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- <text id=91TT0493>
- <title>
- Mar. 04, 1991: From The Publisher
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Mar. 04, 1991 Into Kuwait!
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- FROM THE PUBLISHER, Page 4
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Anyone with friends or relatives serving in the gulf
- anxiously awaits word of how they are holding up in the desert
- under wartime conditions. Journalists are no exception. Letters
- home are treasured because they often contain the most candid
- pictures of life in the field. At TIME we have received several
- heartfelt missives from our colleagues stationed in the gulf,
- including correspondent Dick Thompson and photographer
- Christopher Morris. Both men are working in "pools," small
- groups of journalists who travel with and report on combat
- units operating near the Saudi borders with Kuwait and Iraq.
- </p>
- <p> Thompson, who in peacetime covers the science and technology
- beat in Washington, found his first night with the Army trying.
- "We were assigned an unheated tent that sleeps about 20," he
- wrote. "I found a cot, unrolled my sleeping bag, took off my
- shoes and shivered for about five hours. You can't believe how
- cold it gets here." But the desert nights also bring unexpected
- pleasures. "The stars here are amazing," he wrote. "They seem
- close enough to touch, and there are zillions of them."
- </p>
- <p> Morris, living with a 1st Marine Division unit, has spent
- his evenings for the past six weeks sleeping beneath camouflage
- netting in a hole in the sand. Notes printed under his captions
- are the only way the experienced combat photographer can
- communicate with us. One note read, "Thanks for the candy bars.
- The unit loved them. Could you send some cocoa and a hot
- shower, please?"
- </p>
- <p> Now that a ground war has begun, everybody will miss the
- tedium of endless nights under flimsy tents. Thompson thought
- about that after he drove through a military checkpoint manned
- by a young British soldier. The soldier's expression, menacing
- at first, gave way to a huge smile when he recognized a Phil
- Collins song playing on Thompson's tape deck. "There was this
- important, shared touch of home that's rare here," Thompson
- wrote. "I drove away and started crying. I thought, this kid,
- who should be home raising hell with his friends, could soon
- be in the middle of great violence."
- </p>
- <p>-- Louis A. Weil III
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-