Reuters Foundation
How to be a real survivor
A bomb explodes as the van turns the corner. Masked gunmen burst from the bushes and swarm over the vehicle. Amid gunshots and screaming the journalists inside are dragged out and thrown to the floor. The soldiers are shouting: "Get out of the f***ing van. Get onto the f***ing floor," as one hostage pleads with them. "We are only journalists," he says, "we are only journalists."
Thick sacks are tied over their heads and, unable to see or breathe properly, they are marched to a field in silence and pushed onto the floor. Their possessions are taken and they are left to wonder whether they will be set free - or if they will be tortured and shot.
But these are not the war-torn streets of Sierra Leone, Colombia or Sri Lanka. We are in Hampshire. The guns and bombs are not real, and the soldiers are staff from Centurion Risk Assessment Services.
The ambush resembles one in Sierra Leone in which Reuters journalist Kurt Schork was killed, along with cameraman Miguel Gil Moreno, a year ago. Their deaths prompted the Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Reuters, to pay for 12 journalists who work in dangerous countries around the world to be given survival training.
"Those running the course impress upon their students that they might be able to limit damage to themselves or colleagues, or avoid traps, but they cannot stop bullets or make any war zone safe.
Geert Linnebank, editor-in-chief of Reuters, speaks of the shock that still reverberates around the Reuters office since Schork and Gil Moreno's death last year. This is an attempt, he says, to learn the lessons and do something about it. "Kurt Schork often told us how much he admired and respected the local journalists," he says, "the ones whose own country it was that was being torn apart by civil war. The ones who didn't enjoy the protection of a big foreign power, the ones who didn't have the option of pulling out when the ground got too hot. 'It is those guys who are the real heroes,' he would say, 'not us with our travellers' cheques, our foreign passport and our open ticket out.' "It is precisely for those journalists that the Reuters Foundation agreed to fund and sponsor the Centurion Hostile Environment Training programme.
I can't think of a more fitting tribute to Kurt and the other journalists who have died on the job."
It is hard to understand at first, standing in a sunny field in Hampshire, how the participants could be frightened - they must know it is an exercise. Chris Bell, an FHM staff writer who is covering the course and was included in the ambush, says: "Of course I wasn't frightened. I knew it wasn't real."
But the other participants are from countries where this happens every day - to family, friends and colleagues. Some of the 12 journalists on the course have already been ambushed and tortured. They know it may happen again.
Centurion's instructors are former Royal Marine Commandos with Special Forces backgrounds. They go to great lengths to make the situations seem real and they have been imaginative. "We can't replicate all the situations that you might go through - just the shock that you will feel," the participants are told. This is evident throughout the itinerary which includes sessions on weapons and ballistics, civil disturbances, mines and booby traps, post-traumatic stress disorder and emergency first aid on each of the five days.
Legs, eyes and ribs have all been plundered from abattoirs so that staff can stage a landmine attack. Loaves of bread soaked in blood are made to look like limb stumps. One staff member covered his face in blood and stuck a cow's eyeball to his cheek.
Another exercise involves a man accidentally hacking through his leg while chopping wood. It is genuinely frightening when the screaming man staggers out of a shed, knife in hand and blood soaking his trousers. Another member of staff is cleaning a gun when it goes off. The fake wound is realistic and gruesome. A woman then staggers around crying with a knife sticking out of her arm. The journalists are required to deal with the situation while the 'victim' makes it difficult by screaming, then passing out.
Those running the course impress upon their students that they might be able to limit damage to themselves or colleagues, or avoid traps, but they cannot stop bullets or make any war zone safe. Chief instructor Jon Seward says: "People know that despite having the course they are not bulletproof. But they are better off with it than without it." During a talk on how to try to stop a colleague from bleeding to death, Jonathan Samai from Sierra Leone asks: "What if there is a two-mile rebel ambush?"
"I've never seen a two-mile ambush," replies teacher Mick Haddy, sceptically.
"Believe me," says the journalist, "they do exist."
"Well, there are no answers," says Haddy. "You've got problems. You'd need 2,000 troops."
There is also a more practical reason why journalists are so keen to be trained. News crews are finding it increasingly hard to get insurance if they have had no formal survival training.
Fighting captors or trying to escape from a hostage situation is advised against. Be unnoticeable, they say. They call it "being the grey man". And there is additional advice for women - don't try to fight off rapists. "You may lose your dignity," they are told, "but you stay alive." If a captive does decide to escape, they are told to do it properly. "Are you prepared to carry out an act of violence against your takers?" they ask. "We don't have any doubt about that because we were soldiers. But you guys aren't."
"Centurion staff know that journalists are prepared to risk their lives for a story"
A section of the course deals with booby traps and landmines, and everyone troops onto a field to look for twigs, stones and leaves that are arranged suspiciously. There is a camera lying on a rock and the students walk past, but no one touches it. They are praised for this, and the teacher bends down to pick it up. There is a huge explosion and half the group fall over backwards.
We are told of a British news crew preparing to enter a house in former Yugoslavia. A pile of freshly cut wood was sitting in the doorway and they were advised not to move it because it looked suspicious. It was later found to have a grenade, with the pin pulled, balanced in it. It would have exploded.
In 1999 Schork wrote: "The thing is to work and not to get hurt. And when that is no longer possible it is time to get out." And there is a rule at Reuters which says: "No story is worth a human life." But Centurion staff know that journalists are prepared to risk their lives for a story. And because they are prepared to risk their lives, demand for training is increasing. The Reuters Foundation had 260 applications from journalists in 34 countries for this course. It is the first time they have run the training programme for a week. Centurion used to run it once a year - they now have courses back-to-back all year round.
Linnebank says: "The world isn't showing any more signs of becoming a better place, nor journalism a safer profession." And no one can escape what Schork called "the random chances of the battlefield".
Linnebank continues: "Those random chances will always be there, injuring journalists, taking their lives. We know we can't eliminate the risks altogether but we can and we must do all we can to push all the odds resolutely in our favour."
Yannis Behrakis survived the attack that killed his friends. He did a Centurion course with Schork in 1995 and he believes the training Centurion gave him saved his life. His instinct would have been to run away down the main road from the gunmen intent on killing all occupants in the car. Instead he remembered what he was taught, and got down, ran into the bush and covered his tracks. "I find it a crime to send people without any training to cover wars, to work in a battle zone," he says. Schork felt the same, and it was his concern for his colleagues that has prompted 12 journalists to receive training that, if they are lucky, might save their lives.
"I am sure if Kurt was here - wherever he is - it would be a good day for him," says Behrakis. "It would be a day of celebration."
