Usually it’s a reporter writing about a wounded soldier. This time, in the Washingtonian, Iraq-war veteran-turned-writer Alex Horton writes about a fearsome injury that CBS Radio reporter Cami McCormick suffered while covering the war in Afghanistan. A superb piece. Please go read it.
McCormick arrived at Walter Reed the same way most of the soldiers did, in a frantic journey that began August 28, 2009, in Afghanistan’s Logar Province, a sparsely populated region near the Pakistan border veined with marijuana fields and steep valley walls that make it perfect territory for ambushes.
That day, a week after Afghanistan’s first round of voting for president, McCormick was riding with the 10th Mountain Division in the Charkh District. She was offered a spot in one of two vehicles: a 14-ton MRAP, an armored vehicle that looks like a giant safe on wheels, or a smaller Armored Security Vehicle (ASV). “Which one is safer?” she asked the convoy’s commander.
“Well, it depends on which one gets hit, doesn’t it?” he deadpanned. McCormick had never ridden in an ASV, so she jumped in.
The explosion that came a short time later corkscrewed the 29,000-pound vehicle off the ground. The force of its landing popped all four tires.
vWar-Torn: CBS Reporter Cami McCormick’s Latest Story About Combat and Its Aftermath is Her Own | People & Politics | Washingtonian.
