Yale Bulletin and Calendar

February 20, 2004|Volume 32, Number 19

At a master's tea in Calhoun College, journalist Helene Cooper said she was "a bad luck charm" when she traveled as an embedded reporter with an Army division that invaded Iraq.

Journalist describes adventures at
'tip of the spear' of the Iraq invasion

Helene Cooper, assistant Washington bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal, said she was "a bad luck charm" for her unit when she traveled with the U.S. Army's Third Infantry Division as an embedded reporter in the early days of the war in Iraq.

Mixing vivid description with self-effacing humor, Cooper shared some of her adventures on Feb. 11 as a Poynter Fellow in Journalism, speaking at a master's tea in Calhoun College and delivering a public lecture titled "From Baghdad to Monrovia: War Reporting for The Wall Street Journal."

Determined to be on the "tip of the spear" of the invasion, Cooper "pitched a huge fit" with the officers in charge of assigning journalists to combat units, insisting: "I don't want to be discriminated against because I'm a woman. I didn't want to be stuck in some kitchen patrol unit." She was one of only about 15 women among the 500 embedded reporters, she said, noting that she got her wish -- and then some: "I wasn't thinking that if they give me what I wanted, I was going to be up at the front, getting shot at -- which is what happened."

The unit to which Cooper was assigned had expected a male reporter who would share their tent. When she showed up late that first night, she said, there was a lot of muttering and shaking of heads until they sorted out the sleeping arrangements.

"It's funny, but I hadn't even thought about what it would be like to be the only woman in a group of combat engineers," Cooper told the audience. They found a few other women on the base for her to bunk with, she said. "But once we started moving into Iraq, that changed, and by the end, I was so used to hanging out with them" as the only woman among hundreds of men, that it "felt completely normal."

Long, frustrating days of waiting at the base in Kuwait followed, and when the order to begin the invasion finally came, the prevailing mentality was excitement and relief, the journalist recalled. "I just wanted to get going. ... I feel weird saying it, but it was exciting going over the border [into Iraq]. ... It was scary, but the soldiers were really pumped up, with almost a football game mentality: 'We're going to kick butt.'"

Then, three hours into the invasion, the vehicle transporting Cooper's unit broke down. It was a tank with a folded bridge mounted on top -- a relic from World War II, intended to allow a quick crossing of the Euphrates, she said. She and her companions were left behind as the other 799 tanks and trucks in the convoy rolled around them, deeper into Iraq towards the first battle.

The night was pitch black -- especially for someone without night vision goggles, like Cooper -- and the desert seemed endless and silent, she told the audience. "I thought: I'm going to die three hours into this. I can't believe it."

In the middle of the night, nerves frayed, they were startled to the point of panic when the Army rescue vehicle showed up, she continued. The bridge-carrying tank couldn't be repaired on the spot, so it was towed 120 kilometers to the assembly area south of Nazariyah, where they caught up with the rest of the convoy. It took 18 hours, and when they finally arrived, they were diverted into a mine field and had to back out carefully to avoid triggering an explosion.

Not wanting to limp into the war behind a tow truck, Cooper said, she talked her way onto a Humvee, and off she rolled towards combat. The bombing and shooting began -- "We started pounding Nazariyah," she recalled -- and just as Cooper began to ponder what it "must feel like to be on the receiving end" of the thunderous attack, she heard a loud crunch and felt a fierce jolt that threw the people sitting in front of her sideways out of the windows, and propelled her forward, pinning her against the steering wheel. They hadn't been hit by a bomb, as she first thought -- the American tank immediately behind them had crashed into them, she explained.

Cooper described the scene for the audience: She was trapped and couldn't move. She felt a warm liquid soaking her protective "chem. suit." The pain was excruciating, and she was reasonably sure she was bleeding out.

"I kept thinking, this is such a stupid war to get killed in. This is 24 hours into the war, and I've gotten myself killed. I don't want to die here," she said.

After an "endless" 45 minutes, Cooper continued, she was freed and discovered that she was soaked to the skin, not with blood, but with motor oil from a canister that had burst in the collision.

Her second vehicle now out of commission, she joined another group. This one got lost in a blinding sandstorm and drove in circles for 24 hours, she recalled.

Cooper then transferred to a tank unit. In Alkiffa, they had to drive through a rain of enemy fire, she recalled, noting "By the time we left, there were 400 bodies on the ground. The tank guys I was with would name the bodies. It shows you how twisted your mind gets, that they would joke about it, and I would laugh." One body was called "Track Star," because his face had tank track marks where he had been run over, she said.

They rolled on to Karbala, where they were under attack every night. After about three weeks, she said, "I had a meltdown." She called her mother on her satellite phone and promised not to go into Baghdad with the invading forces.

"I turned tail and ran just outside Saddam International Airport, which was under fire at that point. I caught a Chinook helicopter and bailed out," the journalist recalled.

"If I could change it now," knowing Baghdad would fall so quickly, without street-to-street combat, "I probably would have stuck it out," Cooper told the audience. "But at the point that I left, I didn't think I would have any regrets. I had reached my breaking point."

When she showed up at the Hilton Hotel in Kuwait City, where the Wall Street Journal had a room reserved for its reporters, the receptionist didn't want to let her in, Cooper said, noting that she was wearing a flak jacket and filthy chem. suit that had been soaked in oil weeks earlier, and had a month's worth of desert grit ground into her skin. She took a two-hour shower and shampooed and rinsed her hair eight times before making phone calls and falling into bed, she said, and yet when she awoke the next morning, "Those white sheets were brown with dirt."

Summing up with characteristic understatement, Cooper said that covering combat in Iraq was "probably one of the more intense reporting experiences I've ever had."

-- By Gila Reinstein

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