Read Online Adventures in Correspondentland by Nick Bryant - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Nick Bryant
Ads: Link
Loyalist coloursthat marked the line of demarcation between Catholic Portadown and Protestant Portadown. The raucous cheers that greeted them could just be heard above the din.
True to the fault-line effect of Drumcree, aftershocks spread throughout the province. Still wearing our flameproof undies, we headed to Londonderry â in keeping with the BBC rule, I will call it Londonderry first, then Derry thereafter â where trouble was sure to flare. Parking a short walk from the Bogside, so as to avoid having our car hijacked by rioters, we walked down to a patch of land near the famed âFree Derryâ sign, where Martin McGuinness, Sinn Féinâs chief negotiator and an IRA leader in Derry on Bloody Sunday, was addressing a crowd of supporters. âThe place to be demanding justice is on the streets confronting your opponents,â he yelled, which was an invitation for absolute mayhem. A new Battle of the Bogside erupted soon after and raged through the night.
At the front, teenagers sprinted down the street like javelin throwers, straining for every extra yard, and hurled petrol bombs at the police and army. In the rear, small boys, some as young as nine or ten, carried milk crates full of ready-made Molotov cocktails up to the main battlelines. But the ringmasters were the IRA men disguised in woollen ski masks, with holes for the eyes and mouths, who turned the violence on and off like a stopcock.
Away from all the rioting, there was fun to be had during the marching season and especially at Drumcree. At times, it took on the feel of a journalistic folk festival, a sort of Glastonbury for trouble-seeking correspondents, who set up camp on the nationalist side of the barbed-wire fences erected by the Royal Engineers, close to the local Gaelic football club. Knowing they could end up there for a week or so, news teams arrived in campervans or pulling caravans, well stocked with beer, whisky and other, moreillicit, forms of recreational entertainment. Though Portadown became for weeks the focus of a massive security clampdown, from the journalistsâ mobile homes it was common to hear the sound of laughter and sniff the faint whiff of hash.
Long into the night, reporters would trade marching-season war stories. The Northern Ireland veterans had the best yarns and were also gifted anecdotalists. But at least I could tell of once being confronted by an irate Orangeman who threatened to spear me with a ceremonial pike, and also of coming close to having my posterior peppered with bullets. We had been filming a paramilitary show of force on a Loyalist estate off the Shankill Road, another ritual of the marching season, where a teenage honour guard fired a volley into the air to the delight of a baying crowd. On this occasion, however, the sub-machine gun proved way too heavy for the young Loyalist doing the firing, and, rather like a weightlifter struggling under the load of a giant barbell, his knees started to buckle. With each stumble and stagger, the trajectory of the bullets got lower and lower, and we got closer and closer to the ground, rueing our decision to film from directly in front of the firing squad.
Then part of the global conflict circuit, Drumcree attracted the worldâs big-name, international war correspondents, such as Christiane Amanpour of CNN, which added a certain frisson. But by far my favourite international blow-in was an Australian reporter who worked for Downtown Radio, one of the commercial stations in Belfast. His hourly updates, delivered in a thick Waltzing Matilda twang, made the Garvaghy Road sound like a side street in Broken Hill. What else could we call him but âCrocodile Drumcreeâ?
However violent, what was always remarkable about themarching season was how quickly Northern Ireland rebounded. Although many journalists saw in the rubble of burnt-out buildings and the charred carcasses of hijacked buses images that illustrated perfectly the sorry state
True to the fault-line effect of Drumcree, aftershocks spread throughout the province. Still wearing our flameproof undies, we headed to Londonderry â in keeping with the BBC rule, I will call it Londonderry first, then Derry thereafter â where trouble was sure to flare. Parking a short walk from the Bogside, so as to avoid having our car hijacked by rioters, we walked down to a patch of land near the famed âFree Derryâ sign, where Martin McGuinness, Sinn Féinâs chief negotiator and an IRA leader in Derry on Bloody Sunday, was addressing a crowd of supporters. âThe place to be demanding justice is on the streets confronting your opponents,â he yelled, which was an invitation for absolute mayhem. A new Battle of the Bogside erupted soon after and raged through the night.
At the front, teenagers sprinted down the street like javelin throwers, straining for every extra yard, and hurled petrol bombs at the police and army. In the rear, small boys, some as young as nine or ten, carried milk crates full of ready-made Molotov cocktails up to the main battlelines. But the ringmasters were the IRA men disguised in woollen ski masks, with holes for the eyes and mouths, who turned the violence on and off like a stopcock.
Away from all the rioting, there was fun to be had during the marching season and especially at Drumcree. At times, it took on the feel of a journalistic folk festival, a sort of Glastonbury for trouble-seeking correspondents, who set up camp on the nationalist side of the barbed-wire fences erected by the Royal Engineers, close to the local Gaelic football club. Knowing they could end up there for a week or so, news teams arrived in campervans or pulling caravans, well stocked with beer, whisky and other, moreillicit, forms of recreational entertainment. Though Portadown became for weeks the focus of a massive security clampdown, from the journalistsâ mobile homes it was common to hear the sound of laughter and sniff the faint whiff of hash.
Long into the night, reporters would trade marching-season war stories. The Northern Ireland veterans had the best yarns and were also gifted anecdotalists. But at least I could tell of once being confronted by an irate Orangeman who threatened to spear me with a ceremonial pike, and also of coming close to having my posterior peppered with bullets. We had been filming a paramilitary show of force on a Loyalist estate off the Shankill Road, another ritual of the marching season, where a teenage honour guard fired a volley into the air to the delight of a baying crowd. On this occasion, however, the sub-machine gun proved way too heavy for the young Loyalist doing the firing, and, rather like a weightlifter struggling under the load of a giant barbell, his knees started to buckle. With each stumble and stagger, the trajectory of the bullets got lower and lower, and we got closer and closer to the ground, rueing our decision to film from directly in front of the firing squad.
Then part of the global conflict circuit, Drumcree attracted the worldâs big-name, international war correspondents, such as Christiane Amanpour of CNN, which added a certain frisson. But by far my favourite international blow-in was an Australian reporter who worked for Downtown Radio, one of the commercial stations in Belfast. His hourly updates, delivered in a thick Waltzing Matilda twang, made the Garvaghy Road sound like a side street in Broken Hill. What else could we call him but âCrocodile Drumcreeâ?
However violent, what was always remarkable about themarching season was how quickly Northern Ireland rebounded. Although many journalists saw in the rubble of burnt-out buildings and the charred carcasses of hijacked buses images that illustrated perfectly the sorry state
Similar Books
