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American Morning
On the Front Lines with Walter Rodgers, Army's 3-7th Calvary
Aired April 21, 2003 - 07:45 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: With the gunfire in Iraq starting to fade away, our embedded reporters are finally returning home. And for weeks, they risked their own lives and reported right from the front lines.
Walt Rodgers, one of the many, but one of the special ones too, with the tip of the spear as we like to say, with the Army's 3-7th Calvary, saw some of the first shots fired.
Here now are some of the highlights from Walt's reporting.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALTER RODGERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The pictures you are seeing are absolutely phenomenal. These are live pictures of the 7th Calvary racing across the desert. You've never seen battlefield pictures like these before. What you are watching here is truly historic television and journalism.
This is a live, as-it-happens, real-time war. Again, a few seconds ago, the Iraqis fired another rocket-propelled grenade over our heads.
It was the Army, which assigned me to the 3rd Squadron, 7th Calvary, and that was extremely fortuitous. It was like sitting in a poker game and drawing four aces.
Now, we're hearing incoming. We're not sure what it is.
Good-bye. We've got to dive for our vehicles, we think. See you. Bye.
This giant wave of steel that grows very hour is ever pushing northward, ever pushing toward the Iraqi capital.
This Iraqi soldier that you are looking at has been lying between these two metal bars for more than a few hours now. Increasingly, as he was given water and after the IV went in his arm, it was as if he suddenly realized he wasn't going to die in a dirty ditch, and in point of fact, began smiling and trying as best he could to thank the CNN crew, as well as the Army medics who came along and treated his wounds until he could be evacuated.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HEMMER: He is 62 years young, and he's live back at his post on London. Great to see you, Walt. Wonderful, wonderful, excellent job. Really, our hats off to you for allowing our viewers around the world to see things firsthand.
I've got a few questions online I want to get to in a moment here. But quickly from you, I heard Marty Savidge about a week-and-a- half ago talk about the change in his Marine unit from leaving Kuwait until they reached the outskirts of Baghdad.
Can you, in 15, 20 seconds here, tell us what you noted from your unit about how they changed as men going into battle and moving toward Baghdad?
RODGERS: I think the easiest metamorphosis to describe it is that they were soldiers who had been trained and had never seen combat, and suddenly they were baptized under fire. They performed exceptionally well in the 7th Calvary, and it shows the value of training. It's like that old gag in New York, a man comes up and says, "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" "Practice, practice, practice."
HEMMER: Wow!
RODGERS: And these soldiers had practiced.
HEMMER: Listen, Walt, Carol in London, Ontario has a question. She wants to know: "Was there any time you felt you had second thoughts about going?"
RODGERS: Yes, I think so. I had no idea of what I was getting myself into.
Having said that, it was never really a matter of fear, because when you're afraid, you lose control, you panic, and that's when you're in danger. There were times I certainly winced when I could see bullets hitting beside the road 20 feet away and hear the RPGs whizzing over my head and seeing the anti-aircraft puffs over my head about 30-40 meters in the air. I winced a lot, but I wasn't afraid.
HEMMER: Wow! Marguerite in Seattle, Washington wants to know: "In your interactions with the Iraqi people, what was the most memorable moment for you in terms of their reaction to you and the U.S. troops you were with, be it good or bad?" -- Walt.
RODGERS: I think the most memorable reaction was that Iraqi soldier. We all walked by half-a-dozen times and were sure he was dead. Suddenly, he sat up like a corpse in a morgue. We were all startled, and when Paul Jordan (ph), our security guy, shot him full of morphine, he was feeling no pain. He was just grinning and saluting the U.S. Army and CNN at the time, and that was kind of amusing.
HEMMER: Well, Walt, I read a quote from you. You said, you know, it was like expecting to be taken to McDonald's and going to the greatest smorgasbord in the world; you could have anything you could ask for. What do you mean by that? Are you talking access? RODGERS: I'm talking access, Bill, precisely. It was a superb story. As I said, it was war in real-time, and you could see this huge wave of steel sweeping northward across the desert into Baghdad, and the 7th Calvary, our squadron commander, Colonel Terry Ferrell (ph), just gave us everything. We could listen to the radio.
I was breaking two, three stories a day just because I had access to the Army radio, and the Army was superb.
HEMMER: Quickly, you say you ought to be able to show even more than taste allows, so no one has any illusions how terrible carnage and war can be. Was it too sanitized even though you had access that was unprecedented?
RODGERS: The sanitization came not from the Army, but came from CNN. There was one point where there was a burning tank. It had bodies in it and hanging out, and there was a burning armored personnel carrier and a dead Iraqi soldier on the ground. And I just described it like that. The switchboard lighted up in Atlanta and said, don't talk about dead bodies.
I know this is breakfast television, Bill, but I don't think you should sugar-coat war under any circumstances -- Bill.
HEMMER: I wonder what you do for an encore. Tell you wife hello, Walt, and I know she was a very patient woman watching all of this from several thousand miles away.
Great to see you again. Good luck to you, Walt. We'll talk again.
RODGERS: Thanks.
HEMMER: We'll be talking with more of our embedded reporters throughout the morning here on AMERICAN MORNING from the front lines here on AMERICAN MORNING. You can also ask them about their experiences. Next hour, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the 9:00 a.m. hour, Ryan Chilcote, am@cnn.com in case you want to fire one off online to us here.
Walt, thanks again.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
Calvary>
Aired April 21, 2003 - 07:45 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: With the gunfire in Iraq starting to fade away, our embedded reporters are finally returning home. And for weeks, they risked their own lives and reported right from the front lines.
Walt Rodgers, one of the many, but one of the special ones too, with the tip of the spear as we like to say, with the Army's 3-7th Calvary, saw some of the first shots fired.
Here now are some of the highlights from Walt's reporting.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALTER RODGERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The pictures you are seeing are absolutely phenomenal. These are live pictures of the 7th Calvary racing across the desert. You've never seen battlefield pictures like these before. What you are watching here is truly historic television and journalism.
This is a live, as-it-happens, real-time war. Again, a few seconds ago, the Iraqis fired another rocket-propelled grenade over our heads.
It was the Army, which assigned me to the 3rd Squadron, 7th Calvary, and that was extremely fortuitous. It was like sitting in a poker game and drawing four aces.
Now, we're hearing incoming. We're not sure what it is.
Good-bye. We've got to dive for our vehicles, we think. See you. Bye.
This giant wave of steel that grows very hour is ever pushing northward, ever pushing toward the Iraqi capital.
This Iraqi soldier that you are looking at has been lying between these two metal bars for more than a few hours now. Increasingly, as he was given water and after the IV went in his arm, it was as if he suddenly realized he wasn't going to die in a dirty ditch, and in point of fact, began smiling and trying as best he could to thank the CNN crew, as well as the Army medics who came along and treated his wounds until he could be evacuated.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HEMMER: He is 62 years young, and he's live back at his post on London. Great to see you, Walt. Wonderful, wonderful, excellent job. Really, our hats off to you for allowing our viewers around the world to see things firsthand.
I've got a few questions online I want to get to in a moment here. But quickly from you, I heard Marty Savidge about a week-and-a- half ago talk about the change in his Marine unit from leaving Kuwait until they reached the outskirts of Baghdad.
Can you, in 15, 20 seconds here, tell us what you noted from your unit about how they changed as men going into battle and moving toward Baghdad?
RODGERS: I think the easiest metamorphosis to describe it is that they were soldiers who had been trained and had never seen combat, and suddenly they were baptized under fire. They performed exceptionally well in the 7th Calvary, and it shows the value of training. It's like that old gag in New York, a man comes up and says, "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" "Practice, practice, practice."
HEMMER: Wow!
RODGERS: And these soldiers had practiced.
HEMMER: Listen, Walt, Carol in London, Ontario has a question. She wants to know: "Was there any time you felt you had second thoughts about going?"
RODGERS: Yes, I think so. I had no idea of what I was getting myself into.
Having said that, it was never really a matter of fear, because when you're afraid, you lose control, you panic, and that's when you're in danger. There were times I certainly winced when I could see bullets hitting beside the road 20 feet away and hear the RPGs whizzing over my head and seeing the anti-aircraft puffs over my head about 30-40 meters in the air. I winced a lot, but I wasn't afraid.
HEMMER: Wow! Marguerite in Seattle, Washington wants to know: "In your interactions with the Iraqi people, what was the most memorable moment for you in terms of their reaction to you and the U.S. troops you were with, be it good or bad?" -- Walt.
RODGERS: I think the most memorable reaction was that Iraqi soldier. We all walked by half-a-dozen times and were sure he was dead. Suddenly, he sat up like a corpse in a morgue. We were all startled, and when Paul Jordan (ph), our security guy, shot him full of morphine, he was feeling no pain. He was just grinning and saluting the U.S. Army and CNN at the time, and that was kind of amusing.
HEMMER: Well, Walt, I read a quote from you. You said, you know, it was like expecting to be taken to McDonald's and going to the greatest smorgasbord in the world; you could have anything you could ask for. What do you mean by that? Are you talking access? RODGERS: I'm talking access, Bill, precisely. It was a superb story. As I said, it was war in real-time, and you could see this huge wave of steel sweeping northward across the desert into Baghdad, and the 7th Calvary, our squadron commander, Colonel Terry Ferrell (ph), just gave us everything. We could listen to the radio.
I was breaking two, three stories a day just because I had access to the Army radio, and the Army was superb.
HEMMER: Quickly, you say you ought to be able to show even more than taste allows, so no one has any illusions how terrible carnage and war can be. Was it too sanitized even though you had access that was unprecedented?
RODGERS: The sanitization came not from the Army, but came from CNN. There was one point where there was a burning tank. It had bodies in it and hanging out, and there was a burning armored personnel carrier and a dead Iraqi soldier on the ground. And I just described it like that. The switchboard lighted up in Atlanta and said, don't talk about dead bodies.
I know this is breakfast television, Bill, but I don't think you should sugar-coat war under any circumstances -- Bill.
HEMMER: I wonder what you do for an encore. Tell you wife hello, Walt, and I know she was a very patient woman watching all of this from several thousand miles away.
Great to see you again. Good luck to you, Walt. We'll talk again.
RODGERS: Thanks.
HEMMER: We'll be talking with more of our embedded reporters throughout the morning here on AMERICAN MORNING from the front lines here on AMERICAN MORNING. You can also ask them about their experiences. Next hour, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the 9:00 a.m. hour, Ryan Chilcote, am@cnn.com in case you want to fire one off online to us here.
Walt, thanks again.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
Calvary>
