‘You sound like Mickey Mouse!’ Mum thought the way the satellite phone distorted my voice was hilarious. ‘I’m so glad you’ve called. How are you?’
I remembered at once why I had not been in touch. Before I left I had made a vow to myself that I would tell her only the truth about this trip. I owed her that. She’d helped me with the early stages of my research, and had an idea of the environment I was heading into – or at least so we had both thought.
‘Well …’
I tried to think of words that would describe and not terrify. How could I describe watching that man have his legs shredded without making it obvious that I was in the firing line, too? Nothing came to mind.
‘We’ve done a lot of walking, well over a hundred miles I think. You wouldn’t believe the rain – it’s hard to stand up in it sometimes, it’s so heavy …’
We were on safe ground with the weather.
‘Nan’s having a time of it with the garden. She had Grandad lumping stones all day last weekend. She points, he digs. The grass has gone a bit brown, but the flower-beds are great. Oh, and the ducks are back!’
The dim, claustrophobic courtyard in Tubmanburg opened up into the magical vista from my grandparents’ garden, with its flower-fringed panorama of the English Channel.
‘I’m getting the film, but I’m being very careful. Nick is looking after me.’
‘Well, you make sure that he does. You’ll have a few tales to tell after this one, Jamo. I’m really glad it’s going so well.’
We said goodnight with no mention of Taylor’s vendetta; I stood in silence, listening to the humming insects and the faraway groan of thunder. Only then did it dawn on me that she would have been listening to the World Service all along.
I’d thought it might be upsetting to call home, but the connection back to something familiar was simply comforting. I tried to keep hold of the feeling and dialled Rachel’s number in Glasgow, but cut the call. It didn’t matter where she was. There would be only lies of convenience to tell. There was nothing to say that was true or kind, and I could not bring myself to frame my relationship with her with the brutal language of this war.
I climbed back up to the balcony and looked at Nick and Deku. Nick was sketching a line map from his GPS readings around town; Deku was rolling another spliff, ranting about Taylor.
‘All right, fellas? I might turn in for the night.’
‘Ja, see you in there.’
I nodded goodnight to them and overheard Nick’s conversation with Deku as I vanished into the darkness.
‘Ja, man, could you get your guys to move some of the bodies out into the forest tomorrow? You can really smell them from up here.’
I lay down on my bed, boots on, and waited for sleep.
At six o’clock the following morning I was woken by RPGs destroying the house across the road. Thick, fat booms rocked the whole town. Already dressed, I grabbed the bag with my shot tapes, satellite phone and notebooks, and followed Nick out the door.
Downstairs it was a different scene from the first attack. Dozens of civilians gathered in the courtyard below us. Bullets tore lumps out of our balcony.
I squatted on my haunches behind the wall of the house opposite ours, and lit a cigarette. The crackle of incoming fire had become a melody of short, flat snaps. Two rebels sauntered up to me, looked around the corner of the house, and then raised their Kalashnikovs, firing on full auto into the town centre.
‘Don’ be scare’,’ said one, ‘we protec’ you.’
One of them was wearing a bright green shower cap stretched over his bald pate. Spent shells tumbled out of his rifle like a jet of hot brassy water. It was deafening. My ears distorted my own voice like a broken radio.
‘Why are you wearing a shower cap?’ I bellowed.
I was genuinely interested. Even by the LURD’s bizarre sartorial choices, this set a new standard. It was like I’d been teleported onto the set of a Carry On film.
‘Becau’ i’ rainin’,’ he explained.
Fifty yards away Government soldiers wearing the bright yellow T-shirts of the Navy Division were sprinting towards us, shooting. I ran.
Nick was ten feet away, trying to get sense out of a flustered rebel captain.
‘Nick, fuck, they are really fucking close. We need to go right now … now, now, now!’
We ran together, while Shower Cap pinned down the Government soldiers. I turned around once to film the fleeing civilians and then didn’t look back. We made it to the far end of the main road and waited. A rebel crouched and fired an RPG into a shack twenty yards from him.
Moments later a Government soldier, who had just been taken prisoner, was dragged up the road. He had been stripped to his underwear; hands bound, bleeding, dirty and confused. Deku began railing wildly at him as stray bullets slapped into the buildings around us. I stood and filmed steadily as the commanders argued about what to do with him, following the to and fro of their shrill patois through the viewfinder. The prisoner looked at me, the camera, eyes prised wide open with fear. I thought I saw the flicker of a smile too – perhaps at the thought that my camera, this filmed evidence, would save him. And that is what I thought, too, that I would save him, that being here, being witness to his capture, would protect him. I kept filming. His body was beautiful: every muscle seemed sculpted out of black, sweat-polished marble.
And then all hell broke loose. As Deku ranted, a dead LURD fighter was borne down the road towards us, carried by four comrades, his lifeless arms splayed out cruciform, his yellow Nike sports top stained bright red. I framed the bloody corpse on the floor, and then, as I lifted the camera, Deku, enraged, forced the Government soldier onto his knees by the side of the road and fired repeatedly at point-blank range into his back. The prisoner’s skin split, and his lungs were blown out of his chest.
I went to him, filming, as Deku strode past purposely, heading back to the front line – his metal dog-tags glinting as they swung in front of the red Brooklyn logo on his T-shirt. I watched as the man rasped his last desperate breaths in the dirt, his face dehumanised by pain, his eyes searching mine. I turned to a rebel standing beside me, and heard myself say, ‘He’s still alive.’
The rebel flashed a look of deep concern.
‘Oh,’ he asked, ‘I mu’ shoo’ ’im?’
I turned back to the death. I knew then that I could not unlearn what I had seen. Education in war is a one-way street. Then I walked away and sat on a bench nearby with Nick, who had been watching my back, and lit my last Marlboro. There was nothing to be said.
I told myself it was necessary to film the rebels’ atrocities in order to present a truthful image of their war. I also reminded myself of a black-and-white photo-essay I’d seen in my twenties of an execution in South Africa. Racist AWB paramilitaries had been shot dead in public by a black policeman. What stuck in my mind more than the photos themselves was the reaction of the photographers present. Those who missed the decisive moment were jealous of their colleagues who had captured death on film. Their words stuck with me. ‘An execution is a once-in-a-lifetime thing,’ one had said, ‘even if you are covering violence and war.’
I wondered if the man Deku had shot – who couldn’t have long seen the back of his teenage years – would be missed by anyone, whether there would be a grieving mother counting the days, a wife somewhere holding a photograph, not knowing. Of all the most intimate moments of his life, I, a stranger, had shared the last and most intense of all.
We edged our way back to the fighting through a maze of back alleys. Finally, the firing stopped and we broke out into the main street again. Bobbing out of view down the hill, the chanting yellow T-shirts beat their retreat. Four rebels had been confirmed killed, five seriously injured. Everyone was out of ammunition. Dragon Master confirmed there were only 200 bullets left in the main arms cache – Nick had more than that in his webbing – and almost no RPG bombs. Had the Government attack continued for another fifteen minutes, we would have been
overrun. No one else, except Nick, seemed to realise how precarious our situation had become.
Trekking back to the balcony, we discussed our options.
‘If they completely run out of ammo, we’re going to have to take the gap,’ Nick concluded. ‘It’s better that we take our chances alone than be caught up in a slaughter here – but it’s a last resort.’
‘Absolutely,’ I agreed. ‘Let’s go see if we’ve made the news.’
A couple of hours later Nick tuned in to the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme with Deku and the other commanders, while I bandaged my aching knees. We sat in astonished silence. Taylor had visited Klay Junction that very day, and now pledged to re-take Tubmanburg personally within seventy-two hours. My radio reports had brought hell down onto the rebels; my actions were now directly affecting the prosecution of the war. On the one hand, my reporting was helping them to correct Taylor’s propaganda; on the other, it was inciting him to wipe them out.
That evening, exhausted porters arrived from Fassama with more bullets, RPG bombs and fuel. We were saved. I called the senior BBC producer, feeling not unlike an office worker calling home to the wife with an account of an unusual day in the office. I told him the good news. We had what he wanted.
‘That’s great.’ He sounded genuinely impressed. I breathed another sigh of relief and my spirits lifted. Violence was a valuable commodity. ‘Maybe we can get Rageh Omaar up to the Guinea border to do a series of stand-ups. We can use your combat footage as wrapping. It will be great for you.’
There was no Plan B, no other offer – nor would there be. Battle-worn, profoundly exhausted, I somehow kept my temper. I wasn’t surviving these battles to make someone else look good. I decided then and there to keep this conflict just between Nick and myself, until such time as I could show my work on my own terms. This would remain my own private war.
Life with the rebels became increasingly complex. It was difficult to reconcile the polite and strangely courteous men and women, who shared out the last of their precious rice, with the brutality of soldiers at war. Deku offered me a local cigarette, from his last packet. I plucked it from the hands of a murderer as we joked about the lives – and Marlboros – we had left behind at home.
‘My man Jay, be carefu’ wi’ yor jew’,’ he advised me, referring to Rachel as my ‘jewel’, ‘becau’, my man, if y’ stay fa’ fro’ her too lon’, all kinda ba’, ba’ ting ca’ happen!’
Deku’s past remained obscure. Despite having slain some mother’s son in the dirt that afternoon, he had a child himself, a boy, who was growing up with Deku’s estranged wife in Guinea. When he spoke of him, his eyes lit up, and he smiled. Whatever depravities he inflicted on others, Deku remained infuriatingly engaging.
I thought of the line Martin Sheen’s character, Captain Willard, had spoken in the film Apocalypse Now. ‘Accusing someone of murder in a place like this’, he said, ‘is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.’ In Liberia, it felt like there was only me to point the finger, but the guilty were the ones keeping me alive. I cast around desperately for moral guidance. Walking through the jungle towards the front line, I had clung to the voice of my grandfather, Martin, the professional soldier, who had told me that it was only in war that men were allowed to love each other unquestioningly and unconditionally. It was that love, he told me, that allowed him to both survive and participate in the slaughter. Now, all but surrounded by the Government army, another voice came to me.
My maternal grandfather, Don, one of war’s eminently sensible survivors, had adopted an entirely different approach to killing people: he was not guided by a sense of adventure, but by duty. He fought because he was asked to by his country, and saw the bloody business of combat as a job to be done for a greater good. While Martin played his folk violin and filled my head with Boy’s Own tales of derring-do, Don got down to the serious business of bringing me up with my mum, and making sure I finished my homework on time. Of the few wartime stories he imparted, one in particular resonated with me now: surrounded, and down to his last few rounds of ammunition, it was the South African troops of whom he spoke most highly. There was no love lost between the English and the Afrikaners, but after eight months under siege, together they sprang out of the trap of Tobruk. I shared his stories with Nick, who looked shocked, and then laughed.
‘My uncle was at Tobruk. Perhaps they even knew each other!’ It was a wild thought.
I told Nick about my grandfather’s war in the desert, and how, while out scavenging for parts from knocked-out German half-tracks, he had, quite literally, bumped into Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, himself on a recce in no-man’s-land with only his driver for protection. They had saluted one another under the searing sun and driven off in different directions. What impressed Nick more than meeting Rommel, though, was the fact that my grandfather had immersed himself in my upbringing.
‘Ja, it’s tough on my little one, being away so much,’ Nick said, remembering his daughter in Pretoria. ‘She is a real Daddy’s girl. She won’t leave me alone when I come home. She’s pretty, too – she did some of that modelling for children’s clothes. I wasn’t too happy about that. I stood next to the guy taking the pictures the whole time.’
I tried to consider what Don would make of this war. Alive and strong, he would be waiting for me when I came home, full of understated enquiry, and, I hoped, respect. Deep down, I knew that part of what had driven me to come to Liberia came from a desire to make him proud of me.
As the evening drew to a close, Dragon Master politely asked if he could beg a favour: could I help him make a call from my satellite phone?
‘Yeah, sure. It’s charged up. Who do you want to speak to?’
I was happy to help him out – they asked for very little, and fed us without question or resentment.
‘I go’ to koll de Lady in Conokry,’ he said. ‘She go’ to ge’ de logistic’. We’ go’ so’ men dem readeh boh we don’ know when de nex’ delivery comin’.’
The significance of his reply sank in.
‘You mean ammunition? You want to arrange an ammunition delivery?’
‘Yeah, das righ’.’
I walked back under the tree with him, and dialled the number he gave me, scribbled on the back page of his tatty notebook. He took the phone, smiling, and chatted away unintelligibly. I took a moment to consider my position. I was now helping the rebels re-supply their army with illegal matériel from the Guinean Government. It wasn’t up there with shooting down helicopters, but it was close. I felt like I was breaking one of the sacred rubrics of journalism: Thou Shalt Not Take Sides. I was almost behaving like a mercenary.
For the next four days Tubmanburg was attacked persistently. Every morning, at six-thirty sharp, and then again in the afternoon or evening, 300 or so of Taylor’s crack fighters rushed our perimeter.
Rebel radios crackled with eavesdropped information. Taylor’s helicopter, out of reach of rebel grenade launchers, ferried Revolutionary United Front mercenaries in from Foya. The odds mounted, but Deku’s men hung on. Ammunition re-supplies arrived in dribs and drabs – but a huge shipment of 40,000 rounds, expected daily from Fassama, failed to materialise. We clung to the thought of it, the tiny brass tubes and green bombs the only long-term means of the LURD’s – our – survival.
In between the lethal exchanges in town, Nick and I sat on our balcony, endlessly re-hashing escape plans, staring wistfully at the map and the ambush-ridden road to Robertsport – gateway to the Atlantic and shortcut home. We talked about tactics, and defeat, and, prompted by the memory of the execution of the absurd AWB men, I took the opportunity to ask Nick about leaving the army in 1994.
‘Those so-called new Boer commandos – did you think they might actually be able to set up a separate Afrikaner state?’
‘No,’ he sighed, ‘those extreme guys were idiots. They couldn’t change anything. No, the army offered me to stay, but it was changing. The new MK commanders were useless. None of them took
proper training. Lots of white guys left – though many of the blacks stayed on because it was the only way they could earn money. Anyone who was a professional, who took pride in their work, resented the new way things were being done.’
The ‘MK guys’ were Umkhonto we Sizwe, or Spear of the Nation – ANC guerrillas who’d fought against the apartheid state from 1961 to 1990.
‘Some of them trained up okay, but the commanders didn’t have a clue. Besides, the war was over. My second wife and I bought a shop in Atlanta, outside of Pretoria, and tried to make a go of it. I was keen to get all that army stuff behind me. I think she’d had enough of it by then.’
He stood up and disappeared into the room, emerging a minute later with two fresh beakers of water for us, drawn from our purified reserve.
‘Man, that place was cursed! We used the money I got from the army to buy this general trading store, selling mostly to blacks. But vok! It was in the centre of a fokken snake pit. I have never seen so many snakes. We were completely surrounded by them.’ His voice rose with excitement at the memory. ‘It didn’t matter how many you killed, there’d be another dozen in the morning. My wife went crazy. The store was a disaster; we had to close it. We sold up, and the EO job came along in ’95.’
I couldn’t decide if being surrounded by in-exterminable snakes was a more fitting allegory for his struggle to fit in with the New South Africa, or our present predicament in Siege City.
‘Weren’t you, I mean the army, tempted to fight in ’94? Was there any desire to hold out against the ANC?’
It seemed incredible to me that, after nearly twenty years of war, Nick and his comrades had just walked away from everything they’d fought for with a shrug of the shoulders, and accepted that that was the way it would be.
‘It was already over in ’88. The politicians saw the way it was going, and did a deal, much earlier than people think.’
My Friend The Mercenary Page 13
