wondering, I couldn’t believe what I saw next. I hadn’t been told about it.
Coming towards me from across Departures was a friendly face I knew only too well. Straight in from Bangkok, onto Jakarta and down to Medan, it was the BBC’s Ben Brown. I asked him how things had been in Thailand – very grim was all he would say. They had now realised that the story was moving on. Something had triggered with the reporter Rachel Harvey, who was based near the epicentre; she knew that what she was watching on the TV didn’t ring true. It was down to her that all roads now led to Banda Aceh, though of course they didn’t – every route in bar this solitary flight was blocked.
I was pleased to see Ben and his cameraman Duncan but he looked worse than I did. When I first spotted him, I didn’t know him at all. He looked like a bedraggled man dragging a suitcase across the airport. Of course, he had no paperwork either, nor did he know he needed any. Ben would have got the flight anyway and argued the toss at the other end. He would tell them the world needed to see this story. As we were delayed, Aussie Paul took him back into the city to the Press Centre to get him accredited. He was back within the hour and the flight was still waiting to go.
We knew little of Banda Aceh – it was heavily Muslim and a good diving place. That was it. It would, from this moment on, forever remain in the history books.
I could barely imagine what lay ahead as Ben painted the picture of Thailand, full of makeshift morgues, each with bodies piled high, all bloated through their intake of water. Beaches had been washed away. Both Ben and his cameraman Duncan in all their years had never seen anything like it. We now knew that was nothing compared to what was coming.
At 12.25, we finally boarded in torrential rain and thunder. Air Garuda had one of the worst safety records on the planet – so bad they weren’t even allowed over UK airspace. The flight only lasted forty-five minutes – around me were journalists, aid workers and locals trying to find their families. It was the approach to landing that shocked us all.
About twenty minutes out, there was a surge to the windows and everybody grabbed their cameras. The West Coast was gone – washed away, flattened and devastated. Picture the white cliffs of Dover, which you can probably visualise in detail even if you have never been. Now, imagine them gone. That’s what we were looking at. Heaven only knew what we would find on the ground.
When we landed, it took us two hours to gather all our gear and get away. We drove straight to the military airport to meet Jeremy Hillman; he was now based in Asia, knew the patch inside out, and had been on the first plane into Banda Aceh. It was a thirty-minute drive to what would become the BBC house.
I had never seen anything like it. I had witnessed ethnic cleansing and mass burial in Bosnia. This was on a scale a million times worse. Duncan had no choice but to film through the windscreen. Those who had survived and the poorly equipped authorities hadn’t been able to get started even over a week on. By the side of the road, we saw mass graves and bodies after bodies. Even for someone like me, who had seen it all in war, this was no way to go.
The team put their masks on. There weren’t enough to go around, so I went without. To my right, I saw an open pit and a massive tipper truck tilting up with its back open. Bodies were flying out into the graves. It smelt of death and decay; every time, you would smell the bodies first before seeing them as you got closer. It stunk in a way death had never reeked to me before – so different from that burning flesh and fuel in Iraq. These were abandoned souls and it was beyond humane, but there was nothing anyone could do – they were simply left to rot. You would just be getting used to the tilting truck when an army vehicle would pull up with more bodies. It never stopped. It reminded me of those
Coming towards me from across Departures was a friendly face I knew only too well. Straight in from Bangkok, onto Jakarta and down to Medan, it was the BBC’s Ben Brown. I asked him how things had been in Thailand – very grim was all he would say. They had now realised that the story was moving on. Something had triggered with the reporter Rachel Harvey, who was based near the epicentre; she knew that what she was watching on the TV didn’t ring true. It was down to her that all roads now led to Banda Aceh, though of course they didn’t – every route in bar this solitary flight was blocked.
I was pleased to see Ben and his cameraman Duncan but he looked worse than I did. When I first spotted him, I didn’t know him at all. He looked like a bedraggled man dragging a suitcase across the airport. Of course, he had no paperwork either, nor did he know he needed any. Ben would have got the flight anyway and argued the toss at the other end. He would tell them the world needed to see this story. As we were delayed, Aussie Paul took him back into the city to the Press Centre to get him accredited. He was back within the hour and the flight was still waiting to go.
We knew little of Banda Aceh – it was heavily Muslim and a good diving place. That was it. It would, from this moment on, forever remain in the history books.
I could barely imagine what lay ahead as Ben painted the picture of Thailand, full of makeshift morgues, each with bodies piled high, all bloated through their intake of water. Beaches had been washed away. Both Ben and his cameraman Duncan in all their years had never seen anything like it. We now knew that was nothing compared to what was coming.
At 12.25, we finally boarded in torrential rain and thunder. Air Garuda had one of the worst safety records on the planet – so bad they weren’t even allowed over UK airspace. The flight only lasted forty-five minutes – around me were journalists, aid workers and locals trying to find their families. It was the approach to landing that shocked us all.
About twenty minutes out, there was a surge to the windows and everybody grabbed their cameras. The West Coast was gone – washed away, flattened and devastated. Picture the white cliffs of Dover, which you can probably visualise in detail even if you have never been. Now, imagine them gone. That’s what we were looking at. Heaven only knew what we would find on the ground.
When we landed, it took us two hours to gather all our gear and get away. We drove straight to the military airport to meet Jeremy Hillman; he was now based in Asia, knew the patch inside out, and had been on the first plane into Banda Aceh. It was a thirty-minute drive to what would become the BBC house.
I had never seen anything like it. I had witnessed ethnic cleansing and mass burial in Bosnia. This was on a scale a million times worse. Duncan had no choice but to film through the windscreen. Those who had survived and the poorly equipped authorities hadn’t been able to get started even over a week on. By the side of the road, we saw mass graves and bodies after bodies. Even for someone like me, who had seen it all in war, this was no way to go.
The team put their masks on. There weren’t enough to go around, so I went without. To my right, I saw an open pit and a massive tipper truck tilting up with its back open. Bodies were flying out into the graves. It smelt of death and decay; every time, you would smell the bodies first before seeing them as you got closer. It stunk in a way death had never reeked to me before – so different from that burning flesh and fuel in Iraq. These were abandoned souls and it was beyond humane, but there was nothing anyone could do – they were simply left to rot. You would just be getting used to the tilting truck when an army vehicle would pull up with more bodies. It never stopped. It reminded me of those
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