No War in Sight--Flying Blind to Report on Army Aviation

The Air Force and Navy planes and their precision weaponry took a terrible toll on the enemy. From what we hear, the Army’s armored divisions and their World War-III tanks performed nobly in battle. The 101st Airborne Division advanced shockingly deep into Iraq in just hours--the largest, swiftest and most successful such infantry attack in history, it was said.

As for us, our press pool went to war to cover the pride of the XVIII Army Airborne Corps--its aviation. Its night-fighting, tank-busting Apaches. Its rapid-fire helicopter logistics, which are the propulsion of this fastest Army corps in the world. And we came to tell the story of Army aviation’s women warriors, who advanced fearlessly to the front lines right from the opening bell.

Unfortunately, this is a story we cannot tell you much about.

In 100 hours of war, I took only 10 pages of notes in a shirt-pocket notebook. A television cameraman in our pool shot only a few minutes of film, much of it from a single interview. A prize-winning photographer said he did not get a single worthwhile picture until the war was over, and maybe never did get one of aviation in action. A radio reporter’s finest moment was to record the cheers from a group of grunts when the cease-fire was announced.

Yes, I can say I was there--in the jumpseat of a helicopter 80 miles inside Iraq within the opening hours of battle. Three days later, I was there near Basra, along the Euphrates River, under a bright moon while the ground shook and the explosions echoed from the terrible thrashing given the Republican Guard in that final night of fighting. I ate dust and cold MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), often together, and washed only once. I slept in the dirt, slopped in the mud--and for a cold beer someday I could tell you more about life at the front.

But I cannot tell you much about Army aviation, not at any price.

Or the Apache helicopter. Or women-pilots-at-war. Or whether the airborne assault and logistics were a smashing success or a reckless move that escaped disaster only because the Iraqis lacked fighting capability at the end.

It seems that in its wickedly effective battle plan, the Army airborne’s aviation units had not prepared for one thing: for news reporters who came to chronicle the war and the individual stories of those who fought it.

Improvise. Make do. That’s the Army way.

So when it came to our group of nine journalists, the Army made do by isolating us in a dark tent, occasionally flying us to the front and improvising orders that we were to be told nothing of consequence.

And all along the Army said, yes for sure, at that very moment it was working with all its might to let the public have a look at the real work of airborne aviation at war.

In the end, you ask, does it matter that the story was told only in outline, not in rich detail? The Army won the war. Casualties were light. What difference does it make?

The frustrating thing is, none of us know the answer.

In the final half-day of fighting, our pool found itself at a forward base where 40 or more, maybe twice that many, Apache attack helicopters were dispersed across the desert floor, grounded for lack of fuel. They had outrun their logistics. Some had only enough gas to start their engines and go a few miles.

At what risk were they in the event of an enemy attack? What happened to the vaunted night-fighting Apache on this last night when Republican Guard units were trying to flee through Basra?

An hour after the cease-fire, I asked Col. Emmitt Gibson, of Ayden, N.C., commander of the 12th Aviation Brigade, an Apache attack unit, to explain what happened in the battle.

“Do you have a security clearance?” he replied, acidly.

Repeatedly as the war was under way, our pool had been told to stand by. Pack up to go flying. The Apache is on the attack. The Army is going to demonstrate to its aviation press pool--reporters representing newspapers and television and radio--what it could do. Wait until you get a load of this, we were told.

Each time, Gibson’s brigade canceled.

Maybe it was because of the stories two of us filed before the ground war began. The stories described vivid videotapes taken from Apache gun cameras during early patrols into Iraq. The video images were the first of the conflict to show, close up, the killing of individual soldiers.

Apache pilots displayed the tapes proudly and welcomed the press attention. The Marines and Air Force were getting all the glory, they complained. They wanted their turn. But higher-ups later said we should not have been allowed to report about what we saw, we were told.

We assumed that someone in the chain of command decided we were a nuisance.

Gibson insisted at the end that he really did want the story of the Apaches and the men who flew them told.

We were left to wonder.

Not only were our missions with his Apaches canceled. Twice under his command, the press pool was misdirected in its travels to reach him. We were flown three hours in a helicopter to the forward combat zone of Iraq on the final day of the war and then dropped in total darkness on a landing zone six miles from his headquarters.

We were told later that our pilots landed us exactly on coordinates given by Gibson’s staff. We were forced to bivouac and then were flown out the next morning--again to a mistaken location. Finally, we had to hike cross-country with full combat gear, wondering if we would venture into a minefield, before reaching Gibson. The trip had taken us 20 hours. The war was over.

“Out here, we are used to people taking care of themselves,” Gibson said deadpan.

It proved much easier to get us out of his hair. It took him only 30 minutes to produce our very own helicopter to send us back to within only 100 yards of our tent in the rear.

Bad weather was blamed for keeping us down one other day during the war. Most of us never got a chance to cover the women who flew helicopters into the forward combat bases in Iraq, even though every journalistic instinct told us this was a compelling and historic story.

We found ourselves bitter and dumbfounded.

Sitting in our tent, we looked at ourselves and realized that rarely does such a group of gung-ho journalists end up on the same story.

Among us was a TV camerman who had earned several Emmys covering combat soldiers in Vietnam. A radio reporter was a zealot for anything that flies; just get him in the air. I am an ex-Marine who served in Vietnam and carried with me a soft spot for men and women at war. There was a Pulitzer Prize-winning magazine photographer and a television correspondent renowned for his coverage of Third World fighting.

We wanted to cover the Army at war.

How, then, could the Army manage to turn us uniformly into doubters and nay-sayers? At first, that did not seem the Army’s intent. The Department of the Army in Washington had assigned two public affairs specialists to help get out the story of Army aviation. One of them was Lt. Col. Bob Perrich, of Washington, D.C.

I lost faith in him on the second day of the war. The press pool was stranded in its tent. There were stories everywhere around us, and we were idle. Not Perrich. He was off flying into the war. In full flight suit, he spent the day in the jumpseat of a CH-47 helicopter and flew a mission to pull Iraqi prisoners from the front.

“I wanted to look my enemy in the face after 20 years in the Army,” he said. We suspected he was joyriding.

Two days later, Perrich took us aboard the helicopter headed toward Gibson and the Apache squadrons at forward combat base Viper. “I’m personally going to make sure you get there,” he told us. That’s when we ended up six miles off target. Perrich never left the jumpseat that night, either.

The other public affairs specialist was Maj. Ed Parrish, of Chicago, a by-the-book Army Ranger who believed, along with the press, that the men and women who risked their lives far from home in this war deserved to have their stories told. He believed that Army aviation would be glorified in the recounting of its deeds. He quoted Shakespeare and worked 20 hours a day to churn up news and get it moving.

As best we could tell, Army brass thought he was nuts.

Parrish awoke the press tent at 3 a.m. Sunday, an hour before the ground assault. “Gentlemen,” he barked, “I’m going to Iraq. Those of you who want to come should pack up.” And off to Iraq we went, 80 miles deep, on the first wave of supply helicopters. The CH-47s were slung with giant bladders of fuel. We were flying into enemy territory. A single tracer bullet and we would explode in flames. It was, shall we say, an exhilarating experience.

Once on the ground, we figured we were deeper into Iraq faster than virtually any other journalists. We roamed the troop lines and watched as a forward operations base, a refueling and rearming position, was carved out of a dry lake bed. Parrish thrilled at our enthusiasm. He was like a coach, watching the story unfold, helping us understand it, urging us on.

Then, he raced us to the rear on an early helicopter out, positively electrified that we would be the first to file news of this deep penetration into Iraq, the first with stories and pictures of Army aviation at war.

And his face showed the shock when all the personal risk and effort went for naught because the secretary of defense had decreed that all news would be blacked out for 48 hours. There would be no firsts in reporting the start of this war. No kudos for Army aviation. Parrish didn’t say it in words, but his face asked the question, “How could my country do this?”

From that moment on, Parrish became a conduit for a steady stream of “nos” and “we’ll sees” from on high. He was pressured by us and pressured by senior officers--and he spent hours with us waiting for helicopters that never came, staring silently off into the sand wondering if he would be drummed out of the Army after l7 years and never receive his pension.

Our pool chose to disband in disgust. No, sit still, we were told. Another trip to the front was in store. What happened was the ill-fated ride with Perrich to the encounter with Col. Gibson, and the quick trip back to our tent at the rear.

The next day, an Army officer announced--and we thought he was just a little too cheerful about it--that the press had been stripped of its privileges to fly on military aircraft. We were herded onto Arab buses and driven out of the war.

Twelve hours later, we arrived at press headquarters at the Dhahran International Hotel, our first contact with other journalists. We were ready to hang our heads. This was war, and there would be no excuses, no matter how colorful, for coming back like this.

“Hell, at least you filed,” said one colleague, by way of cheering us up. “Our man with the 3rd Armored, we haven’t heard a word from him yet.”

Still another recounted having to rent her own car, fill it with her own food and water and, nomad-like, follow Army engineers into areas of Iraqi minefields. One journalist said he could get nothing past military censors at one headquarters until officers first heard the same information on the radio.

“I don’t think anything I wrote ever got back,” said another reporter. One wire service correspondent said only seven of 27 stories he filed made it to his editor. Two-and-a-half days after the cease-fire, combat dispatches were still dribbling in, most of them as stale and useless as a cigar butt.

We cheered right up. We covered Army aviation. We were in the thick of it. There were lots of worse places to have been in this war.