John Pilger - Heroes

John Pilger

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London

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Epub ISBN 9781407086293

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Published by Vintage 2001

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Copyright (c) John Pilger 1986

John Pilger has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

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First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape 1986

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VI JOI BANGLA!
(Long live Bengal!)

For Sam and Zoe, and the memory
of my mother and father, and Eric Piper

H EROES

John Pilger grew up in Sydney, Australia. He has been a war correspondent, author and film-maker. He has twice won British journalisms highest award, that of Journalist of the Year, for his work all over the world, notably in Vietnam and Cambodia. Among a number of other awards, he has been International Reporter of the Year and winner of the United Nations Association Media Peace Prize. For his broadcasting, he has won Frances Reporter Sans Frontieres, an American television Academy Award, an Emmy, and the Richard Dimbleby Award, given by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. He lives in London.

ALSO BY JOHN PILGER

The Last Day

Aftermath: The Struggle of Cambodia and Vietnam

(with Anthony Barnett)

The Outsiders

(with Michael Coren)

A Secret Country

Distant Voices

Hidden Agendas

1 University of Sydney graduation day, Bondi Beach, 1920

2 Richard Pilger, alias Ramon J. Peralto, c . 1890

3 John Pilger and photographer Eric Piper

4 Joe Cardy, Murton colliery, County Durham, 1974

5 The McKirdy children, Princes Lodge hostel, London, 1984

6 Mike Sulsona, former US marine, New York, 1980

7 Mississippi in the mid 60s

8 Betty and Kenneth Rucker, Beallsville, Ohio, 1970

9 Robert Kennedy, California, 1968

10 Daughter of an American GI, Saigon, 1978

11 Child burned by Napalm, Vietnam, 1966

12 The bombed ruins of Hongai, Vietnam, 1975

13 Father and child, hit by artillery, Vietnam

14 US Army, Vietnam

15 American soldier and suspected Vietcong, Vietnam

16 Hoang Van Dung, Hanoi, 1975

17 and 18 A helicopter of the South Vietnamese Air Force is thrown over the side of the aircraft carrier USS Midway , 1975

19 The wreckage of an American B-52 bomber, in Hanoi zoo, 1975

20 Bargirls of Saigon

21 Devastation caused by a Vietcong rocket attack on Saigon, 1975

22 Graves of young women anti-aircraft militia, Dong Loc, Vietnam, 1975

23 A. U. M. Fakhruddin, Daily Mirror correspondent in Bangladesh, 1974

24 Vladimir Slepak, Soviet dissident, 1977

25 Underground hospital, Eritrea, 1978

26 Cambodian child with worthless new banknotes, Phnom Penh, 1979

27 Nam Phann, Khmer Rouge commander, Cambodia/Thailand border, 1980

28 Cars swept into a pile during the evacuation of Phnom Penh, 1979

29 South Africa, 1965

I would like to pay tribute to my mother, Elsie Pilger, who died as I wrote this. Elsie put up with hours of tape-recorded interviews and gave us both many laughs in the process; the result is a glimpse of her life in the early chapters of this book. The fifth of nine children, she grew up in the coalfields of the Hunter Valley, New South Wales. She was one of the first scholarship girls, who gained a degree at Sydney University at the unheard of age of nineteen. She became a teacher, linguist, factory worker, traveller and, in her seventies, a student again. She was a humanist and a rebel who had the courage to defy authority and her family, for love and principle. She was my most enduring friend and ally, and I so miss her restless spirit.

I would like to thank those who, over a long period, have directly and indirectly helped me with this book. I am especially grateful to my late father, Claude, for answering unrelenting questions about his life, always with grace and fine detail in spite of a shoulder injury which made his usual copperplate hand a painful exercise; to Sam, my son, for his interest and for keeping me down to earth; to Scarth Flett for her support and encouragement during our marriage; to Jacqueline Korn and Liz Calder for their care and patience; to Jane Hill for her superb editing; to Martha Gellhorn, Anthony Barnett, Ben Kiernan, Colonel Archimedes L. A. Patti, Colonel Harry G. Summers Jr, Geoffrey Robertson, Jenny Pearce, David Munro, Ken Loach and Matt and Jeannine Herron for reading drafts and offering suggestions and corrections; to Ken Regan, Philip Jones Griffiths, Curt Gunther, Matt Herron, Danny Lyon, Nik Wheeler, Bela Zola, Tom Buist, Andy Hosie, John Schneider, Anthony Howarth and Mathew Naythons for their fine photographs in these pages.

My thanks are also due to Harry Cox and my former colleagues in the library of the Daily Mirror ; the staff of the BBCs Bush House library; Andree Wright, Michael Cannon, Henry Reynolds and my cousin Tony Halloran, whose Australian researches I drew upon; also Santosh Basak, Michael Beckham, Phil Braithwaite, Pete and Ronnie Brown, Wilfred Burchett, Jonathan Butler, James Cameron, Paul Chilton, Noam Chomsky, Anna Coote, Hugh Corrie, Ian Craig, Tony Culliton, John Cummings, Mary Dines, Clarice Edwards, John Eldridge, A. U. M. Fakhruddin, Judy Freeman, John Garrett, Ed Harriman, Betty Heathfield, Megan Hitchin, Chris Holmes, Jim Howard, Duong Duc Huong, Joanne Hurst, Mohammed Jarella, Jan Kavan, Phillip Knightley, Rupert Lancaster, Jim Lawrie, Teddy and Shura Levite, Alan Lowery, John McAuliff, Ranald Macdonald, Linda MacFadyen, Joan McMichael, Humphrey McQueen, Chris Menges, Elizabeth Merritt, John Mitchell, Mon Mohan, Christine Morrison, Liz Nash, Bruce Page, Eric Piper, Bob Saunders, Jeremy Seabrook, Rowan Seymour, George Sharp, Jo South, Jim Stanton, Peter Stone, Will Sulkin, David Swift, Do Tuan That, Tooby Thuc, Julius Tomin, Ben Whitakers Minority Rights Group, Louis Wolf and Arthur Wynn Davies. I owe special thanks to Hugh Cudlipp, Lee Howard, Tony Miles and Mike Molloy who, during our years together on the Daily Mirror , gave me rare freedoms to travel, enquire and write. I am grateful to the Daily Mirror and the New Statesman for permission to publish extracts from my work.