All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

Kelly Wallace is a CBS News correspondent based in New York.

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As my producer, Tony Maciulis, and I were on our way to cover the first camp exclusively for wounded women veterans for tonight’s piece on “The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,” I remember thinking, “Am I ready for this?” I wanted to prepare myself for what I expected would be an emotionally difficult shoot, spending time with women who’ve lost limbs and arms and women who were told they would never walk again. I couldn’t imagine what they have been through and were still going through. I assumed some would be bitter and feeling sorry for themselves, others angry. How wrong I was.

Consider this – the five women we met, brought together by the Wounded Warriors Project and the Adaptive Sports Foundation, were asked to demonstrate anger during a motion therapy exercise. They all looked at each other and laughed. That’s right. They laughed because they didn’t know what anger looked or felt like. They weren’t angry.

“I think it’s because you love life more when you stare it in the face,” said retired Army Sgt. Diane Cochran, a mother of three who spent three years in the hospital after her humvee rolled over in Afghanistan. Doctors never expected her to walk again.

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Kelly Wallace is a CBS News correspondent based in New York.

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As my producer, Tony Maciulis, and I were on our way to cover the first camp exclusively for wounded women veterans for tonight’s piece on “The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,” I remember thinking, “Am I ready for this?” I wanted to prepare myself for what I expected would be an emotionally difficult shoot, spending time with women who’ve lost limbs and arms and women who were told they would never walk again. I couldn’t imagine what they have been through and were still going through. I assumed some would be bitter and feeling sorry for themselves, others angry. How wrong I was.

Consider this – the five women we met, brought together by the Wounded Warriors Project and the Adaptive Sports Foundation, were asked to demonstrate anger during a motion therapy exercise. They all looked at each other and laughed. That’s right. They laughed because they didn’t know what anger looked or felt like. They weren’t angry.

“I think it’s because you love life more when you stare it in the face,” said retired Army Sgt. Diane Cochran, a mother of three who spent three years in the hospital after her humvee rolled over in Afghanistan. Doctors never expected her to walk again.

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Hari Sreenivasan is a CBS News correspondent based in Dallas.

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I was happy about being assigned to cover the annual VA/Disabled American Veterans Winter Sports Clinic in Snowmass, Colo., for a few reasons. I'm more comfortable outdoors than indoors, (except when foul weather is my reason for being there). I relished the opportunity to get some crisp, clean, low oxygen, reminds-me-how-out-of-shape-I-am air in my system, but the one thing I looked forward to more was an opportunity to be inspired by the veterans.

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[Editor's note: Watch Hari's experience skiing with the veterans below!]

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Mary Walsh is a producer for CBS News based at the Pentagon.

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Corey Briest was an emergency medical technician in Yankton, South Dakota when he deployed to Iraq with the Army National Guard. He was the unit medic and so when his convoy was hit by an IED he moved forward to treat the wounded. It was the second IED that sent shrapnel into Corey’s skull, damaging his brain so badly that doctors weren’t sure he would survive.

That was Dec. 4, 2005. Four months later, when CBS News national security correspondent David Martin and I met him in a VA Hospital, Corey could signal “thumbs up” to indicate great pain, but he couldn’t talk, couldn’t walk. He was being treated at what the VA called a new “state of the art” poly trauma center -- but all Corey’s wife Jenny wanted was to get him out of there. There were staff shortages, she said. Corey wasn’t getting the therapy he needed.

Looking impossibly young, but drawn by fatigue and worry, Jenny wasn’t about to give up on the man she called the love of her life...

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