ABC Newsmen Injured in Iraq Flown Back to U.S. on Military Plane

ABC News co-anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt returned to the United States on Tuesday after being treated at a U.S. military medical center in Landstuhl, Germany, for severe head injuries from a roadside explosion in Iraq.

The two journalists were flown back on a military plane with injured American soldiers and taken to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., for further observation and treatment.

Network officials said both men -- hit by shrapnel from a roadside bomb outside Baghdad on Sunday -- continued to improve. Vogt was awake and talking Tuesday morning, while Woodruff, whose injuries were more serious, remained sedated, ABC News President David Westin said.

“But the doctors are encouraged by the continued progress he made overnight,” Westin said in a statement. “It will still likely be some time before we have a complete sense of the injuries, but with each day there are promising signs.”

It remains unclear how Woodruff’s injuries will affect his ability to return to his job as co-anchor of “World News Tonight,” a post he and Elizabeth Vargas have held for a month. Network officials said that in the coming days they would announce an interim plan for the newscast.

David Woodruff, who went to Landstuhl with other relatives to monitor his brother’s progress, said the family received good news from doctors there Tuesday morning.

“He’s improved markedly over the night,” he said on “Good Morning America.” “He looks much better than he looked the day before.”

However, David Woodruff said it was too early to say how things would turn out. “But we’re all so encouraged.”

The 44-year-old newsman also has a broken collarbone and broken ribs, shrapnel wounds in his neck and cuts on his face.

“The doctors said at the beginning of this, ‘This is not going to be a sprint, it’s going to be a marathon,’ ” his brother said, “and we’re all committed to making sure we’re there running that marathon with him.”

Former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw, a friend of the Woodruff family, said they were coping well.

“They are very centered,” he said. “There is no hysteria. They know what they’re up against.”