Читать книгу That Wasn’t the Plan - Reg Sherren - Страница 32

During the summer of 1990, our lives changed in the best of ways. In August our son Mitchell was born. I have often said I never really knew why I was on the planet until I became a father. Then it all made sense. It was a proud moment.

But other things were happening too, dark things on the world stage, and they would soon land much closer to home than I had ever imagined. Over in the powder keg known as the Middle East, Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, had invaded nearby Kuwait. Now it looked very much like US president George Bush Sr. wanted to do something about it. Throughout the summer there was a lot of sabre rattling, but little public support for an American intervention.

Then a fifteen-year-old Kuwaiti girl, who was given the name Nayirah to protect her identity, appeared before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus in Washington. With tears in her eyes, she spoke about seeing little babies being ripped from their incubators in Kuwaiti hospitals by Iraqi soldiers who apparently then left them on the cold floor to die.

The president himself told the story over and over. By late September the public sentiment was now overwhelmingly in favour of military intervention to pull the Iraqis out of Kuwait.

Operation Desert Storm was born, a UN-sanctioned combat operation undertaken by a coalition of thirty-five countries led by the United States. Canadian forces would be part of this plan, with their component code-named Operation Friction and based in Bahrain. Initially three warships would be used to help form a blockade in the Persian Gulf and around Kuwait as coalition forces ramped up to attack.

Through research, I learned some interesting facts. Newfoundland’s population represented less than 2 per cent of the population of Canada, yet Newfoundlanders made up over 30 per cent of the forces being sent to the Gulf. The province had a strong Sea Cadet program and going on to serve in the Navy was a career choice for many young Newfoundland men and women. To me, the fact that they were now about to get tangled up in this drama unfolding on the world stage—that was a story.

Don’t forget, until then our armed forces had primarily been involved in peacekeeping missions. Many of those had been dangerous, but this was something else altogether. I pushed hard with our newsroom leaders, arguing that we/I should go and show those at home what that fellow from Carbonear or that young woman from Mount Pearl, now proud members of the Navy, had gotten themselves into.

I worked for weeks to get the Canadian military on side, and spent days—countless hours using a fax machine (my only available form of reliable international communication)—trying to persuade the government of Bahrain to let me in. The Canadian Navy, along with Americans and some Brits, would be based in Manama, the capital. That was the place to be.

Finally, I was able to secure permission to videotape in their country. I’m still not sure how exactly it happened, but one day the fax arrived, and the last obstacle had been removed. Well, almost the last obstacle. I still had to persuade my employers. I argued that this was a huge shift in the way our military operated—these were Newfoundlanders, clearly in harm’s way. I promised that I would also do stories for other regions and produce a half-hour TV show, and all the material would be sent out through the syndicated news service. This would help pay for the trip.

Back in 1990, the CBC regions still had a great deal of autonomy and more control over their budgets. You could negotiate and find little pockets of money from other regions or programs to help make a project more viable. The bosses went for it. To be fair, the leadership in St. John’s didn’t take much convincing. They were always willing to find their own path to a story involving Newfoundlanders. I had just managed to talk myself into going to war, with a three-month-old son at home. My wife was not impressed.

But our team would travel there before the intervention was scheduled to begin, arriving in late October and staying for two weeks. We would have no way to feed tape back to Canada; instead, we would have to carry it back ourselves (feeding it by satellite was much too expensive, even if you could secure an uplink). We had only the fax machine for communication. There were phones, but you could rarely get them to work, certainly not for international calls, and if you could, the cost was astronomical.

The fax machine, for those who don’t know or remember, gave you the ability to send a printed document through the phone system. You fed it into the machine, and on the other end the fax machine spat it out. It worked most of the time. We would make do.

Cameraman Mark Thompson and I would make the trip. With our many cases of gear we flew to Toronto, then on to London. The next day, we jumped on a British Airways jet that would take us down the Suez Canal, across Saudi Arabia and into Bahrain. The flight was twelve or thirteen hours, and the plane was practically empty, with fewer than a dozen passengers including us. At that point the Middle East was hardly a popular destination. Planes flew in to take people out, not the other way around.

The State of Bahrain was a very rich country. It also had a reputation of being somewhat lax in security, and we soon learned it was a reputation the country was trying to dispel. When we landed, there were soldiers everywhere with automatic weapons—and no sense of humour.

They went through everything in our big camera-gear cases. They went through everything in our luggage. They even squeezed some of my toothpaste out of the tube. It went on for hours. In the end they removed all our camera gear, left us our luggage and sent us on our way to our hotel, the Ramada Inn downtown.

As I walked out the front doors of the airport, I was hit by a wall of heat. Daytime highs were 40° to 45°C and the humidity was 100 per cent. I had never experienced heat like this; it took my breath away. The hotel had a cool-water pool. It was so hot outside they literally had to cool down the pool water. Here we were, in the Persian Gulf, as the coalition prepared for war. Without a camera.

It did show up the next day, but we were not allowed to shoot anything without our government escort. One day passed, then another. I was getting nervous. This was a big assignment, and so far I had zilch.

But I was learning a bit more about the country. The Bahraini currency was the most powerful I had ever seen. One Bahraini dinar was worth well over US$3. The economy was based on offshore banking and finance with some tourism, in better times, mixed in. For many years the British had control in the region, but in 1971 Bahrain had declared its independence.

That former British influence had an upside. Besides the roundabouts and even a fish-and-chip shop, you could buy beer there. It was the only one of the Arab Emirates that imported beer, if you could afford it. One beer, which you could find only in the hotel lounge or in the mini fridge in your room, was about $15 Canadian. That was one expensive frosty one.

The other thing about Bahrain was that most of the people working there were from somewhere else. They were from India or Pakistan or the Philippines, hired by the rich of Bahrain to do the jobs they did not want to do. Foreigners, who outnumbered Bahrainis by close to two to one, did most of the work.

Tipping was strictly forbidden. In lieu of tipping everything had a 15 per cent service charge. Once a month the hotel we were staying in named their “employee of the month,” who received a bonus of two dinars. Somebody was making a lot of money and it wasn’t the employees. In our hotel, the staff all lived in a compound out back that was surrounded by a fence with barbed wire. They would move from the compound to the hotel and back again. It did not take long to figure out this was not a democracy—or anything close to it. Here foreign workers had no real rights and not much of a life either, just work and a bed.

We had to take cabs everywhere. The cab from the airport was five dinars. I spoke with an American in the lobby who told us we paid too much. If the cabbies think they can get away with it, he said, they will charge you as much as they can, especially with all the foreign troops in town, but no cab ride should be more than half a dinar. He said if you do not barter with them, they will not respect you. Lesson learned.

I made contact with the Canadian Navy and needed to meet with them, so I called a taxi. Before we left I asked the driver, “How much?” “Five dinars,” he replied. “That’s not a fair price,” I said, starting to get out of the cab. “But for you my friend, just half a dinar,” came the quick response. I agreed, but he would have to wait and bring me back. Even getting a cab quickly was becoming a challenge. Hold ’em while you got ’em. Lesson number two.

The Navy was helping smooth things out with Bahraini authorities. We still didn’t have permission to videotape on land. The Bahrainis had no control over what we taped on Canadian warships, but our Navy did. Back when I had first proposed going, Canadian military authorities wanted to dog-tag us—to essentially enlist us and fly us over on military aircraft. It meant they would have complete control over what we shot and what we said. We said, “No thanks.”

I had no interest in becoming a propaganda arm of the Canadian military. We had maintained our independence, but between the military and the Bahraini Ministry of Information, there was precious little real information to be had. It was becoming a very frustrating, hot experience, enough to drive a man to drink. And that cold Bahraini beer was financially out of reach.

I was lamenting that very fact to my new friend the cab driver when, in a moment of mutual respect, he proposed I meet him outside the front of the hotel later that evening. When I did, he took me to the back of the hotel where another cab was waiting. In the trunk was a case of Löwenbräu beer. He asked for US$40. I countered with $30 and we settled on $35. Thanks to my new friends, I had finally accomplished something.

The next morning, more success. A young fellow dressed in traditional Arabic attire appeared and declared he was our escort. Standing there in his flowing white linen, he didn’t appear to be more than sixteen years old. And he was driving a powerful two-door, super-charged Mustang, not exactly the perfect vehicle to be lugging around two big Canadian guys with half a ton of camera gear. I didn’t care, though—we were shooting!

We took shots of the bustle of the city, and then, travelling at well over 160 kilometres an hour, our young friend zoomed us out to the desert, where we were surrounded by camels and oil derricks. In the city, nobody would speak on camera; off camera, Bahrainis told me they were nervous. A small island nation joined to Saudi Arabia by causeway, Bahrain’s fear was that if Saddam Hussein could march into Kuwait, what or who would stop him if he decided Bahrain was next?

The Americans would stop him, of course, and the coalition. They had arrived with their fleet of warships, and it seemed they had almost taken over the city. They were everywhere. The Canadian military was setting up shop too, but our ships weren’t allowed in the harbour. We were told they had to anchor several kilometres offshore because they were carrying fuel and explosives. Why the Americans didn’t have to do the same is another story, but I will save that for later. Our Canadian forces were where our real story was.

It was hard to believe, but there I was, having my picture taken in the middle of the biggest world conflict of the day. This was about as smooth as the Persian Gulf got. The Protecteur is behind me.

There were three Canadian ships: HMCS Protecteur, HMCS Athabaskan and HMCS Terra Nova. The Terra Nova and the Athabaskan were frigates, already out in the Gulf on patrol. To get to the supply ship Protecteur, which was anchored outside the harbour, we would have to take a water taxi, which was sort of like a gigantic cork rolling and bobbing on the water. It reminded me of those little one-man tugs you saw pushing logs around off the coast of British Columbia just like on The Beachcombers (if you are old enough to remember that great Canadian show!).

I am not a good sea person. This was not a seagoing vessel. It was designed to move people around the harbour, not for sailing a couple of kilometres offshore. The Persian Gulf can get rough—we learned that soon enough. Like an ant crawling through tall grass, we moved precariously through the fleet of warships tied up everywhere in the harbour.

On board were just me and Mark and two crew. The captain barely spoke. His assistant, who was from Bhopal, India, spoke English very well. During the ride out he told me he worked on the boat twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. He slept on the small wooden bench in the cabin. He had one pair of flip-flops, two pairs of pants and two shirts. He cooked and ate on the boat, with just a couple of pots and pans. Twice a year they flew him back to India for a week to see his wife and six children. The rest of his life, he was on this boat. He seemed resigned to it all. These two gentlemen and their bobbing cork would become our only means of getting to and from HMCS Protecteur. Every trip would be an adventure.

And today it was rough. Once we’d cleared the harbour, the swells kept getting bigger and bigger. A floating dock was attached to the Protecteur, at the time our Navy’s largest service and fuel resupply vessel, with a large flight hangar housing the Sikorsky Sea King helicopter on its stern.

As we approached in the swells, I could see getting on that dock was going to be more than a challenge. It would mean risking our lives. At one point the dock was a good three metres above our heads, then below us, then above. We had to time it perfectly to transfer the gear and then ourselves during that brief moment when both our boat and the dock were level. One slipped step and you could lose your leg—or worse. Slowly, slowly, we timed each transfer, then counted all our fingers and toes.

On board, the crew was excited for our arrival. Like a little piece of home, the boys from Newfoundland CBC’s Here & Now had come all the way to the Persian Gulf to see them. They were a great bunch, eager for news from home, and whenever we were on board they couldn’t do enough for us.

The plan was to lift off the back of the Protecteur and fly out to the Athabaskan, which was patrolling off the coast of Kuwait. We would land on the back of it and shoot them on patrol, perhaps even videotape a practice attack drill. No sweat. Well, as it turned out, a lot of sweat. It was hot enough on deck. In the chopper, where we wore flight suits, helmets and water-flotation gear, it was stifling at just shy of 50°C.

The Sea King was well maintained but old. We did a little rehearsal drill about ditching in the water. I did not want that to happen. Earlier, looking over the side of the ship, I’d seen massive sea snakes, lots of them, swimming just under the surface.

When we lifted off there was a big swell, but nothing too serious. By the time HMCS Athabaskan came into sight, however, it had become extremely rough. It was so rough the Sea King couldn’t get onto the deck without help. Our crew dropped a grapple cable with a claw on the end. Below us, the deck crew attached it to a large steel ball on the stern, and we were literally winched down to the surface of the ship, hitting it with a not insignificant thud. And there we were, on a Canadian warship a hundred kilometres off the coast of Kuwait.

My adrenaline was pumping and we were eager to get started, but there was a problem. The water was now so rough we could barely stand up. We attempted to do an interview, but it proved impossible. And I was starting to feel queasy. Everybody was. It was decided, as it was getting late, that we should bunk down for the night. We followed a crew member down a steep set of stairs then to the back. Again, down and to the back, and then again. I thought, “If this keeps up, we’ll be underneath this damn ship.”

Finally, he pointed to a row of bunks and said I was up on top. I rolled into the bunk, lying on my back, with a few centimetres between the tip of my nose and a big steam pipe. A curtain hung on my right. A voice on the other side said, “How’s it going?” After I said hello. the voice continued. “Hey man, I’m from the operations room. I don’t want to scare you or nothin’, but there are twice as many Iraqi planes in the air today as yesterday, and we don’t know where they’re coming from.”

For the first time on this surreal trip, I thought, “Okay, now you’ve really got yourself in the middle of something—something serious.” It was a scary thought, one the crew was no doubt having every day.

By morning the seas had calmed down. We spoke with many members of the crew, and not only people from Newfoundland. I learned that the province with the second-highest number of people in the Navy was Saskatchewan, the one province or territory farthest from the ocean! It seemed those wide-open fields were not unlike looking out over the water. But most of the young people here, and many were very young, called Newfoundland home.

I remember interviewing one nineteen-year-old from Carbonear, Newfoundland, out on the deck. He said, “Mom always told me that as soon as I signed up, something was going to happen, and sure enough, it did.” But mostly they seemed resigned to their situation, and happy to be part of it all. They did not seem to know a lot, or care, about what could be coming. I often heard, “I’m here on a need-to-know basis. What I don’t need to know, I don’t care about.”

What they did care about was enforcing the blockade. Every day they contacted ships, everything from large tankers to small Arab fishing vessels called dhows moving through the zone. If they didn’t like the radio response or if something seemed suspicious, an armed boarding team was dispatched.

And although it would still be close to two months before the coalition was ready to start pushing the Iraqi army out of Kuwait, the possibility of attack by Saddam Hussein’s forces was very real. So they practised, defending against a mock attack. During one drill, the big ship was slicing through the water at better than twenty-five knots while crews scrambled to get to stations. It was very realistic and more than a little unnerving.

But on October 31, there was time for a little fun. On our way back to the Protecteur from the Athabaskan, a giant pumpkin shipped from Canada was loaded into the cargo bay of the Sea King, with dozens of glow sticks packed inside. It was massive and must have weighed at least a hundred kilos. With the cargo bay open and the giant pumpkin smiling out the door, we lifted off, just after dark. The idea was to give the crew of HMCS Terra Nova a little visual treat. As we circled the warship, that huge toothy grin was glowing for those on deck to see, as they waved back to us from the high seas of the Persian Gulf.

Over the next week or so we taped Christmas greetings to be used during the holidays and for families back home, greetings from cooks and officers alike, all serving their country. We shot a little music video for a song written by one Newfoundland crew member who sang about being so far away from home. I even met one fellow from my hometown—Rob Lawrence from Wabush, Labrador. Unbelievable.

The day before we left, a Canadian officer invited me for a drink in the hotel lounge. I sat next to a Saudi businessman who had driven over the causeway because he had an appetite for gin, strictly forbidden back in the kingdom. He seemed very relaxed about the whole Iraqi situation, even smug. He said the Americans would take care of it because they wanted Saudi oil. He drank three triple gins while I sat beside him.

Across the room a British soldier was making a lot of noise, even banging his head into the wall. Quite drunk, he told me he was a paratrooper. He kept saying over and over, “Mate, do you know what my life expectancy is when I hit the ground? About six bloody hours!” He wasn’t much older than me. The whole experience left me sad and a little depressed.

Our time was up. Soon enough the coalition would be lighting up Baghdad “like a Christmas tree.” I thought about that British soldier on my trip all the way home, which included an overnight stay in London.

Cue the “It’s a Small World (After All)” theme again. I had just walked into a pub in Piccadilly Circus to get some supper and was waiting for a pint at the bar when I heard someone shout, “Hey Reg!” Standing at the bar just down from me was a fellow I knew from Brigus, Newfoundland, where Pam and I had married. Unbelievable.

We knew we had great material, and the network couldn’t get enough of it. We rolled it out in the weeks leading up to Christmas, and I like to think it not only gave Newfoundlanders and Canadians a sense of what our young men and women were doing in the Persian Gulf, but helped bring them a little closer to home for the holidays.

By January 16, 1991, the American-led coalition began pounding Baghdad, live on television around the world. CNN had somehow managed to get a cable link hard-wired into the Iraqi capital. Once the ground campaign began, it did not take long—about a hundred hours in the desert—to push Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, but the cost was enormous. Two years after the war a study put the cost at over US$670 billion, with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Gulf states picking up some of the tab, but the Americans shouldering most of it. The coalition lost over 290 soldiers, the British 47. I have often wondered if that British paratrooper in Bahrain was one of them. Thirteen journalists also lost their lives covering Operation Desert Storm; two more were wounded and two are still listed as missing.

And here’s the thing. Remember the young girl appearing before the US congressional committee, with tears in her eyes, to talk about seeing babies ripped from incubators by Iraqi troops? To conceal her identity, Nayirah was the only name they gave her. What they didn’t say was that she was a member of Kuwaiti royalty. Her last name was al-Sabah. Her father, Saud al-Sabah, was the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington. He sat unidentified in the room with her that morning as she wept for the cameras.

In 1992, after the war was over, Amnesty International, along with other organizations, conducted a thorough investigation. They interviewed doctors and nurses on the ground in Kuwaiti hospitals across the country. They could not document a single case of babies being ripped from incubators. It did not happen. The girl’s entire testimony—and, depending on how you chose to look at it, the war that ensued—may have been orchestrated by an American public relations firm hired by the Kuwaiti government.

The truth may set you free, but in this case, a massive lie led to war. Talk about Wag the Dog. In the movie, released in 1997, a spin doctor and a Hollywood producer fake a war. In this case the war was real—it was just the motivation to get the American people on side that was faked.