Soldier gives CBS reporter his Purple Heart

updated 9:02 a.m. ET June 2, 2006

BERLIN - Kimberly Dozier, the CBS reporter wounded by a car bomb in Iraq, now has a Purple Heart at her bedside in a U.S. military hospital in Germany after a young American soldier gave her his medal, the network said.

Dozier, 39, was seriously injured in a blast Monday while covering a story on Memorial Day in Iraq. Her camera crew, Britons Paul Douglas and James Brolan, were killed in the attack, along with a U.S. soldier and an Iraqi translator.

Dozier, who was flown Tuesday to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, remained in critical but stable condition Friday, CBS said. Her breathing respirator has been removed, and she has been able to talk with family and visiting CBS colleagues, the network said in a statement.

She suffered head and lower body injuries in the blast, and her family told CBS she was going to need rods in her legs.

Doctors were performing “routine” procedures on Friday, CBS said.

Beside her bed
On Thursday, CBS said an American soldier who had been awarded the Purple Heart medal for combat injuries made a special visit to the hospital to see Dozier.

“A young American soldier came up to Kimberly’s brother Michael and told him that he had met Kimberly in Iraq two years ago after he had been wounded with shrapnel in his arm,” CBS said without identifying the soldier. “The soldier had his Purple Heart with him, and he told Michael that he’d like Kimberly to have it because, he said, she’s suffered as much as any soldier. That Purple Heart is now beside Kimberly’s bed.”

Dozier’s family and boyfriend arrived Wednesday to be with her as she is treated in Germany.

“When I walked into the room and saw her, it really impacted what that was all about and how closely we came to maybe losing her,” her mother, Dorothy, told CBS. “To hold her hand and have her little thumb wiggle so that she knew us, I’m just delighted with the improvement in the time we’ve been here.”

Landstuhl has not given a timeline for Dozier’s treatment, but patients injured in Iraq are commonly stabilized at Landstuhl, in southern Germany, for three to four days before being flown to the U.S. for further care.

That would mean she would likely be returning home sometime this weekend.

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