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American Morning

Reporter's Notebook: Bill Hemmer

Aired February 04, 2002 - 08:49   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.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Day after day during the holiday period, CNN's Bill Hemmer brought us his insights from his assignment with the U.S. Marines in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Bill is back in the U.S. now, with some reflections for us in his Kandahar diary.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: From Atlanta to Kandahar took us about four and a half days, just to arrive in the city. The way we got on the base is through this Pakistani lorry. It was decorated in all the bells and whistles seen as a status symbol in parts of the world, parts of Pakistan and India, to decorate as best you can.

Our satellite dish is on the back, you can see it sticking up right there. The Marines, I think, are still laughing at us. They searched that thing for three hours.

The terminal building at the air base, a pretty impressive structure, actually. And inside that terminal, we had a part on the floor reserved for us by the Marines. We had a floor, and we had a roof. We had no walls. The windows had all been blown out by the U.S. bombing.

At nighttime is when all the activity took place. You would get upwards of 35 cargo planes, giant C-17's and C-130's coming into Kandahar, dumping their cargo, and leaving.

Our assignment, our mission, the reason we went to Afghanistan, was to spend the holidays with U.S. men and women overseas, and work a satellite hookup so that the families in the U.S. could see their sons, and their husbands, and their fathers at the holiday time. It was really a touching time, I will say. Every person had a different reaction. You could hear it in the ear. There's one Marine, actually, who took it a step further and he proposed to his girlfriend back in Columbus, Ohio. Luckily, and fortunately for us and him, she said yes.

There's a picture that I took of -- we called it the "Charlie Brown Christmas Tree." Some Marines had set it up there, and essentially, this is about as extensive as it got. The Marines were very crafty. They located a well on the base, they tapped the well, brought in some pretty extensive equipment to purify the water, and what we would do is, take our plastic bottles out there every morning and fill up our own gallons of water, bring them back, and for about the first three weeks, that's how we bathed and kept clean.

This was just on the outskirts of Kandahar. This was Mullah Mohammed Omar's compound, and it was devastated. The rumors in Kandahar, the local rumors, state that when the bombing started, back on the 7th of October, Omar was in this house, in this compound, and he heard the bombs hitting at the airport. That gave him time to run into an irrigation canal tucked away in a mountain behind his home, and then the bombs hit his compound 20 minutes later.

This was the center of Kandahar, the town. This was probably the main, busy intersection there. I thought their communication pattern was very interesting. Of course there's no television, or anything like that. Word traveled by mouth or by radio. And the next picture in there, if you look underneath that arch, there's a truck there. And the truck rolled into town, parked, and made this big announcement for about five minutes, essentially announcing that Hamid Karzai had just been sworn in as the new leader of their government in Kabul. And just as quickly as it came, it left again.

There was a mosque at the airport that had been the headquarters for the Taliban in their final days defending the airport, and we met four Muslims, three of whom were Marines, one was a Navy corpsman, who made it their mission to clean the mosque up.

This reminded me of the "M.A.S.H." series, and as I walked by that day, the guy who was building it, I said, "you forgot one sign."

And he said, "What sign is that?"

I said, "Somerset County, Pennsylvania."

He said, "you from there?"

I said, "no, but that's where United Airlines Flight 93 went down."

And he said, "I'll have it up before the sun goes down tonight," and I'm sure he did.

That was the last day I was there. When I got back and had my rolls of film developed, I found this picture in there from Ground Zero. It's a picture I had completely forgotten about. I took it back in mid-November at Ground Zero, on my birthday, in fact. And after being in both places, it is just an amazing and sometimes overwhelming contrast, to think about these two cities, these two countries, they could not be further apart, and yet they are linked forever in history, because of what happened on September 11th.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAHN: And Bill Hemmer now joins us from Atlanta this morning -- welcome back.

HEMMER: Thank you, Paula.

ZAHN: I know that we saw so many of your live shots with troops, and I know you had a very positive impression of how passionate these troops were about their mission. Share a little bit more about your impressions.

HEMMER: I tell you, Paula, I've never been that close to the military before, probably will never be again when you consider, you know, we slept head to toe on the floor of a terminal for the better part of a month. I was amazingly impressed by how professional they were, not just the Marines, but also the Green Berets, the Navy SeALs, the FBI investigators we ran into there, the military investigators. These people were top-notch, and they took a lot of pride in what they did, in part because they knew they were at the forefront of this military operation. Kandahar is where it was, and still is, for the U.S. military operation there in Afghanistan. Amazingly impressed. We met so many people who took so much pride, not only in what they did, but also to let us know that they were doing the best they could for the U.S. And, boy, that's an impression I'll keep forever, Paula.

ZAHN: And in the reporter's notebook, you also reminded us of the trips you made outside of Kandahar, where you had a chance to talk to the people of Afghanistan. How measured was their sense of hope, now that the country is going through this transition?

HEMMER: I think that's pretty much all they do have, Paula, is hope. I can tell you, Afghanistan is a country that needs absolutely everything. Many times I remarked that this country is closer to the fifth world than the third world, but there's a lot of attention given to that place right now and a lot of money, too. Billions are going to flow in over the next couple of years, and it was my impression that, you know, the time and attention and money is all good for now, but it's really up to the people there in Afghanistan to truly change the way they live and to alter the cycle of violence that we've seen for the better part of 23 years, and it is their decision that will determine whether or not they get on a right track or not.

ZAHN: Well, once again, your reporter's notebook just reminded us of the tremendous access you had, some scenes we never had had exposure to before, and thank you for bringing that to us this morning.

HEMMER: You got it, and it's good to be clean again.

ZAHN: Yeah, I bet. I was watching the dipping of the buckets into that pool there of water.

HEMMER: That was just the beginning.

ZAHN: Quite a scene. We never knew that, Bill. Never would have known by watching your reports. Thanks.

HEMMER: Sure.

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