Word: gunship
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Camino Real hotel in San Salvador, where most of them stay, the 200-odd foreign journalists in El Salvador daily swap stories of near misses and miraculous escapes. In one episode a photographer rolled under his car just in time to elude bullets blasting from a helicopter gunship overhead. In another, a van carrying an NBC crew had its windows blown out; the passengers got away unhurt save for cuts from flying glass. Such adventures are often recounted with black humor, and justified on the grounds of competitive pressure. Says one U.S. newsman: "If another network gets a story...
...fighting around the Guazapa volcano was observed firsthand by TIME Photographer Harry Mattison, the only journalist permitted to accompany the Salvadoran troops for three days during the fiercest combat. Mattison's account begins as he boards a helicopter gunship...
When we land, one of the wounded tries to disentangle himself from the limbs of the dead. A soldier in regular uniform starts throwing gear onto the ground, then the dead. The corpses are arranged around the gunship, one here, one over there, one face up, another face down. A medic leads the stowaway off. The crew still stands by the craft, but no one wishes to move or speak. It is a moment of shock and disgrace. I squeeze the pilot's shoulder. "You see," he says, "here there really is a war going...
...anecdotes may be composites from various sources. None of those interviewed is identified, though a glossary reacquaints us with the language of the war: busting caps for firing a weapon, cherry for inexperience, hooch for shelter, No. 10 for the worst, klick for kilometer, slick for helicopter, Spooky for gunship. Santoli's approach is more traditionally documentary, though both books reveal a deranging truth: memories of war's exhilarations often outlast the horrors and revulsions...
Hollywood, back then, worried less about "realism," perhaps realizing that to the unjaded, fantasy is just as "real" as car chases and gunship battles. As the opening credits roll, Mary Poppins sits on a cloud overlooking smoky London. Minutes later, a huge gust of wind blows away a host of prospective nannies applying for the position our heroine seeks. No one believes that it really blows hard enough to whisk away thirty mammarian matrons, or even that young women perch on English cloudbanks. But everyone believes in Mary Poppins, fantastic as she may seem, in a way which makes Luke...