BY WILLIAM BOOT
Boot is the pen name of Christopher Hanson, a contributing editor of CJR and the Washington correspondent for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

THE POOL

I was a combat pool correspondent, one of the happy few who helped provide America with what Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams called "the best war coverage we've ever had." True, most of us never saw a battle and few of us even saw a dead Iraqi soldier, but at least we got to be part of the big adventure. True, many of our dispatches never made it back to our news organizations, but at least we got to writ them. True, military officers controlled our every movement, but that, after all, may be why Williams bestowed his glowing praise, and pool veterans should not take compliments lightly. To help put Williams's tribute in perspective, here is a day-by-day account of what it was like to cover a ground war under the pool system.

February 19 -- Dhahran International Hotel. Correspondents line up at a U.S. military supply room, hoping to draw the helmets, flak vests, chemical suits, and other gear required to protect them in the field.

"If you can get the gear yourself [that is, from an independent source] you're good to go," says a supply sergeant.

"So it's available independently?" asks a reporter.

"No, only from us." Catch-22. At the last minute, an army officer announces that the rules have been relaxed: full protective trappings are not required now. Any gear unavailable today will be issued in the field.

February 20 -- I board a transport plane for the army's Seventh Corps headquarters minus rubber anti-chemical boots -- an essential item in the Desert Storm wardrobe. Upon arrival, we are told by a spokesman, Major David Cook, that Seventh Corps is, in fact, not prepared to supply missing gear. Anti-chemical boots are in especially short supply.

February 21 -- With a reported from The New York Times and an AP correspondent, I embark in a Humvee truck on a lurching two-hour journey across the desert. We are headed for the Iraqi border to visit the Second Armored Cavalry Regiment, which we are told will spearhead the most significant American ground assault of the war. The reporters ride in back. In front are two military escorts -- Captain John Koko, thirty-three, and Sergeant Roy Botkins, twenty-nine, both reservists from Kentucky. Each carries a loaded M-16 rifle and a box of Cracker Jack. Koko, a fount of wisecracks, is gung-ho about the profession of arms, but contemptuous of his current assignment as a "P.A.O. [public affairs officer] puke." He sings snatches of the Army recruiting jingle, "Be all that you can be." Under canvas later on, Koko discusses his unique approach to public affairs at the front. "My job is rumor control," he says, and then gives his interpretation of that duty: he controls rumors by spreading them himself. It's all part of the continuing effort to relieve boredom. Koko seems especially proud of his part in spreading one rumor: a soldier uses a gas mask pouch as a pillow, but as he shifts position during the night the pressure of his head accidentally triggers an antidote syringe needle in the pouch. It punctures the soldier's neck, killing him instantly.

Koko -- who stands about six foot four and once served as an Army Ranger -- is now in high gear, regaling us with tales of how he has been patrolling Seventh Corps territory, apprehending reporters who had made their way to the front without permission. He dutifully, if reluctantly, stops Americans, but truly gets a charge out of busting French and especially Italian reporters, because, in his view, neither country is contributing enough to the war effort.

Ironically, news organizations themselves may have done even more than enforcers like Koko to thwart reporters trying to cover the war. The Pentagon, shrewdly enough, had delegated to U.S. news media in Dhahran many decisions on who got pool slots. In early January, the "sacred sixteen" -- The New York Times, The Washington Post, Cox, Gannett, The Wall Street Journal, and other papers that had kept reporters in Saudi Arabia continuously since late 1990 -- voted to keep pool slots for themselves. Bitter fights with newcomers resulted. (Eventually, the Defense Department created new pool slots to accommodate some of the newcomers.) All told, reporters seemed to spend more energy fighting each other than fighting pool restrictions.

February 22 -- At breakfast I seek soldiers' reactions to the latest reports that Iraq has offered to withdraw from Kuwait, raising last-minute talk of a peace settlement. One soldier tells me he would just as soon go ahead with the ground offensive because he has just had his head shaved and doesn't want to be seen back home until it grows out. At that point, Koko comes up and gently rebukes me for talking to troops without a military escort.

Next, we get a lesson in just how well the military's communication system for field reporters actually works. With Koko supervising, we three reporters interview the only woman in camp, a sergeant whose classified intelligence duties make her the female closest to Iraqi lines. She is tough and articulate and it all makes for a nice story. The only problem is that, after I write my piece and send it back to headquarters in a Humvee, it disappears. It never reaches Dhahran, never is issued as a pool report, never gets to my editors. (The Wall Street Journal's John Fialka tells me later that my experience is typical -- "Seventh Corps was simply a black hole.") February 23 -- Word is that the Second Armored Cavalry does not want reporters along on the ground offensive. But the regimental spokesman, Captain Bob Dobson, says this restriction applies only to TV crews. He can take one "pencil" and agrees to take me, but only if I agree to his terms -- I can go only when Dobson goes and must never venture out by myself. No other escorts are available. Koko and Botkins will be returning to headquarters. Reluctantly, I agree to the terms. The alternative is sitting out the war in the rear. Captain Dobson is now my assignment editor.

February 24 -- At dawn, the Second Armored Cavalry convoys form up and move out across the misty desert into Iraq. I ride with Dobson, twenty-nine, a bright, portly West Pointer with a passion for junk food, who gives me a running commentary on the regiment and its role in the war.

Later, we are ordered to don our chemical-weapons protective suits (I have by now managed to scrounge a pair of the special boots). I then write a story in which soldiers react to the prospect of gas warfare and -- almost to a man -- urge nuclear retaliation if Iraq uses chemicals. No couriers are available. We have outstripped our lines of communication. The only option for filing stories is the regiment's "E-mail" computer system, which in theory can send articles to headquarters via satellite. But the system is on the blink, and remains so for days. My newspaper does not get this dispatch until February 28, when it is far too stale to use.

February 25 -- A day of massive prisoner-taking and sporadic fighting, including a small engagement just a few hundred yards off to the right of the regimental headquarters column. Dramatic stuff for a newcomer to war, and I write a colorful piece on taking prisoners. Of course, it cannot be filed due to technical difficulties.

At one point, Dobson's public affairs vehicle is bouncing along a rutted track, past a cluster of Iraqis who have just surrendered. They wave and smile. We wave and smile. Then the Humvee hits a huge bump, spilling a good part of its load in front of the Iraqis. It is hard not to feel embarrassed.

The convoy lurches on. I ask Dobson if we can break away from the headquarters detachment and join one of the regiment's squadrons of M-1 tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles, which are seeing the real action up ahead. He says he'll try to accommodate me eventually, but can't promise anything. We drive on into the night. At last the convoy halts and circles up. The soldiers dig in as American tank cannons and artillery thunder away nearby. I spend the night sitting up in the Humvee, horrified that the war might be over before I can transmit even one good story. February 26 -- A day of excitement, confusion, and frustration. Reports reach headquarters by radio that the regiment's armored squadrons up ahead are engaging Republican Guard tank units. The regiment's assignment, says Dobson, is to located the main elements of the guard and engage them in battle until heavier U.S. units can move up to finish them off. After pausing during a sandstorm, with seventy m.p.h. winds, the headquarters column moves off, only to reverse direction and hastily retreat because Iraqi tanks have supposedly been spotted up ahead. Night finds us dug in, watching a light show of explosions and flames along the horizon. The regiment's heavy armor is battling the Republican Guards along a twenty-mile front, but from this distance I can make no sense of the action. What could have been my biggest story ever is playing itself out, and I'm missing it.

February 27 -- Dobson gets an update on the battle from the regiment's operations center and gives me a briefing -- it seems an entire Republican Guard division has been annihilated. I write a story on the battle. This time, with Dobson's help, I actually manage to file it over the computer hookup, along with all the other hoary dispatches that have stacked up.

Later, with the column having paused to rest up, Dobson and I and a couple of Air Force liaison officers drive off to inspect the hulk of an Iraqi armored personnel carrier, which has been knocked out by a U.S. aircraft missile. The Iraqi inside the vehicle has been burned beyond recognition. A gunner who sat atop the carrier has been thrown clear but torn nearly in half and horribly mutilated in other ways. I take detailed notes.

"What angle are you planning to use?" asks Dobson. When I make a noncommittal reply, he says, "Here's the angle I would use: There is no glory in war. . . . No one will ever know what happened to these two. Their families will never know. The sand is already covering that [gunner's] body." He shakes his head.

My assignment editor seems to have good news judgment. I take his advice. The problem is that the piece I write is quite graphic, just the sort of story that the Defense Department -- with its smart-bomb videos that make combat seem bloodless -- has been trying to avoid. Will this dispatch survive the censor's blue pencil?

As things turn out, the dispatch gets through unaltered and no high-ranking meddler comes after me. But this may be because the war is all but over.

A more telling case is probably that of Los Angeles Times reporter John Balzar, who was assigned to cover a helicopter aviation brigade in the Eighteenth Army Corps. Before the ground offensive started, his unit was conducting night attacks into Iraq. Apache helicopter pilots allowed Balzar to view infra-red gun-camera footage of one of these raids.

Here is a sample of what he reported shortly before the ground war was launched:

Through the powerful night-vision gunsights they looked like ghostly sheep, flushed from a pen -- Iraqi infantry soldiers bewildered and terrified, jarred from sleep and fleeing their bunkers under a hellstorm of fire.

One by one they were cut down by attackers they couldn't see or understand. Some were literally blown to bits by bursts of 30mm exploding cannon shells. One man dropped, writhed on the ground, and struggled to his feet. Another burst tore him apart. A compatriot twice emerged standing from bursts. As if in pity, the American Army attackers turned and let him live. . . .

This pool report was not censored by the Defense Department, but after it was filed Balzar and the other members of his pool were, in effect, grounded. They were taken to see no combat and spent much of the ground offensive sitting around in a tent. February 28 -- My priority today is to interview the soldiers who had fought in Tuesday night's fierce tank battle and to file an after-action report. But Dobson's priority is to collect Iraqi weapons from the battlefield for the regimental museum. So that, needless to say, is what we do. I take notes as Dobson and three Air Force liaison officers, with .45s at the ready, clear Iraqi bunkers (no Iraqis are to be seen) and haul off booty. From one bunker the Air Force men liberate a twenty-six-inch Sanyo color TV set with stereophonic sound.

For much of the day I ride with a young Air Force captain. He, and not Dobson, now sets my news agenda. At one point, he asks, "Would you like a Pop-Tart?" But he can't find the box. It has fallen off the back of the truck and is lost. The captain is crestfallen. As he drives along, he speaks with a consuming intensity of his fondness of Pop-Tarts, a snack with the flavor of home. Suddenly his eyes bulge. He realizes that he has blundered into a dense field of unexploded cluster bomblets dropped by U.S. planes. Slowly, with great care, he eases the truck through the field. When it's finally evident that he has pulled us through intact, he pauses and says softly, as if to himself, "That really burns me out about the Pop-Tarts."

It's unclear what my lead for today should be -- the Sanyo TV or the Pop-Tarts. I lean toward the latter. March 4 -- After a journey by helicopter and transport plane, I arrive back at the Dhahran International Hotel. The American Military Police at the front door search my bags far more carefully than they had when I arrived two weeks before. The reason for this thoroughness, explains one M.P., is that journalists back from battlefields have been showing up with some interesting souvenirs. He says one member of a CBS crew came in with three Iraqi hand grenades. They turned out to be the trip-wire type, which go off the instant you pull the pin. Other journalists, whom he declined to identify, came in with pistols and anti-tank weapons, and one had four volatile blasting caps in her pocket. The M.P. says he has come to question whether the American press corps has very good judgment.

Back in the hotel, I discuss my pool experience with colleagues and conclude that, astonishingly enough, I have had relatively good luck with the system. Some reporters covering Seventh Corps got no dispatches back at all. A great many -- and this applied to the entire theater of operations -- were far from any combat whatsoever; they will be traumatized for years to come not by what they saw of this war, but by what they didn't see.

In the final reckoning, I'm left with this question: Was joining a pool really worth the aggravation? It's a close call, but probably it was in those cases where you actually got to cover some fighting. On the other hand, those passed over for pool slots were not necessarily the losers. Consider The New Republic's Michael Kelly, who was told he would not get a ground combat pool assignment and opted to go on his own. He and a Baltimore Sun reporter drove across the desert toward Kuwait City, ahead of the allied forces. Kelly's poignant March 18 account of desperate, surrendering Iraqis, begging reporters to take them into custody, made far better reading than any pool report I saw during the entire war.

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