AP World Magazine

Hostile Environment Training

By Paul Alexander

Los Angeles photographer Jean-Marc Bouju, center, has his helmet adjusted by Moscow correspondent Vladimir lsachenkov, left,before minesweeping exercises. At right is Islamabad photographer BK Bangash. (Photo: John McConnico).

Manila Chief of Bureau Paul Alexander has covered stories from Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Johannesburg and Singapore. He wrote the story about Centurion after attending the hostile environment course in March 2001. Alexander joined the AP in Colombus, Ohio in 1980, and transferred to the World Desk in 1985. He was posted to Sydney in 1990, and worked in the Warsaw and Seoul bureaus before being named Hanoi correspondent in 1998. He became Manila chief of bureau in 2001. Before joining the AP, Alexander worked for The Gleaner in Henderson, Ky.

Most journalists don't necessarily think much about looking for signals of booby traps on a forest trail, getting through a checkpoint manned by hostile soldiers or surviving an abduction.

But with hotspots festering around the world, terrorism showing no signs of abating and weaponry becoming more deadly and widespread, learning to deal with such challenges has become increasingly important to cover the story - and survive to get to the next assignment.

Over the last two years, some 300 AP reporters, photographers, cameramen and producers have undergone an intensive immersion course packed with the kind of information most of us never think we need until it's too late - like what to do if caught in the middle of a minefield or how to provide first-aid training that could save a life.

The five-day course run by former British soldiers, is called Centurion, a name that has quickly become part of the AP vocabulary. AP staff members attending Centurion usually go in groups of about 15, with colleagues roughly divided into thirds between AP News, Photos and APTN.

Lessons are taught on a British estate in Hampshire, England, where rolling green hills provide a deceptively idyllic setting. Courses have also been held in Virginia in the United States, and in Israel, where a special short course was held.

The purpose of the course is two-fold: risk assessment and first aid.

"The idea is that every situation has to be evaluated on its own merits," Zimbabwe correspondent Angus Shaw said. "No hard and fast rules apply."

The lessons are all brought home with lots of hands-on demonstrations and simulations that even the most battle-hardened veterans say are as valuable as they can be disturbing.

"I think the most memorable aspect of the course was how the organizers created extremely realistic situations for the practices," said Moscow photographer Mikhail Metzel. "You knew it was a course, but it felt very much like real life."

Consider the morning we spent at the firing range, watching as pistols, automatic rifles and machine guns tore through bricks, concrete blocks, doors and railroad ties, demonstrating the destructive capacity of each weapon. A thick flak vest with heavy ceramic plates stopped some types of ammunition but was no match for the more potent stuff, like an armor-piercing round that can easily slice through the "hardened" land Rovers we used in Bosnia.

After coming under fire briefly in both Somalia and Bosnia, it was a sobering experience to see what could have happened if I had been a little less lucky and to learn that the "snap" I heard a couple of times was a bullet causing a mini-sonic boom far too close for comfort.

"The most important thing for me is that the course gave us something to think about when we're working in a dangerous place, like those examples of how bullets go through objects," said Indonesia photographer Dita Alangkara, who also experienced snow for the first time that day.

The lesson had a practical impact just weeks later when I saw photos and footage from my Manila staffers of a clash during a hostage crisis in the southern Philippines. I called and told them that standing up might provide a better angle for shooting pictures, but the reason the soldiers in their images were hugging the ground was to become harder-to-hit targets and they should follow suit.

One of our first lessons was how to spot hazards by looking for things that don't belong or being conscious of efforts to take your eyes away from something. We were tested by using our naked eyes and binoculars to find 12 dangerous objects like landmines, rifles and a camouflaged mannequin in a bush-lined open field. I picked out six, which was about average.

We also learned to lower our own visibility. That can be as simple as moving from the sun to the shade or avoiding brightly coloured clothing.

Things got tougher, like trying to spot signs of booby traps along a muddy trail. They had to be natural objects and set up unnaturally at the same time, like a leaf pierced by a twig in two places or a mound of pebbles. We got a quick taste of the famed British mud during a controlled blast meant to simulate a land mine.

The instructors also provided sobering statistics:

- An estimated 89 million land mines remain unrecovered from conflicts around the world killing or wounding 500 people every week, 90 percent of them noncombatants.

- Most mines are buried about two inches below the surface.

- Clearing 20 percent of the 10 million mines in Afghanistan at the current rate would take 4,200 years.

We saw video of amputees and of journalists being wounded. We handled disarmed mines with nicknames like the "pate tin", the "Russian black widow" and the "Yugoslav beer bottle." We saw bounding mines that spring up about chest-high to kill more efficiently and improvised exploding devices made mostly from parts you could buy at any electronics store.

Going to be in a place where mines are possible? Perhaps the best purchase is a simple barbecue skewer. But don't plan on hurrying; it can take hours to travel a few feet as you gently probe a few inches at a time.

"The instruction on probing your way out of a minefield had a big emotional impact on me," said Moscow correspondent Jim Heintz, who has gone on foot through areas of Kosovo that could have been mined. "Even though I knew it was just a demonstration, it gave me the cold sweats. What a laborious, nerve-wracking thing that would be in real life. But at least it's better than standing there paralysed by fear and indecision.

Over the next few days, we also were given lessons in:

Surviving a kidnapping: Keep your morale up and keep a low profile by cooperating and not resisting to avoid being a target for beatings or other punishment.

Basic navigation: We used a compass and a grid reference to get from one point to another, including how to get around obstacles since a straight-line path isn't always possible. (This included an amusing demonstration of how easy it is to get disorientated when the instructors pointed out a target 100 yards away, then blindfolded us and watched as we wandered around the low hills.)

Getting through a checkpoint: Be as relaxed as possible, keep your story simple and make sure everyone knows it. Be prepared to be asked for a bribe. Liquor and cigarettes are good for this purpose.

Covering riots: Stay away from petrol bomb throwers; one almost invariably will explode prematurely. Wear solid shoes and cotton clothes, not manmade fabrics that melt and stick to your skin. A T-shirt made of Nomex, the same material race-car drivers wear in case of fire, is best. Keep an eye out for escape routs. Consider shin guards and elbow and knee pads that can be worn unobtrusively under clothing. A pair of swimming goggles and a face-mask may be better than a gas mask. It's always best to travel in pairs.

If you're staying somewhere that security is a problem: Keep a bag packed with the bare essentials that you can grab and run. Use bars or other devices to either block or at least slow entry to your room to buy time to escape.

Every day, there was a first aid lesson based on two critical facts: 39 percent of the civilians who die from a medical emergency do so before reaching the hospital. So your primary job is to keep them alive until then. Of those who die later, the primary killer is a blocked airway. It takes only three to four minutes before brain damage occurs. If someone is unconscious, get their chin up and head back, then make sure the mouth and throat are clear.

We were taught how to use poles, straps, blankets or even a large stick to make a stretcher to help carry someone out of danger. We also learned how to deal with wounds, especially gunshots, with everything from compression bandages to tourniquets.

Our test on this came with Centurion workers who dressed and acted as casualties, some squirting what looked like blood. I did poorly while dealing with a man with broken glass jutting from an arm wound. I didn't elevate it to slow the flow of blood and didn't clear away the broken bottle, so when I accidentally dropped his arm once, it fell back on the glass.

One of the final lessons came in the psychological after-effects of being in bad situations. While post-traumatic stress disorder is a relatively new tag, the condition dates back to Homer and Ulysses, according to our instructor, Dr. Bo Mills.

Some stress is good because it can improve performance, but too much can lead to burnout, with such symptoms as disorientation, anger, depression and withdrawal. Mills said it is important to find ways to deal with stress, including regular social support and exercise, a sense of humour and the ability to talk with someone about the experience, such as a counsellor.

When the course was over the main complaint was that five days was too short a time; There were suggestions for additional lessons in dealing with flooding and other water disasters, driving under hazardous conditions, and learning a little self-defense.

My classmates and I were unanimous that the course had been very useful, thought he general reactions varied from a sense that they were happy to be better prepared, to being more paranoid now that they better understood the risks that some already have been taking.

"For me it's not a question of carefulness so much as intelligence," Heintz said. "I'm not the cowboy type and my natural inclination for carefulness an sometimes mutate into being overcautious. With an improved sense of how to recognize and assess possible dangers, I think I can be more focused.

"The worry level will probably be the same. What will be different is a sense of when and where to worry and what to be worried about."