How to Avoid Being Killed in a War Zone

by Rosie Garthwaite

  Listen to your body when it says slow down

  Journalist Giles Trendle says it took him a long time to recognize when he was under stress and to admit what was behind it. Now, more than 20 years after he first went to a war zone, his advice is to pick your battles, really understand that you are not invincible and know what that means.

  ‘After two years on the front line as a journalist in the Lebanon war, I went home to London, going via Cyprus to visit a friend. There I sat on my first safe beach in two years and realized that the whole left side of my body was paralysed. It felt tight, like it might be a heart attack, but I sort of knew it was driven by my recent experience.

  ‘I stayed in bed for a week in Cyprus and went straight to a doctor when I got to the UK. All my physical tests were clear. The doctor said it was post-traumatic stress disorder. It took me another three years and another huge emotional breakdown to really understand what that meant and how to deal with it.

  ‘The reverse culture shock of moving back home to London was what did it. I spent the first eight months huddled in a corner of my room. Sometimes crying and sometimes in a foetal position, I felt like a waste of space. I felt that no one else understood what was really happening in the world. And if they did understand, they didn’t care. People around me were angry about the new government budget adding another penny on the price of a pint. Where I had just come from people were worried about bombs and dying.

  ‘Then, on a weekend away in Dublin, it all stopped. I realized that everything was going to be OK. I accepted my mortality. I understood that the risks I had been taking were putting me in unnecessary danger for no reward. When shells started dropping on Beirut most people would seek shelter, but I would go out looking for a story – or something. I would come back with nothing but adrenalin. Somehow fate kept me alive when I should have been dead. But to anyone thinking of doing something similar, as some test of their manhood, I would say don’t – it’s not worth it. Whatever you are chasing is not worth it.’

  Breathe

  Breathing properly is good for your heart and good for your head. By ‘properly’ I mean taking long, deep breaths from your belly, not your chest. This technique is described more fully in Chapter 10, but you can also read about yoga and Pilates breathing online. Pick the one that works for you.

  Imagination

  There’s no doubt that imagination can play tricks on you when you’re under pressure, especially at night when fear has no distraction. But imagination can also be a powerful tool in helping to relieve stress. Imagine a ‘safe place’ – a room filled with your closest family, a bed somewhere else, a favourite garden or beach, a boat, a cloud – and go there in your mind when you are stressed or unable to sleep.

  Your mind computes its experiences via dreams when you are in your deepest slumber. So nightmares can be expected and are a healthy way of filing away experiences. But entering sleep through the window of your safe place could help to ward off those bad dreams and help you get to sleep.

  Hoda Abdel-Hamid makes a good point that the less you see, the less nastiness your mind has to deal with:

  ‘In Sarajevo in 1993 I had been seeing constant misery. I had to travel down the famous “sniper avenue” to work. It was well named – a road where you took your chances against gunmen who did not hesitate to target the press or civilians. It created a feeling of excitement. Then, when the excitement was over, I was immediately bored. I didn’t feel very good. I found everyone around me boring and trivial. I looked around for a solution that didn’t involve talking to anyone. I stayed in bed for a month, staring at the ceiling. I cut off all contact. In those days there were no mobiles, so it was easy.

  ‘Over time I have learnt to protect myself. There is no need for you to see everything first hand. There is only so much your head can take.’

  Your imagination can work against you as well as for you when under stress. I know mine can. I am the queen of sleep-talking and sleep-walking when the pressure is on.

  One cold November in southern England I was the officer in command during an exercise at Sandhurst army training college. We were all prepared for an attack by the Gurkhas, who were pretending to be the enemy. The troop had been on the go for three days in the field, so I made sure that ‘stag’ (the watch) was strictly assigned so that everyone could get a few hours’ sleep. But at four in the morning there was panic. I shouted for everyone to ‘Wake up’ and ‘Stand by for enemy fire’. Everyone rushed out of their sleeping bags, tied their boots and prepared for a blank-fire battle. Then a friend tapped me on the shoulder – I was in my sleeping bag, eyes firmly closed, crawling around in the mud like a soggy slug, holding my rifle and barking instructions into the dark. My team was not happy the next morning.

  I have never understood why the army teaches you to sleep with your rifle in your sleeping bag. Surely there are better bedfellows.

  Alcohol and drugs

  How much is too much for you normally? Have you upped your intake? It is very easy to turn to alcohol, nicotine or drugs as an apparent solution to stress or to help you ‘wind down’ before you go to sleep. But be aware what you are doing to your body. You are actually making it more difficult for your mind and your system to deal with stress. Feeling numb is not good when you need your wits about you. The hallucinogenic properties of marijuana and other drugs mean that your brain is not able to deal with its experiences. It needs rest – clear-minded rest – to file those experiences away. So know your limits.

  Documentary-maker Leigh Page says: ‘There is great value in knowing how many bloody Marys it takes to appease a stonking hangover. The Afrikaans have a saying, N klam lap word gou nat, which means, “A damp cloth gets wet quickly”.’

  There is a vast difference between an alcohol abuser and an alcoholic. Alcoholism is an illness, while abuse can be controlled with help.

  Alcoholism is a physical dependence with real physical withdrawal symptoms. Abuse is when you roll your Saturday night into a four- or five-day stretch, but then it comes to an end.

  Alcohol abusers drink for all sorts of reasons: they like the taste, they see it as a way to release stress, they want to sign off from life. Alcoholics drink because they have to.

  SIGNS OF ALCOHOLISM

  Look out for warning signs of trauma

  Delayed reactions, unexpected feelings, small events that overwhelm all of a sudden – don’t dismiss those fears or feelings just because they are the product of relatively minor events compared to other things you have seen or coped with. Passing a traffic accident back home when you have been dealing for months with untangling people from molten tank shells; a conker falling onto your head after living through repeated earthquake aftershocks in Pakistan; the smell of a butcher’s shop after experiencing the aftermath of a tsunami…all these incidents have been enough to tip my colleagues and friends into reliving a trauma.

  SIGNS OF TRAUMA-RELATED DISTRESS

  Remember why you’re in a war zone in the first place

  BBC correspondent John Simpson is clear-eyed in his sense of purpose: ‘I don’t feel you can stand by when people are being killed and say, “I’m just an observer, I can’t get involved.” So there have been a couple of times, once at Tiananmen Square and once in the Romanian revolution, when I waded in.’

  Why are you in a war zone? This is, arguably, the most important thing you must know and remember. It is easy to get attached to people and places and unfamiliar but now urgent driving feelings in times of stress. It would be unnatural if you didn’t feel a particular bond with others who are going through the same experience as you. But never forget the reason you came in the first place. Write it at the front of your notebook, on your rear-view mirror, on your medical kit, your toothbrush – wherever you might look during the day. It’s your raison d’être. It might develop over time, but be aware if it slips far away from your original intentions. Assess if that is what you want, or if you are being propelled in that direction by other forces. If so,
bring it back under control.

  Caroline Hawley observes: ‘Foreigners who have gone to a war zone have usually chosen to be there and can get out. We’re lucky. We have another home to go to. But working under pressure in dangerous circumstances can take a toll that you’re not aware of until it’s too late. After nearly three years living in post-war Baghdad, I was physically and mentally exhausted. Bombs, kidnap threats and the daily adrenalin rushes caused by tight deadlines and reporting live on television had left me feeling what I can only describe as complete adrenal fatigue.

  ‘It was when I moved to Jerusalem in the spring of 2006 that the emotional fall-out caught up with me. I realized I had put up mental defences in response to what we were witnessing – the lives lost and torn apart day after day after day. When I left Iraq and brought those barriers down, feelings of sadness flooded in, coupled with an anxiety I had never felt in Jerusalem before, even back in 2001 and 2002 when the city was the target of regular suicide bombings. It wasn’t long before a diagnosis and treatment for post-traumatic stress followed. Sadly, there’s no magic bullet to sort you out, but I found EMDR [eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy] helpful, as well as the opinion that I – and several others I knew in Baghdad – didn’t have a disorder, but a “very normal reaction to very abnormal circumstances”.

  ‘Don’t underestimate the silent toll that living in a war zone is putting on you.’

  Know how and when to leave

  Making sure you know how you are going to get out before you go in should be a condition of your making the journey.

  Similarly, making sure your family and friends have all the information they will need in the event that you are injured, kidnapped or killed will also give you peace of mind. (For more detail about this see On the Way In.)

  As part of your exit plan, it’s a good idea to have something to look forward to. It might help push you to leave at the right time. Monique Nagelkerke has some interesting ideas about this: ‘Take long breaks in between contracts. I honestly believe that back-to-back missions are killing. I have taken regular breaks of six months and more. Try to work somewhere completely different – with orang-utans in Borneo, as a Jilla-roo [cowgirl] on a farm in Australia. There are plenty of options. Just get away from the war zones, and avoid turning into a war-zone junkie.’

  IF YOU DIE ABROAD…

  /COMING BACK HOME

  You’ve been living a high-octane life in a dangerous environment, so peace can be difficult to handle.

  You’ll be yearning for that buzz, that sense of the unexpected that your war-zone life used to offer.

  Conversations will seem trivial. You will smile when you want to shout, ‘I’m bored! Who cares which dress you wear tonight; whether we eat steak or fish for dinner; which flowers should go where in the garden…’

  You are likely to question why you ever fitted in back home. Or what you have in common with your friends and family.

  You are likely to find it harder and harder to come home each time you go away. You might want to return to the field immediately.

  Your new job and surroundings are likely to disappoint. The lights will seem too bright. The food too rich. The smiles too broad. The parties, bland. The shops too trivial. The world, apathetic. But it is the same place you left – no different.

  It’s tough, but there are things you can do to get over these difficulties. Just don’t expect instant results.

  • Talk, even though it is often the last thing you feel like doing.

  • Connect with colleagues or friends who have had similar experiences. Try to involve your family in those conversations where possible.

  • Ask your family and friends how they feel. What their worst moments were when you were away.

  • Take on a new project, something challenging but different and involving, not isolating. Build a tree-house. Take up a language. Plan a holiday. Redecorate a room.

  If your feelings of alienation don’t go away over a period of 6–8 weeks, you need to seek professional help.

  Marc DuBois, executive director of MSF, recommends: ‘If you are travelling as an employee of a company, you should insist they put a support network in place. At MSF we have in-house counsellors and it’s obligatory to see them when you get back. Then, once you are settled, there’s a team of people dedicated to calling you up and checking you’re OK. It’s vital to have people you can talk to back home who have gone through the same things. It is important that organizations don’t make you believe that’s what sissies do. My induction to MSF was carried out by a really tough guy who admitted up front that he’d been reduced to tears by the work and that he sought counselling to help him out. Once you know that, it creates a culture where seeking help is normal.

  ‘It’s important to understand that trauma is normal and positive behaviour. In Angola in 2002 I was going into these areas where the level of starvation, malnutrition and death was horrid. I went through a few nights of being unable to sleep, having bad dreams, intrusive images, panic attacks. What the counsellor said afterwards was, “Thank God you went through that. You are a human being. It is a positive reaction to a situation – a human reaction based on human compassion. It’s natural to be affected by these people. It’s like experiencing a fever: it doesn’t feel good at the time, but in reality it’s burning up bad germs inside your body. It is a positive thing. Imagine seeing that sort of suffering and degradation and not having it affect you deeply. That’s the thing to worry about.”

  ‘It’s also not unusual to have an overwhelming feeling of pointlessness. Looking at the big picture can be depressing. Humanitarian aid doesn’t fix a political crisis. But it can fix lives. So remember the individual instances where you helped people or affected their lives for the better. Forget the overall picture if it isn’t a positive one. Try to remember what would happen if you weren’t there.’

  /ANETA’S CHOICE

  Alina Gracheva is a stellar camerawoman. She has many impressive achievements to her name, but it is her report ‘Aneta’s Choice’, about a Beslan mother, that stands out. It is a story that has affected her deeply ever since:

  ‘By September 2004 I thought I’d seen it all and could give advice to a rookie like Rosie any day.

  ‘But then came the Beslan school siege.

  ‘It was getting dark outside when Aneta Godjieva made tea for us and finally agreed to record an interview. It was hard to believe that this prematurely aged woman was in her thirties – about my age.

  ‘The day before she had been a hostage stuck inside School Number 1 with her daughters – two-year-old Milena and nine-year-old Alana. And now we wanted her to tell us what had happened. She spoke enough English to tell it in her own words:

  “Chechen gunmen had seized the school on the first day of classes. Hundreds of children and parents had been trapped inside for days in stifling heat with no food, water or clothes. Russian forces outside had the building under siege. The children were terrified and exhausted.”

  ‘Aneta continued in a simple, dispassionate tone that betrayed no emotion. “The terrorists said all the women with all the infants can go. I asked if my older daughter could take my younger daughter out, and I would stay behind instead. They said no. Either I had to stay and risk all of our lives, or leave Alana behind and save two lives. The terrorists were yelling and rushing us.”

  ‘Aneta had a few minutes to make her choice. Save herself and one child, leaving the other alone and scared, or stay behind and risk the lives of all three of them. She left the school carrying the infant Milena, and told her older daughter Alana to keep close to her friends.

  “What would you do in my situation?” Aneta asked me, breaking the unwritten rule that the person with the camera is not supposed to be a person at all.

  ‘Alana was killed by a bullet in her neck, one of 186 schoolchildren who died during an armed battle that ended the siege.

  “Every day I go to my dead daughter’s grave to ask her for forgivenes
s,” Aneta said.

  ‘Tears were welling up in my own eyes, but I had to keep the camera focused on Aneta. It was good material.

  ‘We drove back through the hot, empty streets of Beslan. They were full of the sound of human wailing; it came from behind every fence in town. What would I do if I had to make this choice? I have only one son.

  ‘In situations like this my brain and body go onto autopilot. I still have to finish the job – get back to the hotel, tape-edit the report and send it via satellite to CNN studios in the States in time for a prime-time show.

  ‘The report played out that night, and we moved on to our next story – about survivors from the siege being sent by train to a sea resort far away from the grief-stricken town to recover. But somehow the further I was getting away from Beslan, the more I felt Aneta’s pain. By the time I got to London I was a wreck. Aneta’s words kept sounding in my head. London didn’t feel like the fun party town I left just a few weeks ago.

  ‘It was not for the first time I’d reacted like this. I was familiar with stress and had had similar reactions to events I’d covered in the past. Most vividly I remember a scene we had filmed in the middle of the jungle near Kisangani in Congo, then still called Zaire, during the uprising that led to the fall of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. Rebels had blocked the approach to a refugee camp. There were reports of killings. Two weeks later the journalists and UN were allowed to drive on the narrow jungle road into the camps. The site looked like a horror movie: there were wounded and dead bodies on both sides of the road. A woman lying on a rug was trying to tell us something. It was not clear what she was saying, but she was pointing at the top of her head. When the camera zoomed in, instead of hair there was a round gash. It was crawling with maggots. In my mind, and in my banter with colleagues, she became ‘Mrs Maggots’. For months afterwards her image would come to me at night and keep me awake.