ATLANTA, Georgia - Not a day goes by when I don't think about January 27, 2004 in some small way.It was the day when two friends, CNN employees Duraid Isa Mohammad and Yasser Khatab, were cut down by insurgents on a dusty highway south of Baghdad.

My last view of my friends was their SUV swerving off the road, the windshield spattered with their blood, as bullets crashed through our own vehicle.

Clearly, I'll never forget the guys, and neither will my colleagues who were part of the two car CNN convoy that was attacked by two carloads of insurgents.

But, every year on this date I make a point of mentioning their lives, and their deaths, to as many others as possible. To honor them, and to remind folks of the enormous contribution Iraqi staff make to the coverage of Iraq by western media. Check the CNN BackStory

Yasser was a young, vibrant man with a cheeky sense of humor (he taught me my first real swearword in Arabic).

Duraid had been my translator on previous tours of duty in Iraq, as he was that day in 2004. A loyal, trusted and talented young man with an infectious smile.

He had two kids roughly the same ages as my own, and I remember evenings in the Palestine Hotel when we'd proudly swap tales of the talents of our respective offspring, the sounds of Blackhawk helicopters following the Tigres River at low altitude in the background.

January 27, 2004 was back when the media could still travel out of the capital to report and not worry too much about not getting back alive. Sure, we had security, but this was before the days of orange jumpsuits and on camera beheadings.

We were returning in our two cars after doing a story in Hilla, south of Baghdad, when the killers struck, also in two cars – gunmen standing out of the sunroofs with AK-47's before opening up. Yasser and Duraid cut down in a hail of automatic gunfire in the first seconds of the attack.

The guy attacking our vehicle wasn't too good, fortunately. In those first seconds, I looked him in the eye, saw Yasser and Duraid's car leave the road, and dived across the seat with Scotty.

Our vehicle was hit multiple times, but the gunman's accuracy was poor – only cameraman Scott McWhinnie receiving a slight head wound before our security guard was able to persuade the gunmen to give up the attack.

Washington-based producer Shirley Hung, our driver Ahmed, our security guard, and myself unharmed, but far from untouched.

The loss of Yasser and Duraid stunned us. Guys we'd been chatting with literally minutes before, who we knew and loved and laughed with and talked politics with. Dead.

Those of us who survived are forever linked by our shared experience that day. We pretty much always reach out to each other every January 27, as we did today.

Me, Scotty, Shirley (who'll forever be known as 'Nurse Hung' for her management of the first aid kit as we treated Scotty). I'm still in touch with our security guard, too, and every time I'm in Baghdad I try to see our driver that day, Ahmed (he works elsewhere these days).

The common thread, of course; Yasser and Duraid. Young men taken too soon, but, no, never forgotten.