Reuters World
Life on the Front Line
By Steve Clarke
The Reuters Foundation has helped train journalists from all over the globe in news writing. But it does more -course participants now get tips on how to survive in war-zones.
Steve Clarke went to see for himself.
The chatter of automatic rifle fire rings out across a damp woodland clearing and fourteen cold and wet civilians throw themselves into the mud as a mortar lands to their left. Another day at the frontline? No - this is rural Hampshire in Southern England and the members of the Reuters Foundation news-writing course are being given a taste of war.
All week this collection of working journalists have been polishing their news writing skills, the latest of nearly 2,500 non-Reuters journalists worldwide who have benefited from the Foundation's regular courses. But today is something different; they are on a so-called hostile environment course run by a group of ex British Royal Marines under the name of Centurion.
Many full time Reuters journalists have attended the course and today this international group, drawn from India, Mexico, Tajikistan, Zambia and points in between, are getting their own taste of life in a war zone - and learning how to survive it.
Some have already witnessed the real thing. Ismail Khan reports from the Peshawar bureau of Pakistan's daily The News International and is also a Reuters freelance correspondent. His work has taken him into neighbouring Afghanistan to witness rival groups exchanging fire.
"One incident I remember, I was standing close to a presidential palace," he says. "All of a sudden everyone started running away and I was surprised. Then I realised that planes were coming and bombing the area. I was with a photographer and we started running. It was very scary."
Bisera Lusic helped cover the war in the Balkans for Croatia's second biggest daily paper. "I was going to towns that had been bombed," she recalls, "and you didn't know where it was safe to go so you usually relied on following other journalists. Sometimes it was just a question of keeping your fingers crossed, getting in the car and driving very fast."
The staff at Centurion may acknowledge the luck factor in survival but they prefer to augment that with knowledge and an ability to read dangerous situations and appreciate just how fraught they really are.
"I'm not here to make them bullet proof," says John Seward (right), the tall ex Royal Marine running today's course, "I'm here to give them a general awareness, but it boils down to them getting the feel of the ground when they're out there. Ultimately it's that gut feeling the hairs on the back of your neck and the question, 'Do I walk down that road?"
In the leafy grounds of the mansion where Centurion runs its courses the group is being given observation training, scanning the distant woodland for concealed armaments and booby traps. That's followed by a lecture on ordnance - namely anything that explodes. Everyone jumps as a dummy hand grenade is set off. Then comes advice on what to do if one is thrown at you. Don't run is the surprising answer -you won't get anywhere in time.
Courses like this are now being run continually by Centurion as demand from news organisations has sky-rocketed.
John Seward believes a key reason is the changing nature of war itself. From long running global or inter-continental conflicts, they now tend to be local affairs. Journalists themselves often come in and out of the war zone as hostilities ebb and flow, rarely staying long.
"The big wars were always covered by a small group of correspondents," says Seward. "Now there seem to be so many little wars and the 'old and bold' correspondents are disappearing. A lot of the background knowledge they had isn't being passed on to the younger ones."
As the aftemoon session starts, the Reuters Foundation group of journalists looks relieved to be indoors for a classroom session after a morning dodging dummy bullets in the cold and wet. Weapons recognition begins with an AK-47 assault rifle being handed round.
Journalists may not carry guns but at least this group has now added some knowledge to their armoury. And, as some note, there is always the journalist's best weapon - a lively sense of humour.
"During the war in Croatia," says Bisera Lusic, "the journalists wore white T-shirts at the front line with a sign on the front that says 'don't shoot', and on the back 'press'. They're still wearing those T-shirts and they sell very well.
