Author tells of life with 101st Airborne
Rick Atkinson, spending time 'In the Company of Soldiers'
(CNN) -- On March 19, 2003, the U.S. invasion of Iraq began. One of the reporters who chronicled the war, spending time with the 101st Airborne, was the Washington Post's Rick Atkinson.
Atkinson has written a book, "In the Company of Soldiers" (Henry Holt) about his experiences. CNN "American Morning" anchors Bill Hemmer and Soledad O'Brien talked with Atkinson about the book and his impressions of the fighting in the field.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: From the call of duty in Iraq, to the fall of Baghdad, a new book takes you to the very front lines with the 101st Airborne Division. Washington Post reporter Rick Atkinson spent about two months embedded with this unit. His book is called "In the Company of Soldiers."
[Earlier,] I talked with Rick about his experience there and his chronicle of that war.
RICK ATKINSON, AUTHOR, "IN THE COMPANY OF SOLDIERS": It was a successful military operation. They got to Baghdad in three weeks. They took down a country the size of California, the 25 million people in three weeks.
There was just not much thought or talk devoted to the issue of, OK, what happens now? How do we make sure that the country doesn't implode? How do we go about re-establishing civil authority in Iraq?
The soldiers in the 101st, sure, the military policemen talked about being MPs. But there was really not by the Army or by the armed forces generally the kind of intricate thinking about how you were going to impose phase four, as the Army called it, on Iraq once the shooting had stopped, or at least ebbed.
HEMMER: So at the time, conversation only centered on the battle itself, crossing in northern Kuwait? Nothing post war?
ATKINSON: It's astonishing how little thought was given to what was going to happen after the shooting stopped or at least ebbed. There had been studies done. They had been thinking about it by the State Department and so on. It just did not make its way out into the field.
HEMMER: Is that the responsibility of a soldier or a commander?
ATKINSON: Well, it's the responsibility of senior commanders, I would say. And it's a responsibility, frankly, of the national command authority, from the president, secretary of state, secretary of defense. They're the ones who need to make sure, I think, that, in fact, people are ready for the next step, whatever the next step is going to be.
HEMMER: Do you think there's a lesson learned from that today that's already gone into the military thinking in the Pentagon?
ATKINSON: Oh, you hope so. Because it's clear that you can win the war and lose the peace.
It's a victory of the worst kind if, in fact, you get to Baghdad in three weeks and the country disintegrates ultimately into civil war. We've got 560 some dead American soldiers. You want to make sure that their deaths mean something.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: It was my experience in Kuwait with the Marines they were relatively gung-ho about carrying out this battle and this war and getting it on like so many had said to me personally. Did you have the same sense?
ATKINSON: Sure. The 101st Airborne Division is the original band of brothers. And they're nothing if not gung-ho.
I think what you saw was a sobriety, though, that set in early. The 101st first casualties came from a fragging. A sergeant -- [who] has been accused of murder -- rolled three grenades into tents really the night the division was going into Iraq.
HEMMER: And that was back in Kuwait.
ATKINSON: That was in Kuwait. Two officers killed, 15 wounded. That was a very sobering experience for the division.
HEMMER: When they crossed into Iraq and they met the resistance, how did you gauge the response?
ATKINSON: Well, the resistance was unexpected in the sense that the Apache helicopters -- the 101st has 72 of them -- proved to be very vulnerable. The 11th attack helicopter regiment, a different unit, had flown out on the early morning of the 23rd of March. Two helicopters lost.
Of the 30 that came back, 29 were full of holes, averaging 15 to 20 holes a piece. Basically from small arms fire. The Iraqis had done things like flipped the lights of a town off and on as a signal for everyone with a weapon to fire up into the air.
That was also sobering. So there was a recognition that the Iraqis were going to use tactics that had not been anticipated.
O'BRIEN: General Patraeus asked you many times, I understand, "Tell me how this ends."
ATKINSON: Yes. General Patraeus is a very interesting character. He's the son of a Dutch sea captain. Kind of an unusual background. And he also has a Ph.D. from Princeton.
And he asked me about the 26th of March, tongue and cheek, "Tell me how this ends." And it became his mantra. And it became a private joke between us. "Tell me how this ends."
HEMMER: Your response was what?
ATKINSON: My response was, "You're the general. You tell me how it ends."
HEMMER: Wow.
ATKINSON: And he was not talking, of course, just about the war. He was talking about the whole campaign, the whole business that we're in now.
