| Journalist tries to win Darwin award [message #9224] |
Mon, 24 March 2003 01:55  |
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Blazer
Messages: 3322
Registered: February 2003
Location: Phoenix, AZ
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General (3 Stars)
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http://www.msnbc.com/news/889555.asp
"The photographer and I got to the head of the convoy and accelerated past. I saw a post with a soldier standing on an island in the middle of the road. I saw he had a gun—but I thought he was American.
I was wrong. As I passed, I realized he was Iraqi. I looked to my right; there were more than a half-dozen men with guns racing toward my car. Just then the photographer came on the walkie-talkie and said in French, “Weapons! Weapons!” At that moment I heard the Iraqis pepper my car with bullets, hitting it all over. It made an eerie patter, like somebody tapping a finger on glass. I ducked down and put my foot on the gas and sped as fast as I could. It was instinctive. I popped my head up and saw I was fishtailing and going in the wrong direction; trying to compensate, I made it worse. I slammed into the island in the middle of the road, about 150 feet from where the Iraqi had been standing. My car flipped and slammed into a light post.
I crawled away from the car, thinking it would explode. I was still hearing the whir of bullets overhead and the sound of them nicking the dust near me. Keeping the car between the soldiers and me, I crawled about 75 feet from the flipped vehicle. I lay there. There was more gunfire and shouting in Arabic.
...the convoy stopped. Troops went to investigate. They went back with some Bradleys and armored cars, and they found seven Iraqis with AK-47s and two RPGs; they had been lying in wait for the convoy. The soldiers rounded up the men who’d shot at me, and the last I saw they were sitting around the checkpoint with their heads bowed, guarded by U.S. troops.
When I went back to the car there was a huge hole that went in one side and blew out a two-inch-wide hole in the other. I had no idea where the photographer was. He had blown through the checkpoint. (I later learned he was rescued by the Americans, too.)
My car is shrapnel and I’m basically embedded now. I don’t have much chance of going independent again and, to be honest, I don’t know if I want to."
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