Combat Camera (3 page)

It was in this spirit of self-pity that I first learnt about the Media Operations Group, or MOG. I was sitting in the newsroom, festering, waiting for my next hourly bulletin. It was already written – it only took two minutes to put together – so I turned on the TV and started watching Sky News. It was showing a report from Iraq by a soldier called Lorna Ward, a Sky journalist who was also a captain in the Territorial Army, running something called the “Combat Camera Team”. I watched her creeping down a deserted street in Baghdad, clad in body armour and helmet, looking suitably anxious.

I looked up “Combat Camera Team” and found out all about the MOG. It was a TA unit based in London, always on the lookout for “media operators” with military experience – be they PR types or journalists. I took down the details.

The MOG was going to save me. There was no doubt about it.

I got a place on their selection weekend about two months later. They ran a handful every year at their Kingston upon Thames headquarters. It consisted of a series of written tests to assess our military knowledge, followed by a practical (taking questions at a mock news conference) and a couple of interviews. The Commanding Officer at the time, a blunt Ulsterman called Colonel Lucas, asked me the most important question first:

“Would you be prepared to deploy to somewhere like Afghanistan?”

“Absolutely, sir,” I said, mindlessly.

I hadn’t actually thought about the reality of an operational tour in Afghanistan. If Colonel Lucas had asked me to stick my head in a lion’s mouth, I would have given him exactly the same answer. I was desperate to make something happen with my life – my career was dying. I knew that if I was going to deploy to Afghanistan, they would want me for the Combat Camera Team – “news-gatherers” were in short supply in the MOG – but I hadn’t even begun to consider the risks involved. My priority was to get through the selection weekend – I would worry about everything else later.

Four days later I got a letter in the post, welcoming me into the MOG.

* * *

I didn’t volunteer for Afghanistan straight away. I wasn’t a complete idiot. I needed some time to feel my way back into the military. Just becoming a reservist was strange enough. As a regular, I’d always been a bit sniffy about the TA – surely
the army was a lifestyle choice rather than a weekend pursuit? How could you commit to a role that might require you to sacrifice your life, when you were doing something else five days a week?

I soon got over my prejudices. I was no longer some tragic underachiever in his mid-thirties who read the news for peanuts on local radio. Those days were over. I was now a part-time army officer in his mid-thirties who read the news for peanuts on local radio. In my mind, there was a huge difference. There was now a light at the end of the tunnel; I could see some sort of career path emerging. I didn’t know whether it would lead to Afghanistan necessarily, but at this stage I didn’t care. I was just glad to have some of my self-respect back.

I got laid off three months later. The station was merging with its sister site in Birmingham. There were three of us working in the newsroom in Nottingham, and one of us had to go. Unable to muster the enthusiasm needed to preserve my role, I got the P45.

I applied for a vacant position in the newsroom at BBC Radio Leicester, but it meant nothing. I was washing my hands of local radio. I’d spent most of the decade in that particular rut and now I wanted out. It was time to do something with my life, even if it meant possibly losing it. The MOG was always on the lookout for the next Combat Camera Team leader, so getting a tour lined up would not be a problem. The BBC application was just a token gesture, intended to fail, intended to hasten my lurch towards Afghanistan. I filled out the form during the last few days of my Smooth Radio notice period, killing time between bulletins. If I had any last-second doubts about volunteering for the Combat Camera Team, I could always tell myself that I’d tried – and failed – to find a normal job.

BBC HR got back to me a week later, just as I was girding my loins to make the big call to the MOG. Apparently, the Managing Editor at BBC Radio Leicester had been impressed with my application form. Was I available for an interview?

The BBC dream was still alive, it seemed. Without getting too carried away, I started to wonder whether a spell at BBC Radio Leicester might not in fact be a good idea. With my nose in the Corporation trough, I’d be in a decent position to sniff out a job at one of the national stations, broadcasting to the masses. I’d spent almost ten years in the hinterlands of local radio, fantasizing about a role in one of the newsrooms at Broadcasting House. Surely it was worth giving it one last shot, before riding off into the Afghan sunset?

* * *

I put the call to the MOG on hold, went to the interview at BBC Radio Leicester – and got the job. At the time, I thought the planets must have aligned. Only later did I learn that the Managing Editor – a bohemian turned journalist called Kate Squire – was specifically looking for a decent newsreader. The interview had gone quite badly, in fact. I had no idea, for instance, that so much emphasis would be placed on their
Breakfast Show
.

“Tell us about our
Breakfast Show
this morning,” Kate had said. “What did you like about it, and what would you have done to improve it?”

“I’m afraid I was quite busy this morning,” I said casually. “I didn’t get a chance to listen to it.”

I’ve since learnt that this sort of response is normally enough to derail a BBC interview completely, but obviously
the newsreading gods (and Kate) were smiling on me, and my slip-up was overlooked.

I enjoyed working at BBC Radio Leicester – my colleagues in the newsroom were a good crowd, and made me feel more than welcome – but it was always just a means to an end. I read the bulletins on the
Breakfast Show
for six months, familiarizing myself with the BBC way of doing things, and then I applied for a placement at one of the national stations. The man I had to impress was a newsreader himself, a minor celebrity called Alan Dedicoat (aka the “Voice of the Balls” on the National Lottery). He oversaw the BBC’s top stable of radio newsreaders, and had the power to lever me into one of the national slots for a trial run. If he liked my voice, I could be reading on BBC Radio Two within days. If not, I was going nowhere. I emailed him a demo bulletin on 7th July 2010 and awaited his reply.

He got back in touch a few days later with the following email:

Good morning!

Well, I’ve taken a listen… and sadly, it’s not quite what I’m after.

– It’s a bit “sung” for my liking

– And breathy in places

– Each story’s read in exactly the same way

– There’s virtually no attack at the start of each item; there’s nothing to make me listen up

– Frankly, it sounds a bit like you’re more concerned with how you sound than what you’re reading

– How high’s the volume on your headphones?

Sorry, but you did ask!

I was a little taken aback by this – I didn’t agree with any of his points – but at least he wasn’t sugar-coating it. I replied to that effect:

OK Alan, thanks for the honesty!

There wasn’t much else I could say. I was in no position to start arguing with him. He probably got dozens of demos from BBC staffers like me every week.

He replied five minutes later:

Well, it’s not a write-off, Christian – don’t think that. I’m just looking for something special. Listeners have just one shot at understanding the news. They don’t have the script or prior knowledge of the stories. We’re honour-bound to help them understand FIRST TIME. We shouldn’t “colour” it with the way we sound or how we say things.

My real problem is everyone wants to join us.

If you’re in town at all, call me and take me for coffee!

Of course I was never going to call him and take him for coffee. Perhaps I could’ve sent him another demo in six months, or approached somebody else of equal standing, but I just didn’t have the energy. Trying to crack Broadcasting House could take years, and what would I be doing in the meantime? The prospect of more local radio, decades of it, stretched out before me like a desolate plain, too depressing to contemplate.

I was a desperate journeyman, looking for a seismic shift, something to break up the long, unwanted trek. I needed a fault line to open up, something that would reveal a deeper, more
precious route. Something quicker, riskier and with greater reward.

I wasn’t about to leave the BBC altogether – that was my safety line. A brief descent was all that was required, then I’d haul myself back up to the surface, hopefully in a new and magical land.

As long as the ground didn’t swallow me whole, I’d be just fine.

Home Fires

Telling your family you’ve volunteered to go to Afghanistan is never an easy thing. Why would anybody in their right mind want to go there? Even if you don’t mention the war, it’s a tough sell. It’s the poorest country in Asia, it generates most of the planet’s heroin and it’s stupidly hot. Throw in the firefights, the IEDs and the suicide bombers, and you’ve got that most difficult of pitches: “Hell on Earth”.

With no wife or girlfriend to speak of – my love life to that point had been a series of mildly amusing disasters, worthy of their own comic novella – I only had to worry about breaking the news to my parents. I did also have a brother and sister, but they were much less of a concern: both Will and Nicky took after our father’s side of the family, being typically English and phlegmatic about things like love and war. Unlike myself, they shared none of our mother’s Germanic fondness for tearful sentimentality.

I told my parents on a frosty evening just a few days before Christmas, stopping by on my way home from work. My mother was standing by the fire in the lounge when I broke the news, while my father was in his favourite chair, reading his newspaper.

“I’ve got something important to tell you,” I said.

I wasn’t normally given to statements like this. Already my mother looked worried. My father put his paper down.

“I’m going to Afghanistan.”

My mother’s face dropped, and she started to cry.

Shit
.

What was I doing, putting her through this? She didn’t deserve this. She’d brought me into this world, loved me and looked after me. Now I was dropping this on her.

“How long for?” she said eventually.

“Four months.”

More tears. I think that for a second she’d been hoping it might have been some short journalistic assignment, lasting just a few days or weeks. The fact was, it could’ve been worse – it could’ve been six months. I’d requested a shorter tour, and luckily I’d got it.

“Are they making you go?” asked my father. He wasn’t crying, but he did have his “serious” face on, eyeing me carefully over the top of his reading glasses.

“They asked me if I wanted to go, and I said I did.” This was sort of true, insofar as the MOG was always asking for volunteers. “I think it’ll be good for me.”

“What will you be doing?” my mother asked.

“I’ll be running a camera team.” Already I was omitting the word “combat”. “There’ll be myself, a cameraman and a photographer.”

“Will it be dangerous?”

I considered telling an outright lie to this question, claiming my job was entirely office-bound, but I wasn’t sure it would wash. My mother was pretty good at detecting bullshit; if she thought I was trying to protect her from the truth, it could make things even worse.

“It shouldn’t be too bad,” I said. “We might have to go out on the odd patrol.”

She looked unconvinced, her cheeks still wet with tears. I gave her a hug.

“It’s going to be OK,” I said. “If it was that dangerous, I wouldn’t be doing it.”

To be honest, I had no idea how dangerous it was going to be. I only knew that I didn’t want to get hurt. If the Taliban had seen fit to publish a “Forecast of Events”, then maybe I could’ve made an informed decision. Sadly, they had no media planner to keep us journalists informed about their future movements. They just did what they did on a seemingly random basis, attacking coalition troops whenever it took their fancy, terrorizing all our mothers in the process.

* * *

My colleagues at BBC Radio Leicester reacted to the news of my departure in a slightly different manner to that of my mother. They threw me a leaving party at a lap-dancing club. Remarkably, all the girls in the newsroom came as well. I think they looked upon the excursion as a kind of anthropological field trip, an opportunity to peer under the rock where drunk and/or lonely men go to stare at naked women.

I enjoyed it, anyway. We all drank an incredible amount of vodka, then everyone chipped in for a lap dance, buying me ten minutes with a peroxide blonde who’d squeezed herself and her Hindenburg breasts into a Stars and Stripes Lycra dress. I had just a short moment to contemplate the significance of our special relationship with the US, then the dress came off and the Hindenburgs were in my face, threatening to crash-land onto my forehead before veering back up again, floating around in a dreamlike sequence that was over all too quickly.