Break Point by Matthew Ollerton

Author:Matthew Ollerton
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Blink Publishing
Published: 2019-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

13

THE ROAD TO BAGHDAD

My first job in Iraq was working as security for American κ ‘ Ü network ABC News. Flying into Jordan, I wasn’t worried about what I might have got myself into, I was overwhelmed with excitement at being back in the mix again.

When I reached the Jordan–Iraq border, an ex-SAS guy I knew called Ben was there to pick me up. He explained that he had some weapons buried in a cache across the border, and that as soon as we got into Iraq, we’d collect them. I was rubbing my hands together, thinking, ‘I cannot wait to get back on the tools!’

Shortly after crossing into Iraq, we came to a halt and Ben shot off to pick up the weapons. When he returned, he passed me this tiny little Tokarev pistol. It was so small, I could hardly get my finger in the trigger guard. It looked like the kind of thing a female Bond villain would keep hidden in her garter, except it didn’t have a mother-of-pearl handle, it had a rusty metal one.

I said to Ben, ‘Are you taking the piss?’

‘Don’t worry about it, mate, there’s not much threat about at the moment…’

I got back in the vehicle, looked at this gun and thought, ‘This is pathetic…’ My dreams were shattered. I was supposed to be rear protection on the transit, but I would have been better off with a sack full of rocks.

As soon as we got to Baghdad, we started our security detail for ABC. This usually involved ferrying them around the city, mostly in ones and twos. It was only a few months after the country had been invaded and Saddam Hussein’s statue had been toppled in Firdos Square, so it was quite tense in Baghdad at the time. One day, a massive explosion went off near our compound. We jumped straight in our vehicles and soon came upon a building that had been reduced to a smouldering pile of rubble. The building had been the Canal Hotel, which the United Nations used as its headquarters in Iraq. We later learned that a 500-pound bomb had been delivered in a cement truck.

We were the first people on the scene and found a handful of people trapped under the rubble, one of whom turned out to be a Brazilian diplomat called Sergio Vieira de Mello. We tried to dig him out, but he died at the scene. At least 22 people died in that explosion, including a British citizen.

Because we arrived before the US military, we were taken into the inner cordon, where I started taking photos of the devastation. I didn’t think anything more of it until later that night when one of the ABC journalists came to see me and asked to see my pictures. I did a deal with Associated Press and the pictures were in newspapers and on websites all over the world.

I should have got a lot more than the $2,000 Associated Press paid me, but it was enough to buy myself a laptop on the black market.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.