TBO.com Life

The War Up Close

By WALT BELCHER wbelcher@tampatrib.com

Published: Sep 15, 2005

TAMPA - -- During the recent week that the U.S. military death toll in Iraq reached 2,000, WFLA anchor Bob Hite paid tribute to 25 Tampa Bay area soldiers who have given their lives.

He read their names and showed their photographs on an 11 p.m. newscast. Hite, a former Marine, keeps one of the photographs on his desk.

"We should not forget the people who are fighting this war," he said in a recent interview.

"Tampa's MacDill Air Force Base is the home of Central Command, which is running this war, so we have a vital connection to this story."

Hite said he had long wanted to find stories that show how the troops are trying to "win the hearts and minds" of people who live with the constant threat of terrorism.

In August, Hite spent two weeks in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He jokes that the military gave him access and WFLA management allowed him to go "because they know I'm getting close to retirement and I'm expendable."

Hite returned with numerous profiles that will be featured on WFLA's newscasts during the November sweeps.

They are being packaged as "War Stories," with additional reports by anchor Keith Cate.

Cate went to the hospital at Ramstein Air Base in Landstuhl, Germany, where 28,000 wounded have been treated since the war started.

"What happens to the wounded is a story that has rarely been told," says Cate, who had access to the operating rooms where doctors work almost nonstop on horrific injuries.

"War Stories" will air during the 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts starting Wednesday, with an hourlong special to follow at 11 a.m. Dec. 18.

WFLA, Channel 8, and The Tampa Tribune are owned by Media General and share reporting resources.

Last week, WTVT, Channel 13, ran a series of special reports from anchor-reporter Mark Wilson, who was embedded with a unit from Clearwater.

Wilson also went seeking stories about Tampa Bay area military.

"I wanted to see if we were making a difference," he said.

He was embedded with the "Ghostriders," Army Reservists from Clearwater who fly combat and rescue missions in Black Hawk helicopters.

While there, Wilson faced a dust storm and mortar fire and joined two night patrols, buzzing at 150 feet over Baghdad, well in range of sniper fire.

The WFLA reports showcase the veteran anchor Hite and his heir apparent, Cate, who will one day move into the top male anchor slot when Hite steps aside.

Hite, 58, said he will never retire from reporting but that sometime in the future, he will leave the anchor desk.

Always A Reporter

He has been at WFLA for 28 years. When he steps down, he would like to become a freelance reporter-producer.

Hite said he had wanted to go to the battlefront since the war started.

"One reason it took so long for me to get to Iraq is that obligation to be there to anchor the news," he says. "If I were a reporter, I'd have been over there two years ago. I am basically a reporter. I shot all the footage in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Hite traveled with Command Sgt. Maj. Curt Brownhill, the highest-ranking enlisted man at Central Command.

"I had a lot of access because they appreciated that I would be telling the story from a Tampa perspective," Hite said.

At one point, Hite was embedded in Fallujah and talked with troops about what it is like to patrol the streets under the threat of snipers and improvised bombs.

"Everywhere I turned, I found a story, so I brought back far more than we can show in this series," he said.

Of the stories, he was most impressed by those involving soldiers who have reached out to help children.

At the Bagram Air Base Hospital in Afghanistan, he finds stories of compassion from a medical staff that has helped save the lives of Afghan children, including a 2 1/2 -year-old girl with burns so severe she cannot close her mouth or eyes -- and she has no skin left on her skull.

Another child, a 7-year-old boy who has lost a leg and the fingers on his right hand, has had more then 20 operations.

The head surgeon tells Hite that "they are told we are the great Satan, and then they come here, and we save their little boy or little girl, and it changes their mind."

Hite also talks with Maj. Corteney Callis of Sarasota, who, along with his fellow Florida National Guard unit at Camp Phoenix near Kabul, helped send a 6-year-old Afghan girl to America for life-saving surgery to correct a heart defect.

Also at Bagram, he interviews Command Sgt. Maj. Tim Green, who has become a mentor to 19 Afghan boys, ages 7 to 15. Green and his men have fed them and taught the boys manners and good hygiene.

In the winter, when the Afghan school closed because there was no heat, Green's men chipped in to pay for instructors and space heaters so the children could learn English.

"These are the kind of stories that we haven't seen on the network news," Hite said.

Beyond The Conflict

Cate also finds stories that haven't been widely covered.

During his week at the military hospital in Germany, Cate talked with doctors and the wounded.

Airman 1st Class Rolando Quiles, 20, from Temple Terrace, told him about how he has helped care for young soldiers who have lost arms and legs.

Cate talks with a soldier who was wounded by shrapnel from a car bomb and watches as doctors try to repair the arm of a Navy seaman that was ripped open when he was shot in an ambush.

"The hospital there is constantly full," Cate said. "They cycle the wounded in and out. Within 48 hours, the injured are treated and are shipped back to their units or to the United States depending on the injury."

Cate said he learned that the survival rate of the wounded in the Vietnam War was about 76 percent but that in Iraq, because of advances in medical treatment, it is 90 percent. But the injuries are more severe because of the nature of the weapons.

"For example, on the Navy seaman who was shot, the bullet exploded and split his arm from the wrist to the shoulder," he said. "We have some footage that is so gruesome that we won't show it."

Cate also found Capt. Kara Elliott, an Air Force nurse from Plant City, who is honored just to "provide that gentle touch that their family wishes that they could provide."