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Frontline news by
Jess Davis When she met Saddam Hussein, he had just been captured. His hair was long and disheveled, he badly needed a shave and he was hurling insults at her too obscene to print. "He wasn't very pleased to see a female wearing pants, with a weapon and in charge," said Maj. Josslyn Aberle, an active duty public affairs officer (PAO) with the U.S. Army and a second-year graduate student in mass communications at USC, recalling her meeting with the deposed Iraqi leader. At the time, Aberle was the spokeswoman and PAO for Task Force Ironhorse, a combination of the 4th Infantry Division and additional support units totaling more than 33,000 soldiers. Her task force entered Iraq in March 2003 and fought their way to Tikrit, where they set up headquarters. Soldiers in her task force were spread out throughout the "Sunni Triangle," a large region of northern Iraq known as the seat of Saddam's power.
Aberle wasn't expecting Hussein to be captured that day; she knew soldiers were searching for him but because they didn't capture him until evening, she was ready for her first shower in three days and some rest. Instead, she spent more than 72 hours without sleep, first verifying that the man they had captured was Hussein, then handling the media frenzy that erupted after news broke of his capture. She first met Hussein while photographing him the night of his capture. Soldiers were checking to make sure he didn't get a concussion from bumping his head as he climbed out of his hiding place and cleaning him up. When she showed a group of Iraqi citizens pictures of the captured former dictator at a news conference in Baghdad, wild cheers broke out. As the media members stationed in Iraq traveled to Tikrit after the news conference in Baghdad, Aberle handled about 250 news organizations and thousands of media queries. When the press visited the site where Hussein was captured, "every single one of them had to get in that hole," Aberle said. "And some of them wouldn't get out - they just wanted to stay in that hole. Finally I had to say they could have 30 seconds in there before some of my soldiers would physically pull them out," she said. Eventually, some of the frenzy died down and it was back to business as usual for her division. In April 2004 they returned to America and Aberle was waiting to be reassigned. In mid-May she was offered a choice between her "dream job," working with the department of Homeland Security, or graduate school. Aberle chose to come to USC because of its integrated communications program, something she already had quite a bit of experience with from working as a PAO. She was surprised to find that Tim Frisby was playing as a wide receiver for USC - she had been his commanding officer several years earlier when she was working in Italy. "It's a very small world," she said. Now, instead of planning battle tactics, Aberle is studying for her classes. In the middle of speaking about her preparations for Iraq, she stopped to go check on the results from the comprehensive exams she had taken in the past couple of weeks. She's excited and nervous, just like her classmates. She is applying for a practicum to work on Condoleezza Rice's public relations staff in the spring and after that, she's not sure where she'll go. "The Army owns me, from my beret to my boots," she said, noting that there was a possibility she would return to Iraq but that she could travel anywhere. Since graduating from Montana State University in 1989, she has traveled to 40 countries and every state but Rhode Island. She's played a part in some of the most well-known military operations in the past couple decades. From Kosovo to the Republic of Congo and Rwanda to Bosnia, Aberle has seen some of the world's populations at their most desolate. When she worked in Italy, she was a member of the tactical operations team, where she helped put together battle plans. In Iraq, she was also a part of that team, but there, she worked from a public relations perspective. "I love what I do, and I love the soldiers - they are amazing and some of the best people in the world," Aberle said. "There's never a dull moment in my job. Every time I thought about (leaving the Army), they offered me something better." Asked if she ever plans to return to a civilian life, Aberle said, "oh, I'll retire one of these years," but it's clear that she loves what she does too much for "one of those years" to come any time soon.
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Though in the months
leading up to his capture there had been many close calls, it
wasn't until Dec. 13, 2003, at around 8 p.m., that a group of
soldiers found Hussein in what amounted to a glorified hole in
the ground, outside of his hideout in a small town called Ad
Dwar, about 12 kilometers south of Tikrit. Located in the courtyard
next to a "ramshackle farmhouse with a three-sided mud hut," was
Hussein's underground "bunker" - a bricked-in hole about
6 feet high, 7 feet long and 8 feet wide.