when the red light was on.
(Weeks back, we had offered to give our co-ordinates to The Pentagon but they simply weren’t interested. It would be nice to think this wouldn’t have happened if we’d been embedded, but then we wouldn’t have been chasing Barzani across Iraq.)
Just then, someone spotted a body in the back of one of our enflamed vehicles. That awoke something inside me to save the story, let alone the body. I ran to my car to discover it was a sleeping bag wedged against the back window, but I had to rescue the remaining broadcast equipment. There was no point at all us being here if the videophone and all the footage were going up in smoke.
I managed to get the hatch open but it was like a furnace in there. I climbed inside to cut the rope to free the two spare jerrycans. I ran to John, threw them just to the right of the camera, then turned and went back to the other vehicles through the flames. Fred shouted to me to save his gear.
All the cars were burning now – the third one looked seconds away from explosion as I grabbed our personal bags along with John’s diaries, notebooks and fucking Tilley hat. It was like a barbecue out of control but the smell was horrendous – nothing is more ghastly than the smell of burning fuel and smouldering flesh combined. I blocked it out of my mind and concentrated on the vehicle. All our lives were in those trucks – my focus was now totally on preserving the story and not human life. The guys I was concerned about were safe; the gear was not.
John was raging again when he finished the live. ‘There’s gotta be a fucking inquest into that,’ he yelled to everyone and no one. ‘Was that OK?’ he turned to Tom. John had been better than OK. He was at his best, flicking an internal switch from anger and disgust to smooth calm.
It had been a disgraceful error. Forty-five had been injured, sixteen lives lost. The Americans were worried there was more incoming and wanted to evacuate.
Some of the gear was damaged. Most importantly, John’s Tilley hat now had a hole in it. Some twenty-five minutes later, my concern was still the vehicles. Despite that toxic mix of fuel and flames, I could see one of the Peshmerga guys trying to steal the third vehicle; the other two were burned to shreds.
‘Fuck off – this is our vehicle!’ I screamed at him.
In the back, he had placed his weapon along with some ammo. I found a hand on one of the seats. I told John to stay with the vehicle as I began to move everything into this car, piling stuff on the roof and clearing the glass from the seats. I had no windscreen left.
By now, all the traffic was coming towards us – the rest of the media had got wind of the story and were piling in our direction. All we wanted to do was leave, heading back down to the original checkpoint.
‘What about Abdullah?’ John asked.
We agreed to have one last look.
Checking under the vehicles and charred corpses in this scene of devastation, we found nothing except the truth. He hadn’t even bothered to stick around. That was the final straw for me with him. If he wasn’t my responsibility before, he certainly wasn’t now. It was time to go. In every sense. Even for battle-hardened souls like Fred and me, it had taken its toll.
‘That’s it, I’m off,’ the American announced through the dust and wind in the front of the Land Cruiser. But he meant off and out of the country. It was time for him to get back to California to see his little baby. This was just the wake-up call he needed to get off the adrenalin rush and back to the real world.
‘Yeah, that was a close call,’ I agreed.
It all showed what a difference a day could make, and indeed a week. On the same day that Kaveh was being buried, we nearly met the same fate. Just a few hours ago we had been buddying up with the very guys who called in the airstrike – and I’d been reminiscing about old times with them. The SF had told me none of theirs had died but I
(Weeks back, we had offered to give our co-ordinates to The Pentagon but they simply weren’t interested. It would be nice to think this wouldn’t have happened if we’d been embedded, but then we wouldn’t have been chasing Barzani across Iraq.)
Just then, someone spotted a body in the back of one of our enflamed vehicles. That awoke something inside me to save the story, let alone the body. I ran to my car to discover it was a sleeping bag wedged against the back window, but I had to rescue the remaining broadcast equipment. There was no point at all us being here if the videophone and all the footage were going up in smoke.
I managed to get the hatch open but it was like a furnace in there. I climbed inside to cut the rope to free the two spare jerrycans. I ran to John, threw them just to the right of the camera, then turned and went back to the other vehicles through the flames. Fred shouted to me to save his gear.
All the cars were burning now – the third one looked seconds away from explosion as I grabbed our personal bags along with John’s diaries, notebooks and fucking Tilley hat. It was like a barbecue out of control but the smell was horrendous – nothing is more ghastly than the smell of burning fuel and smouldering flesh combined. I blocked it out of my mind and concentrated on the vehicle. All our lives were in those trucks – my focus was now totally on preserving the story and not human life. The guys I was concerned about were safe; the gear was not.
John was raging again when he finished the live. ‘There’s gotta be a fucking inquest into that,’ he yelled to everyone and no one. ‘Was that OK?’ he turned to Tom. John had been better than OK. He was at his best, flicking an internal switch from anger and disgust to smooth calm.
It had been a disgraceful error. Forty-five had been injured, sixteen lives lost. The Americans were worried there was more incoming and wanted to evacuate.
Some of the gear was damaged. Most importantly, John’s Tilley hat now had a hole in it. Some twenty-five minutes later, my concern was still the vehicles. Despite that toxic mix of fuel and flames, I could see one of the Peshmerga guys trying to steal the third vehicle; the other two were burned to shreds.
‘Fuck off – this is our vehicle!’ I screamed at him.
In the back, he had placed his weapon along with some ammo. I found a hand on one of the seats. I told John to stay with the vehicle as I began to move everything into this car, piling stuff on the roof and clearing the glass from the seats. I had no windscreen left.
By now, all the traffic was coming towards us – the rest of the media had got wind of the story and were piling in our direction. All we wanted to do was leave, heading back down to the original checkpoint.
‘What about Abdullah?’ John asked.
We agreed to have one last look.
Checking under the vehicles and charred corpses in this scene of devastation, we found nothing except the truth. He hadn’t even bothered to stick around. That was the final straw for me with him. If he wasn’t my responsibility before, he certainly wasn’t now. It was time to go. In every sense. Even for battle-hardened souls like Fred and me, it had taken its toll.
‘That’s it, I’m off,’ the American announced through the dust and wind in the front of the Land Cruiser. But he meant off and out of the country. It was time for him to get back to California to see his little baby. This was just the wake-up call he needed to get off the adrenalin rush and back to the real world.
‘Yeah, that was a close call,’ I agreed.
It all showed what a difference a day could make, and indeed a week. On the same day that Kaveh was being buried, we nearly met the same fate. Just a few hours ago we had been buddying up with the very guys who called in the airstrike – and I’d been reminiscing about old times with them. The SF had told me none of theirs had died but I
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