Two who fell so we could see by Pete Hamill, New York Daily News 04-07-2003 This one is for David Bloom and Michael Kelly, casualties of the war in Iraq. I didn't know either man, but each was part of the guild of which I'm a humble member. Each died while working for all of us. They were members of that brave band of reporters who go to bad places to send bulletins to the safe. Such men and women have one fundamental task: to tell us the difference between what is said by politicians and propagandists and what actually happens. They don't italicize the differences. They simply say: Here's what I saw. And so each day of the war we followed David Bloom, moving with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division as they dashed north together to Baghdad. When the soldiers slept, Bloom slept. What they ate, he ate. When there were incoming rounds, he was there, too. Any round of incoming ordnance could have killed him. In those first days, he exuded a youthful Midwestern energy, whose motor must have been a simple one: the great adrenaline rush of covering a war. In those first days, it was hard to listen to him without remembering other stories he had covered in a time that was glibly called peace: the O.J. trial, the Monica Lewinsky follies. Those memories swiftly faded as he did his superb work in the present tense of real time. There he was, in those grainy, imperfect images that so perfectly expressed the rawness of war. We learned that he and his cameraman were traveling in a customized M-88 tank recovery vehicle that was dubbed the Bloommobile. According to MSNBC, the vehicle featured a gyro-stabilized camera - the kind used on helicopters - that eliminated lurching and jiggling as the vehicle bumped and roared through desert. Even its Goodyear tires were customized, made "soft and mushy" by the Maritime Telecommunications Network, "so they just ooze through the sand." But again, Bloom's work wasn't a mere product of the technology, any more than a piano can create music. It was about him, and what he was seeing, and what he was learning. He didn't make a point of any of this - it just was there on his face. And day by day, that face grew older. It was like seeing a novel in the making, the tone darkening, the character's face grayer by the hour as Bloom absorbed the many varieties of death on a battlefield. "Poor David Bloom," my wife said the other evening. "Look at him. He's sick. Just look at him, that poor boy." The next day David Bloom was dead at 39. Women seem to sense these things better than men do. The Associated Press said he was about 25 miles south of Baghdad when he collapsed from what was reported to be a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in the lung. Someone said his death was not combat-related. Tell that to his wife, Melanie. Tell it to their 9-year-old twins, Nicole and Christine. Tell it, years from now, when the war is memory, to their 3-year-old daughter, Ava. Michael Kelly was a different kind of journalist. At the New Republic, he was a columnist, with special gifts for sardonic vehemence. He moved on to edit the Atlantic Monthly, gave it an immense shot of energy, and in his own bylined works often demeaned his considerable talents by using a sneering tone, laced with vicious personal hatred - as in his repeated assaults on novelist Norman Mailer. He supported the right-wing Bush policies, domestic and foreign. He sneered at the UN and supported the war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Neo-con courageous But he had something very rare among his fellow neo-cons: the courage of his convictions. At 46, he volunteered to travel with the troops, first preparing with younger soldiers, then going off to the war. Paul Wolfowitz didn't resign from Donald Rumsfeld's staff to go to the war with foot soldiers. Kelly didn't see Richard Perle traveling with the 3rd Infantry Division, or Rush Limbaugh, or any of the dozens of other right-wingers who live forever in the rear echelon while 20-year-olds die on the front lines. Kelly went to the war. After all, he was the son of a newspaperman. And, yes: He was Irish. For almost two weeks, he wrote stories for The Washington Post. He saw death and blood and destruction. Then, on April 3, he was traveling in a Humvee with the 3rd Battalion of the 69th Armored Regiment as it went to assault the Karbala Gap. Just Kelly and an Army driver. Beyond Karbala lay Baghdad. Suddenly, they came under fire from Iraqi soldiers using AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. The driver swerved to avoid the fire and rolled into a canal. Both men were dead when soldiers reached them 25 minutes later. Kelly never did get to see Baghdad, where so many of his friends had predicted showers of roses. He never got to see his wife, Madalyn, again, either, or their two sons, Tom, 6, and Jack, 3. Years from now, with the consolations of time, they might all understand that convictions sometimes demand courage. David Bloom and Michael Kelly: Two wives and five children have lost them forever. Obviously, they are not the only dead in this war, not even the only dead journalists - four foreign reporters also have died. As the war goes on, more will surely die, and each deserves a farewell salute. But in the much larger sense, Kelly and Bloom were witnesses, and as such, they died for all of us. Originally published on April 7, 2003