How to Avoid Being Killed in a War Zone Read online

  First signs: Facial weakness, arm weakness and speech problems. There are various tests for these:

  • Face – are the features unusually uneven? Is the person able to smile? Is their mouth or eye droopy?

  • Arms – can they lift both arms to the same level?

  • Speech – can they speak clearly? Can they recall words easily?

  Other areas may also be affected. The legs may go numb. One side of the body may appear paralysed or slumped. The vision may be affected. They may fall suddenly, or be affected by a severe sudden headache.

  Action: Speed is of the essence. The earlier the patient gets medical care and rehabilitation, the better their chances of recovery. You can do very little, only support them, calm them and hold their hand while waiting for expert help. If they stop breathing, begin CPR immediately (see CPR for adults).

  Sunburn (see Sunburn)

  Trench foot (see Trench Foot)

  Vomiting

  Vomiting can be caused by any number of different problems, from food poisoning and fever to altitude and car sickness. But if it is caused by an infection, it can be passed easily from person to person if the conditions are not kept as hygienic as possible.

  First signs: Gagging reflex; extra saliva in the mouth; nausea.

  Action: Move the casualty away from the cause of the problem if it is physical, such as an allergy or sea sickness. Your aim is to calm them and make sure they are drinking enough fluids and salts. If the vomiting continues over a day, or is particularly severe or blood-filled, you need to get medical assistance as soon as possible.

  When the casualty is well again make sure they eat only simple foods, such as pasta, bread or potatoes, for the first 24 hours.

  Fortuna fortis favet (Fortune favours the brave). I never really understood this until I found myself in various dangerous situations where, invariably, the most dangerous thing was indecision. Fortuna fortis favet should not be mistaken for recklessness or aggression. Often the brave call is restraint, decisively turning back or breaking an engagement rather than pursuing it. But invariably the unlucky men who were injured in a contact, or the unfortunate teams that got stuck in difficult situations, were those who didn’t commit wholeheartedly. Patrick Hennessey

  7/ Feeding Yourself Under Fire

  You can eat anything… When I was teaching Royal Marines what they could eat in extremis, I would buy maggots from a fishing tackle shop, add some beetroot and they would turn pink, like prawns. The class would gobble them up quite happily, and only felt squeamish when I told them afterwards what they had eaten. The lesson is: don’t die or get sick for the sake of being fussy. Food is fuel. It is amazing what people can survive on. Dr Carl Hallam

  Surviving on a diet of monotonous food is hell for me. Faced with limited options – say, falafel seasoned with sand every evening for four months, or ‘Menu F’ army ration box for 21 days, or Baghdad hotel spaghetti bolognese for a month’s worth of lunch and dinners – I often choose not to eat at all after a while. I get lazy and I get hungry.

  But tell me that there is no food for the next three days and I will transform into an über-efficient hunter-gatherer, a jungle chef par excellence, whose sole mission is to present anyone within plate-pushing distance with gourmet grubs, boiled potato scraps, strangled hen or whatever I can get my hands on.

  I discovered I had these abilities while on a tour through the rainforests of northern Bolivia. We were 10 hours’ boat-chug away from the nearest town when we heard that the river had been blocked off by a local strike. We were supposed to return that day, but we decided to stay in camp and wait for it to end as these strikes can get violent.

  When the drinking water grew dangerously low and the petrol for powering the boat almost ran out, our wise guide decided we needed to take control of our own welfare. He began to delegate tasks amongst us plump, dirty-looking Westerners. We didn’t know where our strengths would lie. I was chosen to be the piranha-catcher, but it wasn’t meant to be. Six hours hunched over our dugout canoe and I had managed to get through all the bait – potential food for the evening – and failed to catch anything at all.

  The trick with piranhas is speed. They will always go for the bait, but if you hesitate for a second, they will bite off the hook with their tiny, sharp teeth before you can reel them in. I’m sure there are many ways to catch them, but our guide told us to keep the line short – around half a metre long – and tied to one finger. The moment you feel even the slightest tug, you simply flick your finger up, bringing the greedy fish and hook to a bounce on the boat floor.

  I had lost three hooks by the time I conceded defeat and handed over to my vegetarian friend Kathy. With her extraordinary patience and future doctor’s digits, she began to pluck piranhas from the water with all the ease and rhythm of a metronome.

  One group returned to camp with grins as wide as their captured snake was long, while another group was covered in cuts and bruises sustained in bringing home a huge juicy palm heart. I made fire, boiled water and listened to their tales of how man took on nature and won. That night we feasted. But hunting and gathering is exhausting work. Relentless too. People grew bored with the long treks to find dangerous beasties, and the even longer ones dragging back palms through the mosquito- and leech-infested jungle. By the time a passing boat told us that the strikers were willing to let us through, we were hungry and tired of the adventure. We wanted a can of baked beans and a cold beer. We headed home, most of us having used our penknives properly for the first and last time.

  We had been in a fertile area where, despite our difficulties, it was relatively easy to find food. Outside the jungle, of course, food is cheap and very easy to come by in most parts of the world. That makes it even harder for most of us to cope when that quick bite to eat is snatched away.

  Laura McNaught remembers getting by on a very limited diet in the Congo: ‘You can survive on beer and bananas for longer than you might think – in my case, three days. In fact, anything deep-fried or fruit with skin should be OK, especially if it’s washed down with some bug-killing alcohol. Boiled eggs and a Dioralyte [rehydration powder] are a good breakfast option, and you can never pack too many cereal bars.’

  /EAT LOCAL

  This book is not about extreme survival. It is about survival in unfamiliar and difficult surroundings. Survival against the odds, but mainly against man rather than nature. And when nature wins – in an earthquake, flood or tsunami – you need to be prepared (see Basic Survival). In this chapter I am largely assuming you are not intending to be too far from local people and therefore some kind of food. But I have included some basics about hunting, gathering, fishing and fire, which should keep you going if, for instance, your car breaks down in the middle of nowhere and your original plans are thrown out the window.

  Danger and war don’t have to mean deprivation, particularly if you are on the ‘winning’ side. In fact, if you are on an embed with the US military, you will probably get fat on their rations. Back at their base, where you can choose from one of multiple fast-food outlets, you will begin to wonder why you ever had a craving for a Big Mac with double cheese and curly fries.

  Each culture you meet will have its own extremes. I have been living in the Arab world for the last few years, so I know the people there adore sugar, especially in their tea and coffee – enough to stand a spoon up in your cup in some cases. In my humble experience, Iraqis have the sweetest tooth. When it comes to food choices, I recommend playing to your host nation’s strengths. The sticky pastries, the delicious pistachio ice cream, the cardamom coffee… These can fire your engine for hours every day. The people really know what they’re doing. And this food is safe. If you push for the less familiar, that is when you are going to get into trouble. For example, opting for sushi on Lake Titicaca can land you in Lima with a drip in your arm after 15 painful hours on a bus to get there. I’ve seen it. But go for ceviche, the local version of sushi, and you will probably be fine. The most important thing
to know about the food you are eating in out-of-the-way places is whether it is safe… because you are a long way from a hospital.

  For some that means excluding foods their guts don’t trust. Kamal Hyder told me: ‘I am quite fussy about food. I’ve been in situations when a goat has been alive one minute and is served up to you on a plate 15 minutes later. I don’t trust it. I make excuses, say I am too sick to eat meat. I always carry a tin or two of Cheddar and some olives. You can always find warm Afghan bread, warm tea. Stuff like that is always safe. But be careful with water…it can kill.’

  My best advice is to stick to what the locals are eating. Ask around and learn what you can and can’t eat. Gather knowledge rather than trying to gather your own food. It will serve you well when there is no one around to help.

  Also, work with your surroundings. If you are in Outer Mongolia and you are not a fan of fermented yak’s milk, you need to find a way of politely saying no. If you are a vegetarian and a village kills their last goat in celebration of your arrival, it is going to be tough to find a way out.

  Samantha Bolton told me: ‘I gave up being vegetarian after two weeks of boiled and roasted goat and no vegetables in the refugee camps in Tanzania. There’s no point in being precious about diet. It’s a waste of time. Just eat what you are given.’ Leith Mushtaq, however, has a different approach: ‘Normally, I am vegetarian, so I always take a supply of tinned food. I don’t eat meat for politeness’ sake. I pretend I am sick.’

  Having worked and travelled with a few vegetarians and fussy eaters, I implore you, do not bother to explain your moral reasoning for saying no. Just do as Leith does and pretend to be ill. It is a lot less painful, and it works…although they may then rustle up a special local potion to make you better instead.

  A good diet is a varied one. In the long term you need to make sure you are getting a balance of protein, carbohydrate and fats. You need vitamins and minerals too. Sticking to one kind of food will limit your nutrients.

  /FOOD IS NOT JUST FUEL

  When you’re far from home and a long way from anything familiar, food can be incredibly comforting. My colleague and friend Hoda Abdel-Hamid has spent most of her adult life flying in and out of war zones or dangerous places. Until recently, Baghdad was like a second home for her. It was there that she got engaged over the phone to the man who is now her husband. I was there too, and afterwards we celebrated with all sorts of goodies from the bottom of her bag. She has learnt how to keep herself happy when times are tough out in the field: ‘If I am going for a long stint, I take treats – mainly food like Parmigiano, foie gras and good chewing gum. On a day you finish work early you go to your room, pull out a treat and it turns into a party.’

  Food is important in so many ways, not least in keeping up energy and morale. Nick Toksvig recalls: ‘In 1985 we were working on a Lebanese hostage crisis story. It meant 18- to 20-hour days of endless live interviews with the studio back in London. I commandeered the hotel kitchen and made sure the troops were fed. Even journalists march on their stomachs.’

  Chris Helgren was Reuters’ chief photographer in Baghdad for almost two years after the war. He spent most of his time training a team of young Iraqi photographers, who had done mainly weddings until 2003. He looked after them as if they were family, and that involved the occasional family feast – usually a barbecue in the back garden. There was always a lot of food. Returning to the Reuters bureau from Basra, where the shelves were still pretty bare and my translator was on a permanent diet, I always looked forward to these parties. Now editor-in-charge at the Reuters UK pictures bureau, Chris has been all over the world with his job, and knows the importance of a good meal when home is far away:

  ‘I didn’t eat chicken for a year after I left Iraq. Every day for the two years that I was based in Baghdad, lunch and dinner came from polystyrene boxes loaded with chicken and rice. Or rice and chicken. Or rice and rice. Or rice, chicken and rice… Our bureau was outside the American Green Zone, which offered greasy comfort food, and even Chinese take-away. While at a US air base north of the city, I even spied a taco bar in the gymnasium-sized food hall. But for us, there wasn’t much choice when it came to take-away.

  ‘What to eat while on assignment is a perpetual issue. When I was based in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war, we had a cook who used what seemed to be half a kilo of salt in every dish. In other places, such as Jerusalem and Kuwait City, or anywhere for that matter, extended stays in hotels lay bare the problem of never-changing menus. If you’re sick of what’s on offer after a week, a month later it’s unbearable.

  ‘My advice is learn to cook. In Baghdad my salvation came when I discovered an international supermarket, where, for a premium, you could buy British-brand mayonnaise, Italian pasta, Japanese soy sauce, even pancake mix from the USA. Soon our local staffers were watching me in the kitchen as I prepared spaghetti with a ragu of chorizo sausage, although they wouldn’t touch it themselves. They considered all pasta, whether it was Japanese noodles or ravioli, to be “macaroni”.

  ‘Food is also a big logistical concern on the road. After American and British tanks stormed across the Kuwaiti frontier into Iraq, we gave chase and lived in the desert for about three weeks. Other journalists were embedded, while we were unilateral. This meant we had to fend for ourselves in procuring food, water, fuel and finding safe places to pitch camp for the night. So, on a rather irregular basis, we would receive huge duffel bags sent from colleagues in Kuwait, loaded with canned meat or beans, noodles, dried fruit, chocolate and cigars. We found that we could easily trade a Snickers bar for a bottle of water from a British Royal Marine, but a cigar could fill a 20-litre jerrycan with precious diesel for “Brenda the Defender”, our armoured Land Rover.’

  /FENDING FOR YOURSELF

  When you are out of options and forced to turn to nature it can be scary for a mainly urban generation. Survival is hugely reliant on instincts, but sometimes you need to know which bit of wood goes where to make a snare or a fire. The information that follows is all about that. But it is in no way a survival manual to live off for months. I hope the tips here will get you through till a rescue team arrives.

  CHRIS HELGREN’S FANTASTIC FOOD TIPS

  SAFE TO EAT

  UNSAFE TO EAT

  /GATHERING FOOD

  I am not going to list all the possible plants and fruits you can eat in the wild. For that you need to find someone local to help you. If they don’t know if a plant is safe to eat, avoid it.

  If you’re on your own, the best advice is to approach everything with caution – even if it looks friendly and familiar. Try a tiny bit, rub it on your skin and wait for an hour. If there’s no reaction, chew a tiny bit in all areas of your mouth, then spit it out and wait a couple of hours for a reaction. If nothing happens, swallow a small quantity and wait five hours without eating or drinking anything else to see if your tummy likes it. If it does, try a bit more, but always be ready to make yourself throw up if you suspect it may be poisonous.

  /FISHING

  Believe it or not, fishing and hunting are a lot simpler than gathering, and what you catch can be a lot more rewarding and less dangerous than plants and fruits. Here I’m going to pass on some techniques that you might find useful one day.

  How to catch a fish

  The best times to catch fish are early in the morning and late at night. You will need a hook and (if you don’t have a fishing line) a length of thin string. It needs to be strong enough not to snap from the weight of the fish and should be tied tightly to your hook. If you don’t have a hook, you can improvise and make one out of a tin can, a hairpin, a piece of barbed wire, a strong barb from a bush, or the loop of a dangly earring.

  Failing any of the above, you can simply put a sharp straight stick, like half a toothpick, through a piece of bait and hang it like a T-junction at the end of the string.

  It depends where you are fishing, but you might need to use a combination of floats and weights along the line in or
der to dangle your bait in the right place. If not, the bait might fall flat on the bottom if it’s in a lake with no movement, or the current might push your line back against the bank. You can use corks, polystyrene or empty plastic bottles with the top done up as floats, and stones for weights.

  If you like, you can leave a line like this overnight so that breakfast will be waiting first thing in the morning.

  For live bait you can use anything that wriggles, but it needs to look attractive. For fake bait try feathers, small bits of cloth, or even a fish shape whittled out of wood. Keep trying until you find something that works.

  If using an improvised hook and line is beyond you, there are all sorts of traps you can invent to catch fish, provided you have a little imagination and a lot of time. Here are some examples of fish traps where the bait inside is accessible by a narrow funnel. The fish can squeeze in but they will find it much more difficult to get out again.

  If you are dealing with shallow fertile water, you could also try spear-fishing. Make sure your shadow is not over the potential catch or you will never succeed.

  Warning: You can shoot fish with a gun, but never do so with the gun barrel in the water. It will explode, causing the bullet to fire backwards and might kill you.

  And another warning: Don’t eat fish you find floating on top of the water – you are likely to explode with hideous food poisoning or worse.