by Mark Austin
Our meeting with Colonel Vernon confirmed one thing in Terry’s mind: Basra was the place. Basra was the story. Basra was where he needed to be when the time came.
I was unsettled by the briefing; Terry was buoyed by it. On the way back to the Sheraton he had a clarity of purpose that I admired.
And that night, he seemed relaxed and confident. ‘I feel good about this one, Marky,’ he told me. ‘You know that feeling when you have a team around you that makes you feel comfortable?’
‘Yes,’ I replied.
‘Well, I have that feeling,’ he said. But he didn’t need to.
I knew exactly what he meant. I knew the strength and confidence you draw from knowing you have some of the very best people in the business right there with you. Particularly in potentially dangerous situations. We were apprehensive, but excited about what lay ahead.
At that moment, one of his camera team, Daniel Demoustier, walked in carrying bags of clothes he’d bought at the market. Among the purchases was a green fleece, far too big for him, but necessary for the cold desert nights that lay ahead.
Everybody was busy preparing – checking their kit, the 4 x 4 vehicles, the fuel and food and water. Fred Nérac, a French force of nature in his forties who loved good restaurants, fine wine and skiing, was also on Terry’s team. He was out trying to source ‘a few nice things for the camping trip’. He meant, I presume, food. He was always well supplied and well prepared.
I remember once working with Fred on a story about a serious avalanche in the French Alps, in which British tourists were killed or missing. I arrived hopelessly attired, in suit and overcoat. I’d been covering a diplomatic story in Paris. Within minutes, Fred had taken me to a ski shop, buying all the kit I needed. We had permissions, complimentary lift passes, and a guide to take us to the affected area. He had it all planned, right down to the piece to camera on the slopes, with him skiing backwards. We sent the pictures and a voice track back to London, and then headed out to the restaurant he’d already booked. Fred was a class act.
The final member of the team was a Lebanese driver, fixer and translator, Hussein Osman, who I had met a year earlier in Beirut and who had been driving me around Kuwait in the build-up to war. Quiet but loyal, brave and efficient, he was now running around making sure they had enough fuel for the days ahead.
Everyone was busy preparing for something I felt you could never really adequately prepare for. What lay ahead was utterly unpredictable, uncertain and in the lap of the gods. War, once it starts, is impossible to anticipate with any precision. Things go wrong, plans go awry and intentions go south. It is a truism of war that ‘no plan survives contact with the enemy’. And another favourite with British troops is SNAFU (‘situation normal, all fucked up’).
So, in such circumstances, how can you prepare? It didn’t stop us trying. My team, consisting of cameraman Mike Inglis, producer Derl McCrudden, soundman Ted Denton and two satellite engineers, Steve Gore-Smith and Alan Bugby, did all we could to make sure we had everything that we could possibly need in our four vehicles. The most important items for Inglis were a large box of teabags and a kettle. Mike didn’t mind going to war so long as he had a brew every morning. For me, it was tinned tuna and crackers. I could survive for weeks on that and bananas. Odd, really. All Steve seemed to worry about was the new satellite dish ITN had bought for the job, the Swe-Dish. Light, mobile and mounted on a 4 x 4, it would, we hoped, enable me to anchor the evening news each night live from inside Iraq. Our plan was ambitious but perfectly doable. In fact, it was to be a huge success.
A day or two later, we moved out from the Sheraton and drove sixty-odd miles to the desert border area and set up camp. Terry and his team had left earlier and were already filming in the heavily militarized no man’s land between Kuwait and Iraq. The build-up to war was complete; the desert had become a giant, dusty military car park full of tanks, armoured vehicles and impatient troops. Hundreds of thousands of them.
On our first night in the desert, ITN wanted us to present the Evening News to test the satellite dish was working and all was well. Mike Inglis aimed his lighting rig at a couple of army Land Rovers near a makeshift press information centre (PIC) set up by Colonel Chris Vernon and his team. It worked as a backdrop, and the broadcast went smoothly. The communications were easy and the picture was clear. We were under way.
Afterwards, we decided to pitch our tents at the PIC and get some food – and, more importantly, some sleep. Unfortunately, it soon became clear that we were not welcome. The British reporters ‘officially’ based at the PIC, including a team from ITN, had apparently made it pretty obvious to the military media people that they didn’t want us there. They were unhappy that we were trying to take the benefits afforded by the PIC – food, decent accommodation and protection – while not having to submit ourselves to the other side of the deal, i.e. control and censorship.
And they were right. That is exactly what we were trying to do. Their opposition to it was understandable. I would probably have done the same. It just didn’t seem like that at the time.
And so it was, in the morning, we were kicked out and went off to fend for ourselves.
We moved south, back towards the Kuwaiti border, and found a flattened area surrounded by berms of sand on four sides, which provided near-perfect cover. We pitched tents and made it our home, or rather the others pitched their tents. I couldn’t be bothered, and slept perfectly happily for two or three nights in the car.
This small area also became our studio in the desert as we counted down to war and broadcast nightly back to the UK. Weeks of diplomacy, against the backdrop of the huge military build-up and big anti-war protests at home, had failed to lead to a peaceful solution. President George W. Bush appeared on television, live from the Oval Office, to announce the start of hostilities, and soon bombs began falling on Baghdad. It was only a matter of time before hundreds of thousands of British and American troops would cross the Iraq–Kuwait border and head north towards the capital.
On the Friday night before the war began, I spoke with Terry on our Kuwaiti mobiles. He had already filed a number of reports from northern Kuwait and he was happy. He told me he was bedding down for the night alongside some American tanks and armoured vehicles. He said his plan was to cross with them and then make his way along the Basra road. Neither he, nor I, thought he would get very far before they would encounter roadblocks. But I wished him well and told him we would be heading for a port near Basra called Umm Qasr. We had been told the British would be airlifting troops into the area to secure the port as soon as possible. It would be an important staging post for supplies. Our decision to head there seemed like a sensible plan.
‘Go well, mate,’ Terry said. ‘See you on the other side.’
On the Saturday morning, at first light, we moved off. By now Terry had already crossed into Iraq. He had awoken to find the Americans had already gone, and he wasted no time in giving chase.
As for ourselves, we had arranged a rendezvous with a friendly British military policeman who was looking after one of the main crossing points into Iraq. He had agreed to smooth our way across. We were on our way in our convoy of four vehicles when my producer Derl, who was in the lead car, signalled for us to stop. We pulled over and he jumped out brandishing his mobile phone. He had received a text message from London. ‘Call Newsdesk Urgent’, it read.
We didn’t think much of it. That is pretty standard stuff from the ITN foreign desk, and more often than not there would be nothing particularly urgent about the message whatsoever. Still, Derl called, and it was answered, unusually, by the deputy editor Jonathan Munro. Munro asked where we were. There was an urgency in his voice. Derl told him we were at the border about to cross into Iraq and we were anxious to get going. ‘Don’t,’ yelled Munro. ‘Stop exactly where you are. I am ordering you not to cross that border.’
He told Derl something about an ITN team encountering trouble in Iraq and that they were halting our deployment
. It soon became clear it was Terry’s team. He, Daniel, Fred and Hussein were all ‘missing’.
Later, I called Jonathan back. He confirmed they were unaccounted for and went further. ITN had received reports there had been a gun battle and it was likely they’d been caught up in it.
‘Are they alive?’ I asked.
‘We don’t know, we think so. Just don’t cross, just wait,’ he said, and ended the call.
I felt sick to the pit of my stomach. But, shamefully, not only because of Terry and his team. I felt sick also because I was being prevented from doing something I had thought about every minute of every day for the past few weeks.
Our initial reaction was anger that we were now unable to do our jobs. Mike Inglis was particularly annoyed that they were stopping us doing what we had long planned for. This was the moment. The war had begun. The invasion of Iraq was under way. British troops were about to be in action just a few miles from where we were standing, and we were being told not to go. We were all furious.
We stood at the roadside and watched as the British troops and heavy armour went over the border. It was immensely frustrating. Soldiers gestured to us to follow them in, and we couldn’t. More than once, we thought ‘to hell with London’, but we didn’t cross. We stayed where we were and missed the beginning of one of the biggest stories we’d ever cover.
But, slowly and painfully, it began to sink in that perhaps the foreign desk wasn’t telling us everything they knew… or at least suspected. We calmed down, and it soon hit us that Terry and his team might well be in serious trouble. No contact with London or us meant bad news. Just how bad would become clear in the coming hours.
Gradually, more information came through. Only snippets, the barest details, but all of them bad. We heard something about them being caught in crossfire, something about vehicles burning, something about no word from Terry. Something about ambulances and Basra. Our anger turned to desperation for more news. By now, nothing else mattered. Not the story, not the programmes, not the war. We just wanted to know our mates were OK. But they weren’t.
Another call from London. Munro again. This time it was to tell us a morsel of good news. Daniel Demoustier was alive, had made contact and was walking back towards an Iraqi border crossing. Munro gave me the name of the crossing and asked Mike Inglis and me to go meet him. We looked at the map; it was about ten miles away. We set off.
We got there before Daniel, so we had to wait for him to come across the border. And then I saw him. A dishevelled, dust-covered, hunched-up figure, walking, stumbling towards us. He was alone.
He was held briefly at the border point, frustratingly close to us, and then he came through. We embraced. He looked dazed and shocked. He had the vacant stare of a man who had seen bad things. He had cuts and grazes and his hair was matted with dust and mud and a little blood. In fact, his hair seemed brittle, standing up. Is that possible? I just remember it being like that. Was it shock? It must have been.
Then he started talking and didn’t stop. It was muddled and incoherent and endless. We tried to slow him down; Mike Inglis led him to the car and we drove south towards Kuwait City. And all the while, Daniel talked.
He told us he had been driving north towards Basra, he and Terry in one vehicle, Hussein and Fred in the other. He told us how they drove past some American tanks in the fields either side of the road. ‘But there was no roadblock, nothing to stop us. The traffic was moving. Everything was OK. We could see a bridge ahead and then Basra.
‘And then the shooting started. Heavy shooting. I tried to get into the well of the driver’s seat, I just got my head down. It was too much firing,’ he said. ‘Too much.’
He told us how he thought he saw Terry was hit, but he wasn’t sure. He thought he saw him open the front passenger door and fall out of the vehicle. It was all a blur. A terrible blur.
‘I just don’t know what happened to him or Fred or Hussein. I just don’t know. I’m sorry.’
He was crying now, but didn’t pause even to catch his breath. It was a long stream of terrible, awful detail. The gunfire, the noise, the smell, the fear, the heart-stopping fear, the blur, the guilt… yes, guilt, that he was out and breathing and talking and safe, and the others – his colleagues, his friends, his buddies – were not. And, and, and…
He trailed off for the first time since he fell into our arms at the border.
Then he started again. Sitting upright on the back seat of the car. He told us how he managed to get out of the vehicle and crawled across the road into a ditch. How he just tried to make himself invisible as the firing continued. He mentioned something about the car exploding, how it was on fire, how he could do nothing to get nearer to the other guys. ‘I couldn’t see them. Where were they? I couldn’t hear them. It was just firing all the time.’ He told us how he was pinned down and terrified and frozen to the spot.
Mike and I looked at each other. We both feared the worst for the others. I felt sick. I asked Daniel what he thought happened to Fred and Hussein in the other car. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I just don’t know.’
We drove to the military checkpoint where vehicles were being stopped from coming further north. We didn’t want to cross in case we weren’t allowed back in to the closed border area. We had arranged to meet a member of the ITN team who would drive Daniel back to Kuwait City and to hospital to be checked over.
Before he left us, Daniel showed me the sleeve of his oversized fleece, the one from the market. There was a bullet hole through it. The fleece was baggy enough that it had missed his arm. One thing was obvious, Daniel was lucky to be alive. What had happened to Terry, Fred and Hussein remained unclear. There was still hope they were alive.
We returned to the desert and our tents. It was a terrible time. Someone produced a bottle of whiskey, illegal in Kuwait but we didn’t give it any thought. We drank and we talked about Terry and Fred. There was tracer fire in the distance. The story we should have been covering didn’t seem to matter now. Nothing much did.
We were asleep in our tents in northern Kuwait that Saturday night when David Mannion was called into an edit suite at ITN’s HQ in London. Some footage had come in from Basra. It was filmed by an Iraqi camera team in a hospital morgue, and showed bodies piled up after an incident on the bridge earlier that day.
David took one look. He knew it was his mate. He knew it was Terry. ‘I just recognized him straight away,’ he told me much later. ‘It’s not something you should ever have to see, your best mate dead, but it was him. I knew it.’
David left the edit suite, got straight into his car and, for the second time that day, drove out to the Buckinghamshire home of Terry’s wife Lynn to break the devastating news to her. It was an appalling night for Terry’s family, for David and for everyone at ITN.
I woke early on the Sunday morning. By now Derl had spoken to the desk in London. It had been confirmed: Terry was dead; Fred and Hussein were missing. The words ‘presumed dead’ weren’t used, but they were implied. We were all devastated. Mike Inglis, one of Terry’s best friends, made tea and cried. We all cried. Day one of the war. Day bloody one. And Terry was gone. I could not believe it was happening. We drank our tea in silence. But we were all thinking the same thing. What on earth do we do now?
What we did was go out and film whatever we could; we had a programme to put out. The Sunday evening broadcast was dominated by the death of Terry. We went live from the desert and the presenter, John Suchet, asked me about him. It was the hardest report I have ever done. As I spoke on air I noticed Mike Inglis, behind the camera, welling up. I never thought for a moment that on day two of the war our programme would essentially be one story, and that story would be about the death of one of our own.
But that is war. People die, hundreds of people every day. And you never know any of them. But someone knows them, someone out there does. And they grieve and mourn and cry their hearts out. We just don’t see it. Or we seldom do. War is most often about anonymous d
eath.
But on that day, in that war, it wasn’t. We did know them. We knew them well. I couldn’t have presented the programme that night. I didn’t have it in me. Suchet did a brilliant job, sounding composed and calm and in control. Not easy, not in those circumstances. Not easy at all.
Afterwards, Derl phoned the news desk. David Mannion answered. He told Derl that we had done a great job in appalling circumstances and he told him to hang on. He put the phone on the desk, leaving the line open. He then addressed the newsroom, allowing Derl to hear it. He paid tribute to his best mate and then to everyone involved in that day’s coverage.
‘It was touching and sincere,’ Derl told me later. ‘He then came back on and spoke to me. And for a man who was grieving, I always felt he was remarkable in being able to give more than he took in those moments.’
The phone call over, it was just the six of us in the desert, sitting on the berm staring at the sky. It was 2 a.m. Over towards the port city of Umm Qasr, just across the border, tracer bullets ‘danced in the night sky’ as Derl put it. We sat there saying nothing. In the distance, the sight and sounds of the war we should have been covering. I noticed Derl was welling up. Mick Inglis did, too. ‘I know, mate. It’s hard, isn’t it,’ said Mick.
It was the worst day of my professional life.
But Terry had said in Kuwait, ‘We just have to do our job, it’s important.’ I’d thought he was right then, and I felt even more that he was right now. We had to do our job.
That was not the immediate view in London. There was paralysis, and understandably so. Nothing like this had happened at ITN. And no manager, however well trained, organized or prepared, can be expected to deal perfectly or even adequately with a situation like this.
David Mannion called to say he still didn’t want us to cross the border. He suggested we return to Kuwait City. Or even return home. I understood why he was saying that. But I had no intention of doing it and I am not sure he meant it either. I think he just felt he should say it. What else was he supposed to say? He had just sent his best mate to war and he wasn’t coming back.