. The 3rd Mechanized had passed into Iraq. We were sitting ducks until the word would come for us to move out and into Iraq.
Camp Pennsylvania
Getting psyched up to go into combat is a lifelong pursuit for commanders training young soldiers: how to turn fear into something that motivates. The attack on Camp Pennsylvania, just down the road from our base, bruised the morale of many in the 101st. It was an attack from one of their own, and one of the most confusing sequences of events I had witnessed in the Kuwaiti desert.
An American soldier was alleged to have thrown grenades into three of his commanderâs tents. He also opened fire as a soldier tried to come out and investigate the source of the blasts. One soldier lay dead, while nineteen were injured, including the commander.
At Camp New York, there was pandemonium as first word spread of the attack and then another explosion erupted into the night sky. I looked up and saw a huge orange fireball slowly falling to earth not far from our camp. Then the alarm sounded for us to put on gas masks. Soldiers, believing there was a coordinated terror attack on the Camps, took up defensive positions, crawling on the ground around our tent and aiming their weapons at the perimeter fences.
As the hunt was underway for the wanted American soldier at Camp Pennsylvania, in an unrelated incident, one of the campâs Patriot missile batteries mistakenly identified a British fighter jet as an incoming missile, and launched. We heard the launch, and the fireball I saw turned out not to be a downed missile as we first reported, but the aftermath of two British pilots being blown out of the sky.
Unrelated events, but in the end connected. As soldiers rushed into bunkers, the wanted American soldier who had carried out the attack was seen in a bunker with blood on his clothes, tackled, and arrested.
Despite the obvious news value of the attack, some questioned our reporting, because it actually delayed the departure of the 3rd Brigade. COL Joe Anderson, who attended the memorial ceremony the next day at Camp Pennsylvania, left us behind at Camp New York. His view was, âThe story is a day old; we have a war to fight. I canât imagine why youâre still reporting that.â
The colonel never tried to stop us from reporting, but the incident demonstrated one way of controlling reports coming from embeds. The Army wonât censor your material, but they can control what you have access to. We relied on their transportation, their good will to take us where we wanted to go, and sometimes they werenât interested in allowing us to see what we thought was news.
Mission Planning
It deserves to be written now that overall, during the war, I was provided remarkable access by the 101st. Not all commanders were as open as COL Anderson. He trusted me as a professional, enough so that I was privy to witnessing the actual mission planning as it happened. I was allowed to walk in and out of what is known as the TOC, or Tactical Operations Center. Inside there were computer screens with real-time information on troop movements. In battle planning, we heard when troops would move before they did. I also saw American intelligence estimates showing the estimated strength and locations of Iraqi forces. All of this helped me cover the war for the American public in a most efficient manner as an embedded reporter.
Because of his confidence in me not to report mission plans, which would surely cost
I went from fear to anger; from not wanting to mask-up at all to reminding myself there could be chemical weapons in one of those warheads, which, while falling harmlessly in the desert, could be blown into our camp with lethal consequences.
My producer, who had decided to stay in the bunker, told me she saw one young soldier, tears visible through the gas mask eye pieces. The 3rd Mechanized had passed into Iraq. We were sitting ducks until the word would come for us to move out and into Iraq.
Camp Pennsylvania
Getting psyched up to go into combat is a lifelong pursuit for commanders training young soldiers: how to turn fear into something that motivates. The attack on Camp Pennsylvania, just down the road from our base, bruised the morale of many in the 101st. It was an attack from one of their own, and one of the most confusing sequences of events I had witnessed in the Kuwaiti desert.
An American soldier was alleged to have thrown grenades into three of his commanderâs tents. He also opened fire as a soldier tried to come out and investigate the source of the blasts. One soldier lay dead, while nineteen were injured, including the commander.
At Camp New York, there was pandemonium as first word spread of the attack and then another explosion erupted into the night sky. I looked up and saw a huge orange fireball slowly falling to earth not far from our camp. Then the alarm sounded for us to put on gas masks. Soldiers, believing there was a coordinated terror attack on the Camps, took up defensive positions, crawling on the ground around our tent and aiming their weapons at the perimeter fences.
As the hunt was underway for the wanted American soldier at Camp Pennsylvania, in an unrelated incident, one of the campâs Patriot missile batteries mistakenly identified a British fighter jet as an incoming missile, and launched. We heard the launch, and the fireball I saw turned out not to be a downed missile as we first reported, but the aftermath of two British pilots being blown out of the sky.
Unrelated events, but in the end connected. As soldiers rushed into bunkers, the wanted American soldier who had carried out the attack was seen in a bunker with blood on his clothes, tackled, and arrested.
Despite the obvious news value of the attack, some questioned our reporting, because it actually delayed the departure of the 3rd Brigade. COL Joe Anderson, who attended the memorial ceremony the next day at Camp Pennsylvania, left us behind at Camp New York. His view was, âThe story is a day old; we have a war to fight. I canât imagine why youâre still reporting that.â
The colonel never tried to stop us from reporting, but the incident demonstrated one way of controlling reports coming from embeds. The Army wonât censor your material, but they can control what you have access to. We relied on their transportation, their good will to take us where we wanted to go, and sometimes they werenât interested in allowing us to see what we thought was news.
Mission Planning
It deserves to be written now that overall, during the war, I was provided remarkable access by the 101st. Not all commanders were as open as COL Anderson. He trusted me as a professional, enough so that I was privy to witnessing the actual mission planning as it happened. I was allowed to walk in and out of what is known as the TOC, or Tactical Operations Center. Inside there were computer screens with real-time information on troop movements. In battle planning, we heard when troops would move before they did. I also saw American intelligence estimates showing the estimated strength and locations of Iraqi forces. All of this helped me cover the war for the American public in a most efficient manner as an embedded reporter.
Because of his confidence in me not to report mission plans, which would surely cost
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