A Day Like Today: Memoirs. John Humphrys
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and the best in the business. Hugely experienced, clever, brave, resourceful, brilliant on camera and probably the most competitive human being I have ever worked with – which is saying something.
He was so far my superior in every aspect of our craft that I was mildly surprised he had deigned to pay me a visit – he’d ignored me until then – and even more surprised when he told me he wanted to help. He’d heard that we’d shot some decent stuff at the airport and said he had a small charter plane which was taking his own footage out of Dhaka to Burma where his agent would put it on a plane to London. Did I want my film to go too? You bet I did! The answer to my prayers. He might be the most ruthless operator in the business, but what a decent human being Nick was when his colleagues needed a bit of help. I told him I’d get the film from my cameraman, who was having a much-deserved snooze, when he woke up in an hour or so.
‘No good,’ said Nick, ‘the plane is waiting to take off. I need it now.’
And then the little worm of doubt did its job. I told him my cameraman would be extremely cross to be disturbed and then I went down to the hotel lobby. The first journalist I saw was a friendly stills photographer: ‘Ah, John, heard about the plane have you? It’s been set up by the Americans … probably leaving in a couple of hours. We’re all using it.’
To his credit Nick managed to look a little sheepish when I told him I wouldn’t be handing my precious film to him after all. Later that afternoon the plane took off headed for Burma with all our footage including my own. I treated myself to a large whisky and settled back to await the congratulatory Telex messages from my bosses in London. They never came – for the very good reason that the film took longer to get to London than if it had travelled by camel.
The country I had flown out to on 1 December 1971 was East Pakistan. When I flew home three weeks later East Pakistan no longer existed. The war lasted only thirteen days, one of the shortest wars in history, and Pakistan signed the instrument of surrender on 16 December. The new country of Bangladesh was born. The Bengali people, who had suffered terribly under what they regarded as the Pakistani occupation, went wild. It was the first (and last) time I had ever been carried shoulder-high through the streets of a city by a massive, cheering mob who regarded the BBC as heroes. Tragically, the Pakistan military had taken a different view. When we arrived in Dhaka we had recruited a local Bengali to work with us as guide and interpreter. One night he disappeared. We found him the next day in a ditch with his stomach slit open. Would he have been a target had he not been working for the BBC? It is impossible to know, but equally impossible not to feel guilt.
Everyone was at risk in that war-torn city and the Red Cross declared our hotel a protected zone. They draped a huge Red Cross flag over the roof and we foreign journalists who were staying in the hotel were asked to act as wardens. Our job was to stand guard at the hotel entrance and check all those who wanted to stay. There is something deeply unpleasant about having to search through the luggage of strangers just in case they happened to be terrorists with a bomb. Much more unpleasant when the war ended was watching how the Bengalis dealt with some of the defeated enemy. Vast numbers became prisoners of war, but some of the Pakistani forces’ most notorious leaders were dealt summary justice in public. We decided we would not film some of the most gruesome punishments. Our judgement was questioned later by some colleagues and bosses, but my cameraman had no doubts. There are some things, he said, that nobody should see and he would not film them even if I ordered him to. He was right.
We were, by now, desperate to get home for Christmas and we went out to the airport to try to get a flight. We knew there wasn’t much chance. The problem was that the crater we had sheltered in a few days earlier, plus several more, meant no commercial airlines had a hope of operating. We were told it might help if we lent a hand to some of the workers trying to fill in the holes so that at least some light aircraft might be able to operate. Parked at the edge of the runway was a small, ancient single-engine plane which might, just about, have been the very last remnants of the old East Pakistan air force. The passenger door had been removed and a large machine gun bolted to the floor. There was a young man standing next to it. We asked him if he was the pilot and when he said he was we asked him if he would fly us out – ideally across the border to Calcutta a couple of hundred miles away. He looked a bit dubious but he thought there was probably enough space between potholes to take off. We settled on a price, squeezed in around the machine gun and set off. We did a little praying, held our breath, wobbled a bit … and we were airborne.
The pilot seemed mightily relieved but still tense. He had no maps and nor, as far as I could see, much in the way of working instruments but after what seemed like a very long time he pointed out of the window: ‘Look! Calcutta!’
Now it was just a matter of landing. Obviously there was no question of trying the international airport (they’d have probably thought we were the Pakistani enemy launching an attack) but our pilot said he knew there was a grass air strip somewhere – and so there was. The landing was, second only to being rocketed by the Indian air force, the most frightening moment of my life. It wasn’t so much a landing as a series of crash landings, each slightly less shattering than the last. When we skidded to a halt on the grass strip I swear the pilot offered thanks to whichever god he worshipped. I said something like: ‘Err … well done! Looked a bit difficult …?’
‘Yes indeed,’ he said, ‘it was my first time!’ It turned out that he had been a co-pilot and his instructor had yet to prepare him for a solo landing.
In September 1973 I was despatched to Chile to report on the bloody military coup that had just been staged. It was a big story. Democracy was a fragile flower in Latin America and the democratic government of Chile had been threatened for some time by those who opposed the policies of the socialist president Salvador Allende. Leading them was the man who was to become one of the world’s most ruthless dictators: General Augusto Pinochet.
I happened to be in New York at the time and London ordered me to get to Chile post-haste. It was difficult. All the Chilean airports had been closed and no international flights were being allowed in. So I decided to get as close as possible and, with my film crew, caught the next plane to Buenos Aires – more than 5,000 miles south. Maybe we could drive across the Andes and into Chile by road. I was disabused of that idea very swiftly: far too dangerous and, anyway, it would take for ever. So maybe we could charter a light aircraft from Argentina. No chance. Again, too dangerous. The Andes are very big and very high.
There was only one way to get in – assuming the Chilean army would let us. I decided we should charter a jet and tell them we were on our way. That wasn’t easy either. The only one on offer was from the Argentine state airline and it was a jumbo jet. I suspected my masters in London, desperate though they were to get footage out of Chile, would quibble at the cost. And the airline wanted the money up front. But there were many other foreign correspondents from news organisations around the world in BA also trying to get into Chile so we all met in my hotel room, agreed to split the cost, handed over our credit cards and I scuttled off with them to the airline’s office. They made it clear that once the deal had been done we’d have to pay whether our plane was allowed to land or not. We were over a barrel so I paid up and a few hours later we all pitched up at the airport and prayed.
Late in the evening the word came through from Santiago: permission granted. At any other time the prospect of flying over one of the world’s great mountain ranges in your very own jumbo jet would have been the stuff of dreams. But not in the middle of the night and not when you’re worried sick about trying to catch up on a story that had broken days before. The champagne in the first-class cabin went undrunk. When we finally arrived in Chile we were greeted by the military – ‘greeted’ meaning that we were herded into the back of an open-topped troop carrier and driven into a subdued and fearful city. The fighting was over. The government had been crushed and the dictatorship led by Pinochet was in total control of the country.
We were allowed into the city’s football stadium, now converted into a vast prison for Allende supporters. I wondered as we filmed them how many would still be alive the next day. We also filmed at the presidential palace, which had been stormed by Pinochet’s soldiers. Allende’s body had been removed long since.