There are certain scenes while covering a war that stay with you for a lifetime.

It was the night before Iraqis cast their votes for a new Iraq on Jan. 30, 2005, for the first time after Saddam Hussein was deposed, and I was an embedded journalist at Camp Victory in Baghdad to witness the process.

There was a nationwide curfew, and I was on the streets with Army Capt. Todd Napier, a commander with the 1st Squadron, 7th Cavalry, patrolling the al-Amal district, south of Baghdad. It was a little after 10 p.m. We received a message that an Iraqi woman gone into labor and needed to urgently go to a hospital. We went to the address. Napier knocked on the door. There was nothing that he or his team did wrong, but their appearing in boots and with guns was enough to reveal the puzzled faces before us that this was an extraordinary time in the country which coincided with this woman’s most momentous time in life.  

The commander was talking through a translator, assuring them that they would take her to the hospital while also instructing his team coordinating the convoy. Once she came out of the house, walking slowly, I got into the Humvee first, and she was going to sit next to me. As she took her first step inside though, her water broke. She was shivering like a bird while tears were racing down her cheek, but she was utterly mute and her hands were like they were frozen. I will never forget those eyes telling me the whole story of what it meant for women, at least, to be the cost of removing Saddam from power.