Word: biafra
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
COMBAT reporting is never a safe or simple job. But even for case-hardened veterans, the Nigerian civil war presents one of the meanest assignments yet. Merely getting in and out of Biafra is a dangerous and doubtful proposition. The irregular airlift from Lisbon flies through Nigerian antiaircraft fire to reach a makeshift airstrip that is only open at night. When correspondents finally manage to get in, they are shuttled off to quarters in the Progress Hotel in Aba, the country's provisional capital. When they are not in the field, they face the hazards of the Progress menu...
...hardly unusual. On and off, they spent four days with a Biafran commando unit behind enemy lines, crawled through the brush with a Biafran sergeant on a reconnaissance mission, joined white mercenaries leading a dangerous ambush. What really troubled Wilde about this assignment was what he saw happening to Biafra and its people. "A chaplain travels from village to village administering last rites to the dying and blessing the heaps of the already dead," wrote Wilde. "Vultures screech in the brooding, muggy sky. The air is fetid with despair and death. Reporting this story is depressing beyond description...
...simple, he feels: "the Ibos were right to secede. They're smart, the smartest in Africa, they have all the doctors and lawyers." Though the origin of the war is tribal, its continuation may be due to intervention, he says, noting that "there's a lot of oil under Biafra," and that the oil might have something to do with English support for the Nigerians, and the French money and mercenaries aiding Biafra...
...sight of senseless human misery (see the Green Berets) is becoming a well-known cliche, but McGuire slides into the type, probably not as a sham. He is more a soldier of fortune than soldier, however, for he says he never carried a gun, even for personal protection in Biafra. ("I figured we had enough guns and ammo on the plane already.") He left Biafra at the end of July, after his mother died in the United States and his close call made him suspicious of the safety of the airlift's flying procedures but he wants to return there...
...people. The problem is, McGuire says, that he as an airman can fly the food in, but there is no guarantee that it will reach those who need it. "It goes here, it goes there, it goes everywhere," he says sadly. So he wants to return, go back to Biafra, this time on the ground to supervise distribution of food supplies as a worker for the Red Cross or other charitable agency. "I know the people. I know the operation, I want to make sure this food gets where it's suposed to," he comments...