Dozier's Stay In Germany Extended

Injured CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier will remain at a military hospital in Germany for a few more days before returning to the United States.

Though Dozier had been looking forward to going home Sunday, wounded soldiers with more urgent needs had to be flown out before her.

In a statement on Monday, CBS said Dozier remains in critical but stable condition and that she "is doing well, all things considered." She is expected to be transported back to the United States in the next few days.

Dozier was critically injured May 29 and two CBS crew members, cameraman Paul Douglas and soundman James Brolan, were killed by a roadside bomb while filming a story in Baghdad.

CBS News producer Kate Rydell, who flew with Dozier from Baghdad to Landstuhl, Germany, reports that staying a little longer here will mean Dozier is in better condition for the flight.

Dozier underwent an operation Friday to repair her legs, which were injured in the blast.

On Saturday, Dozier was able to eat solid food for the first time since the blast. Her father fed her cream soup, orange juice and chocolate pudding.

When Dozier first arrived in Germany she could not talk or breathe and was immobile. Now she is sitting up, talking with her family, cracking jokes with her boyfriend and eating.

"She's sharp as a tack. Really," Dozier's father, Benjamin, told CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar on Thursday. "She knows where she is. She knows the questions to ask."

Her first question Thursday was: "What (happened to the) crew?" Her family and doctors agreed, if she asked, that she should be told what happened — that James Brolan and Paul Douglas died in the attack.

The coffins with the bodies of Brolan and Douglas were flown on Thursday from Kuwait to London's Heathrow Airport, where a ceremony was held with their families and close friends. Their arrival was honored in a simple, moving ceremony; their plain wooden coffins draped in the Union Jack.

When Dozier heard the news, "You could tell it upset her. She kind of closed her eyes," Dozier's mother, Dorothy, told MacVicar. "I know how deeply she feels, and when she can voice her feelings it will be much easier for her."

On Thursday a young American soldier gave his Purple Heart to Dozier's brother, Michael, to give to Dozier. He told Michael that he wanted Kimberly to have it because, he said, she'd suffered as much as any soldier. That Purple Heart is now beside Kimberly's bed.

The three journalists, who were embedded with the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, were doing a Memorial Day story about what life is like for the troops in Baghdad when an explosives-packed car blew up nearby.

Dozier, Douglas and Brolan had been riding in an armored Humvee. But at the time of the blast in the Karada section of Baghdad, they were outside on the street, accompanying troops who had stopped to inspect a checkpoint manned by the Iraqi Army. They were wearing helmets, flak jackets and protective eyeglasses when the bomb went off.

Douglas, 48, and Brolan, 42, died at the scene of the explosion, which also killed a U.S. soldier and an Iraqi interpreter and wounded six U.S. soldiers. The soldier has been identified as Army Capt. James Funkhouser, 35, who had been in Iraq only a few months, and leaves behind a wife, Jennifer, and two daughters, Caitlyn and Allison.

Dozier, 39, was flown to the closest U.S. military hospital, which was about a mile away, where she underwent two operations.

Douglas, who was British, leaves a wife, Linda; two daughters, Kelly, 29, and Joanne, 26; and three grandchildren. Brolan, who was also British, leaves a wife, Geraldine; and two children, Sam, 18, and Agatha, 12.

Douglas had worked for CBS News in many countries since the early 1990s, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Rwanda and Bosnia

Brolan was a freelancer who had worked with CBS News in Baghdad and Afghanistan during the past year. He was part of the CBS News team that had received a 2006 Overseas Press Club Award for its reporting on the Pakistan earthquake.

Dozier has been a CBS News correspondent reporting from Iraq for the past three years. Her previous assignments include the post of London bureau chief and chief European correspondent for CBS Radio News from 1996-2002, and chief correspondent for WCBS-TV's Middle East bureau. She has won three American Women in Radio and Television (AWRT) Gracie Awards for her radio reports on Mideast violence, Kosovo and the Afghan war.

Scores of journalists — nearly 75 percent of them Iraqis — have been injured, killed or kidnapped in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion that ousted the government of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.