[Mb-civic] The New Ernie Pyles: Sgtlizzie and 67cshdocs - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

The New Ernie Pyles: Sgtlizzie and 67cshdocs

On Internet Blogs, Soldiers in Iraq Offer Up Inside Story on the War

By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 12, 2005; Page A01

BAGHDAD -- There were no reporters riding shotgun on the highway north 
of Baghdad when a roadside bomb sent Sgt. Elizabeth Le Bel's Humvee 
lurching into a concrete barrier. The Army released a three-sentence 
statement about the incident in which her driver, a fellow soldier, was 
killed. Most news stories that day noted it briefly.

But a vivid account of the attack appeared on the Internet within hours 
of the Dec. 4 crash. Unable to sleep after arriving at the hospital, Le 
Bel hobbled to a computer and typed 1,000 words of what she called "my 
little war story" into her Web log, or blog, titled "Life in this Girl's 
Army," at http://www.sgtlizzie.blogspot.com .

"I started to scream bloody murder, and one of the other females on the 
convoy came over, grabbed my hand and started to calm me down. She held 
onto me, allowing me to place my leg on her shoulder as it was hanging 
free," Le Bel wrote. "I thought that my face had been blown off, so I 
made the remark that I wouldn't be pretty again LOL. Of course the 
medics all rushed with reassurance which was quite amusing as I know 
what I look like now and I don't even want to think about what I looked 
like then."

Since the 1850s, when a London Times reporter was sent to chronicle the 
Crimean War, journalists have generally provided the most immediate 
first-hand depictions of major conflicts. But in Iraq, service members 
themselves are delivering real-time dispatches -- in their own words -- 
often to an audience of thousands through postings to their blogs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/11/AR2005081102168.html?nav=hcmodule

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