The Daily Telegraph

Fully prepared to take the flak

By Janie Lawrence

We are in a war zone and our colleagues have inadvertently stumbled into a minefield. When we find them, all three are seriously injured, their screams deafening. In urgent need of first aid, they need to be moved as swiftly as possible to their nearby Land Rover and transported to safety. It is also imperative that, in the process, we don't detonate any further mines.

We improvise stretchers, we bandage the wounded. More by luck than design, we narrowly avoid blowing ourselves to smithereens and after what seems a chaotic eternity, we are informed that a helicopter is on its way.

Into battle: Janie Lawrence puts her training to use as she learns about survival techniques in a hostile environment. (pictures: Martin Pope) Thankfully, the above scenario is played out not in any of the world's current hot-spots but in the safety of the muddy Hampshire countryside. That any one of the participants might one day find themselves in such a situation for real is the reason we are here. When we are debriefed, it is by a member of Centurion, a company staffed by former Marines, which is in the business of training everyone from journalists through to Amnesty International workers - people whose employment takes them to hostile environments.

"What was the main thing those casualties needed to fear?" barks an instructor. Given the overall Dad's Army antics of our so-called rescue mission, it seems fair to assume the answer is us. Among our group of 13, the previous first-hand knowledge of hostile environments ranges from zero through to those television crews of whom it is simpler to ask where they haven't been. Shamefully, not one of us has thought to check whether the Land Rover keys are still in the ignition (they are): we could have simply reversed it to the casualties.

Subsequently, vast amounts of time have been spent in what can only be described as Corporal Jones behaviour at its finest. Still, despite some monumental faffing around, were it a genuine situation, every "casualty" has emerged with a sporting chance of survival. An impressive result, since it transpired on day one that only two of us possessed the most rudimentary first-aid skills, while several others volunteered Casualty as their main source medical knowledge.

Paul Rees, who founded Centurion six years ago says that one of the primary aims of the course is to kick-start in us the very quality that has patently been in short supply. "A lot of you haven't needed to use common sense before," he says. "What we do here - whether you're experienced or know nothing - is improve your knowledge by 100 per cent. I would be foolhardy to say you're now bullet-proof, because you never know what's round the corner. Martin Bell was experienced, but he still got injured."

To this end we have spent hours "hitting the deck" to avoid a mortar attack; learning that is best not to crawl straight towards the direction of rifle fire (glaringly obvious afterwards, not quite so during); and discovering that negotiating one's way out of a minefield be undertaken with a barbecue skewer (trust me). By far the most nightmarish point has been an afternoon during which we have been dragged from a car kidnapped with drawstring hooded sacks cutting into our necks and thrown face down on to the ground. It was sufficiently terryfing for those of us gasping from a 25-a-day ciggie habit, excruciating for the two severve asthmatics, who had to be pulled out of the exercise.

The Freedom Forum, a media foundation, estimates that 40 journalists (none British) were killed in the line of duty in 1999. Little wonder that the BBC now insists that all of its personnel-including engineers and managers-undergo training before they are sent anywhere hairy. Other broadcasters are beginning to catch up. The Rory Peck Trust, established in memory of Peck, a freelance camerman who was shot dead in Moscow in 1993, offers international bursaries for both print and broadcasting freelances. With neither the financial resources nor the back-up of an official organisation, freelances often expose themselves to more danger in order to get the story.

As increasing numbers of women have begun to work in dangerous areas, female attendance on the course has jumped from 10 per cent to 40 per cent. All but the most stridently politically correct will be unsurprised to learn that, in some areas, there were differences. Both myself and Michelle Clifford, a Sky News reporter, are fully paid-up members of the "wind window down and ask" school of map reading and haven't seen a compass since our Brownie days.

Equally, we were at a distinct disadvantage when it came to distinguishing between an Uzi and an AK47. Of course, there wasn't one male participant who upon being handed a Kalashnikov didn't, as if guided by some atavistic DNA, involuntarily puff out his chest and practise taking aim. And in general, men could be relied upon to come up with more interesting interpretations of the word "bandage". Assessing the relative merits of flak jackets, the same men who joked that a woman's priority would be based on whether it made her look fat conceded that we were generally jolly useful to have around at a border check point.

Rees is reluctant to be drawn on the potential advantages or otherwise of female journalists in war zones "Its less to do with any gender divide than with experience," he says. "In some countries, women may get better results and be more successful at defusing a situation in which a guy may cause that extra bit of hassle. And there are instances where women are mentally stronger."

He cites many instances of Centurion course graduates who have had reason to believe that their training saved their lives. World Service reporter Shamsa Abdullah, who was kidnapped in her native Somalia only weeks after attending the course publicly stated that. in textbook fashion, she had somehow managed to remain calm throughout her captivity.

With four of my group shortly bound for Russian republics and Kosovo, it was left to Sky editor Colin Hamilton to sum up the feelings of the most experienced "I've been to Sarajevo and Sierra Leone," he says. "Before now, there was definitely an element of 'ignorance is bliss'. After this I'm not sure I ever want to leave the office again; I don't know how I've survived until now.