A gentleman of the press in Iraq war
This story appeared in the Antelope Valley Press
Sunday, April 27, 2008.
By DENNIS ANDERSON
Valley Press Editor
Sometimes you know a friend by the touch of their hand on your shoulder.
"You letting this character register?" Jim Crawley asked the desk clerk, grinning. He meant me. "I guess they let anybody in here."
That's a shaggy dog newsman's greeting and it preceded the newsman's remedy, heading to the nearest watering hole for a beer.
We were registered at a Marriott in Evansville, Ill., and we were a few hours away from meeting with then-Lt. Gen. David Petraeus that evening at Northwestern University.
Crawley, along with San Antonio Express-News newsman Sig Christenson , co-founded the Military Reporters and Editors, emerging from Operation Iraqi Freedom and the new debate about how to map relations for fair play between media and the military.
The average age of a first lieutenant is probably about 25 years old. Of a captain, maybe 29, and of a major, about 34. By the time you hit the field grade of lieutenant colonel, likely you are at the threshold of 40.
When Crawley went to war during the invasion phase of the Iraq war, he was around 46, and expected to keep up with Marine grunts of whom he was old enough to be father. He was funny, cheerful and portly with a middle-age spread that wasn't receding, in spite of all that hydration, desert heat, sleepless nights and nonstop adrenaline surge.
Crawley got packed into the back of a USMC Light Armor Reconnaissance scout vehicle like so much extra baggage - which he was.
At the age most officers are operating from a command level, Crawley was covering the war as Ernie Pyle described it "from the worm's eye view" of the grunt's world.
I guess what I'm sharing is that it takes tremendous stamina and intestinal fortitude and high confidence to go to war when you are trained for it, when you muddle through boot camp, when you are a practitioner of the profession of arms.
It's more of a stretch when you are a creature of suburban America.
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was the unlikely architect of the embedding process. It grew from a "news blackout" that afflicted the Army's telling of its own story during Desert Storm.
Joseph Galloway, the dean of American military correspondents who writes a column for this newspaper, was among the cohort of reporters bottled up in places like Riyadh in Saudi Arabia when the Army was busy demolishing the Iraqi Republican Guard in the desert near the Euphrates River.
In other words few Americans - or anyone for that matter - got to see what Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf's "Hail Mary Pass" actually looked like in execution. Why? Because Department of Defense, the Pentagon, wanted the news channeled and controlled.
So, no one was there to witness the victory of arms while it was being fought. So, Rumsfeld, rare and faint in friendship toward media, became architect of "embedding." Journalists, as in all other wars, would camp out with line units.
When the Iraq war launched in 2003, for good or ill, whatever the politics and debate, somewhere around 1,000 journalists, American and foreign, were linked up with parts of the story as the invasion unfolded.
Crawley and Christenson were among those covering from the front, along with David Bloom of NBC who died while engineering real-time coverage from his "Bloomobile" television-equipped M-88 tank retriever.
Crawley, covering for the San Diego Union-Tribune, went with the Marines, and his buddy Christenson went with the 3rd Infantry Division, Army, "Rock of the Marne."
Crawley died last week at the age of 51 from a fast-moving brain cancer.
On Jan. 5 in Washington D.C. at the National Press Club, the portly guy who rode hell on wheels with the Marines was finishing out a business meeting.
The surprise for a man who was surely dying was a small party from all of his MRE and other press buddies, plus an Army pal, good and true, retired Lt. Col. Michael Birmingham, who ran his press relations gig fair and on the level.
It was the usual gathering of old friends and new, people who had worked one big story or another, elections, terrorist acts, natural disasters, and the biggest disaster, war.
"I can't believe he's gone," his friend, Sig Christenson, said. "That man did so much for so many other reporters. He was a master of technology and equipment, and he always shared all his knowledge.
"It was this giant 'Lawrence of Arabia' overwhelming adventure, but without communication in the desert, you were done for. Jim cooked up stuff that saved lives and kept the story flowing."
There he was, bald from cancer treatments, smiling gently, utterly surprised that friends hailed from all times zones and a war theater to have some cake and champagne.
"I'm really touched," Jim Crawley said. "Mostly, I'm very tired."
He faced cancer the way he did war. With cheerfulness, crankiness, a sense of mild outrage, a series of running jokes and stories, and the simplest word for it is courage.
Our fighting troops lose friends, too early, and too often.
For a combat zone buddy like his friend, Sig Christenson, the loss is like losing a comrade in arms, a brother, simply devastating.
In November 2006 with MRE at the Medill School for Journalism, Petraeus laid out plans for reducing violence and increasing security for Iraqis and Americans caught in the reptilian coils of a seething insurgency courting civil war. Sig and Jim, all the MREs, we hoisted our beers in salute to the dead and wounded, and hopes for better times.
A little over a year later, we gathered at National Press Club to toast Jim and celebrate a life. After the party, we did what newsies do. As we were shuffled out of the Press Club we crossed the street to the pub for a beer. Jim was torn whether to head home on the subway to his beloved wife of 20 years, Melba, or have that beer. He chose the beer and collapsed, telling a funny story about the emergency room in Baghad.
A group of us rushed after the ambulance to the emergency room. Hit by all the shocks flesh is heir to, Jim still counted it a pretty good day.
Gone now forever like his hero Ernie Pyle, he operated with the same kind of class.
As Pyle's buddies from World War II said of him, Jim Crawley was "a good guy" and he maintained his trust to inform the public.
More Tributes to Jim Crawley:
Editor & Publisher made note of Jim's passing with a story about his work with MRE and as a military affairs reporter. It can be seen here:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003793064
Joe Strupp, a senior editor at Editor & Publisher magazine, has penned this wonderful tribute to Jim, capturing his courage in the face of very daunting obstacles and his leadership of MRE through some difficult times. It can be read here:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/rewrite_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003793161
Media General's tribute to Jim Crawley:
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/apr/26/na-ex-media-general-military-reporter-dies-from-ca/
Copyright © 2008 - Military Reporters and Editors
