Going to the Wars

420 Pages·2001·84 MB·English

by  Max

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'A superb account of journalists, soldiers and the experience
of modern battle, written by one of the greatest war
i r • y
reporters of our time.'
Robert Harris
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M AX H A S T I N GS
G O I NG TO
THE W A RS
M A C M I L L AN
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First published 2000 by Macmillan
an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Ltd
25 Eccleston Place, London SW1W 9NF
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.macmillan.co.uk
ISBN 0 333 77104 4
Copyright © Max Hastings 2000
The right of Max Hastings to be identified as the
author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to A. P. Watt on behalf of the
National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty
for permission to quote an extract from Rudyard Kipling's
Arithmetic on the Frontier.
Extract from 'A Cock-Eyed Optimist', words and music by Richard
Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, copyright © 1949, Williamson
Music International, USA, reproduced by permission of EMI Music
Publishing Ltd, London WC2H 0EA.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written
permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized
act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal
prosecution and civil claims for damages.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library.
Typeset by SetSystems Ltd, Saffron Walden, Essex
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Mackays of Chatham pic, Chatham, Kent
FOR PENNY
BARRY FANTONI
'Things must be bad, amigo. I think I just saw Max Hastings.'
The Times, 6 June 1983.
Contents
List of Maps and Illustrations ix
Foreword xi
1 Tarnished Wings i
2 Street Apprentice 28
3 A Taxi to Biafra 5 5
4 Shooting \ietnam 69
5 Ticket to Firebase Six 96
6 Yom Kippur 120
7 Israel's Victory 141
8 Bush War 170
9 Goodbye to Da Nang 190
10 The Fall of Saigon 210
11 Savimbi's Angola 234
12 Yom 249
13 Voyage to the South Atlantic 269
14 On the Shore 302
15 Mount Kent 325
16 Walking to Stanley 352
Postscript 380
Index 389
List of Maps and Illustrations
Maps
South East Asia 75
The Yom Kippur War: southern front 122
The Yom Kippur War: northern front 123
Rhodesia 173
The Falklands: the two-pronged attack 305
Section One
Macdonald Hastings as a war correspondent in Normandy
1944
The author at seventeen with his Parachute Regiment 'stick'
The author aboard a Royal Navy submarine {Evening
Standard)
Carnage in Ulster, 1969 CLondon Express)
The author with a welcome beer, Biafra, January 1970
Victims of Biafra's agony
Interviewing an American colonel in Cambodia, 1970
Seconds later, we found ourselves scuttling for cover
Men of the 2/31st Infantry in Vietnam's Hep Due Valley,
June 1972
The scene after most of the company took to the river
Guest of a village chieftain in the Arabian Gulf, 1971
IX
LIST OF MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS
The author with officers of the Deccan Horse outside their
mess in north-west India (Evening Standard)
Recording a commentary tape for BBC TV's 24 Hours
Yom Kippur: the Israeli advance towards Damascus, 1973
(Camera Press)
A dramatic scene during Israel's agony on the Golan Heights
in October 1973 (Harmsworth Photo Library)
The moment of Israel's triumph (Harmsworth Photo Library)
Section Two
Rhodesia: the would-be hunter in 1973
Angola, 1976: some of Savimbi's men
A street scene in Dalat
Vietnamese refugees on the road to Saigon fleeing before the
communist advance
The American Embassy compound on the final afternoon
The author, feeling extremely frightened
Safe out of Saigon aboard the US carrier Okinawa
The Falklands, 19S2: the stricken frigate Antelope
Setting off on the yomp from Teal Inlet with 45 Commando
(Nicholas van der Bijl)
Typing a dispatch at San Carlos
Lt.-Col. Michael Rose, commanding 22 SAS
Captain Jeremy Larken of Fearless
The dashing Lt.-Col. Nick Vaux (Roger Ryan)
My picture of the Argentine TV team
The Argentines' picture of the author
Defeat: some of the thousands of Argentine prisoners
Armchair correspondent, Kuwait 1991
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Foreword
SOLDIERS AND JOURNALISTS make uneasy bedfellows. Mem-
bers of any decent army, navy or air force are formed in a
tradition of duty, discipline, honour, teamwork, sacrifice. Jour-
nalists are individualists, often even anarchists. Whoever heard
of a successful reporter respectful of regulations and hierarchies?
To the eye of your average regimental officer, correspondents
are irresponsible, disloyal, undisciplined. Soldiers have to see
things through to the end. Journalists almost never do. After
the Falklands War, Captain Jeremy Black, RN, vented his
disgust about the selfishness of the reporters he carried on his
own ship, the carrier Invincible. Soldiers and sailors of all
nationalities have echoed his sentiments through the ages.
Kitchener's pithy remark about drunken swabs has passed into
Fleet Street legend. The commanding officer of 2 Para, with
whom I marched to the edge of Port Stanley in 1982 before
the unit was ordered to halt and I went on alone in pursuit of
a scoop, said afterwards that he would never take me on an
operation again, because he thought my behaviour so irrespon-
sible. I wasn't too impressed with him either.
Yet over the years, on battlefields all over the world, I have
enjoyed encounters and made friendships with soldiers and
sailors that I cherish, and which I think some of them, too,
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