Kimberly Dozier 'Sharp As A Tack'
CBS News correspondent Kimberly Dozier is awake and alert at a U.S. military hospital Thursday in Germany. She remains in critical but stable condition.
Dozier is unable to speak because she is still on a ventilator, but she is now less heavily sedated and has been writing questions and communicating with her family and CBS colleagues, CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar reports.
"She's sharp as a tack. Really," Dozier's father, Benjamin, told MacVicar. "She knows where she is. She knows the questions to ask."
Her first question 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, CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips reports.
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, reports MacVicar.
Dozier's family remains by her side at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, where she is being treated. Dozier was seriously wounded Monday by a car bomb in Iraq that killed Douglas and Brolan.
It is expected that in the next couple of days Dozier will be stable and she will be transported to an appropriate medical facility in the United States, MacVicar reports.
"On the ventilator, it's easier for her to get the oxygen level she needs," Shaw added, noting she could not speculate on when Dozier may be able to go home, but said patients usually stay at Landstuhl for an average of three to four days before being flown to the United States for further care.
"She has to be stable enough to sustain the flight," she said.
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.
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.