McCullin Page #3

Of course I did. But I don't want to brag about it.

I did it sometimes to clear my own conscience.

These little battles were erupting all over

the northern part of the island of Cyprus, where the Turks lived.

We saw this soldier looking at the bodies, and I said,

"What's happening?" He said, "There's been some killing," he said,

"There's a dead body up there and some more in that house."

I knocked on the door, I tapped on this door and there was no answer.

And I let myself in.

And the first thing I was greeted with was warm blood.

These men had been murdered the day before,

and the warm, early morning sunlight had penetrated through

the glass door of this house.

And I closed the door and I tiptoed around the room,

and I got myself in a corner, and I was taking the first shot.

And suddenly, the door opened and, to my horror, the whole family burst in.

I thought, my God, they're going to be really cross, finding me in here.

To my astonishment, they weren't, so I carried on photographing.

And there was a woman who started screaming like mad.

And the truth was that it was her husband who was just below my feet,

who was dead. A new husband at that, they had only been married a week.

And the Greeks came the day before and attacked this community

and murdered these people in cold blood in this house.

I'd go into a village one day, and I got there in the early morning.

And they were finding bodies of Turkish men

who were defending the villages.

And then they were coming back to the village

and telling women that their husbands had been killed.

And then you saw these Goya-esque kind of poses

of people looking up to Christ.

I've noticed that a lot in wars.

When people are in deep grief and emotion, they look up

as if they can see God himself there, offering them some help.

And you see that in Goya's drawings.

Before men are being shot or massacred,

they look up, or they are praying,

and it's part of that religious nature of the great painters.

That moment is so classic.

I call it one of the decisive moments in photography.

Because it combines the news moments with the compositional elements

which make a photograph in themselves.

So, there is something, a second or two would have made a difference.

I asked Don how he took the picture.

As I recall it, he actually had to fall to his knees quickly to get it

because he just sensed it was coming.

I mean, OK, I talk as if there's a lot of poetry in me.

There isn't. I'm a photographer. I am neither an artist or a poet.

I'm a photographer.

And one of the things I've learned most of all, erm,

over and above photography,

the very best qualifications you can have when you are in this situation,

and you are exercising this duty as a photographer, or whatever, reporter,

is that it's much better to be on the side of humanity.

All this was coming at me so fast, this responsibility.

And I felt, almost from the word go, I got a grip of it,

and I thought, I understand what I'm doing for the first time.

I'm meant to be doing this.

There was a decree put out that journalists were not allowed

to leave Leopoldville.

And then I thought, here I am, all this way out here in the Congo

and now I can't even leave out of the capital.

So, I had it in mind, and I knew that there were mercenaries

operating up in a place called Stanleyville.

I quickly managed to discover all this.

I've been appointed by Mr Tchombe

to recruit a number, which I can't disclose,

of men to form a fighting unit in the Congo,

to dispel the present rebellion.

"Mercenary" is a dirty word.

This unit is going to change the meaning of that word,

and "mercenary" will now be a badge of honour,

rather than a dirty word in the English language.

I met one of these mercenaries, and his name was Alan Murphy.

And I said, "Could you get me some information about this?"

And I pumped him for how to get there.

And he said, what happens was, every morning,

a C130 American plane, under the CIA,

would take groups of mercenaries to Stanleyville.

And I said, "Could you get me one of your shirts and a pair of trousers,

"and if I sleep overnight in the hotel,

"would you kick my bed in the morning when you get the call to leave?"

And he did just that.

And I see myself now, many, 40 years ago, standing on that runway

with the early-morning rain shower that had passed.

And a man with a clipboard, who happened to be a CIA man,

asking people's names. And I thought, I've had it. I've had it, you know.

Then he came up to me and he said, "What's your name?"

And I said, "McCullin." He said, "You're not on the list."

I said, "I should be," and my legs were like jelly.

And he said, he wrote my name down, he said, "OK, climb aboard."

And I'd cracked this amazing no-go situation.

When I arrived in Stanleyville,

I could hear a lot of shouting and screaming,

people crying and gunfire.

And I saw gangs of boys who had been tied up, and they were being beaten

and shot in the back of the head and kicked into the river.

I was looking at all this.

I had my little camera in my bag, and 20 rolls of film.

And I thought, how am I going to bring my camera out now

and declare that I shouldn't be here and I'm not a mercenary?

Because it was a huge gamble.

And it was the Congolese gendarmerie who were killing these people,

torturing them, dragging them behind trucks on wires,

it was really terrible.

They were skinned alive, some of them.

It was a kind of wood yard, and they were sitting in a corner, shivering.

Knowing that any moment, they would be shot.

And then they dragged some of these boys out in front of me

and started brutalising them.

And I had no power, by the way, to prevent this.

I took a few pictures and I walked away.

I thought, you know, you have a moral sense of purpose and duty.

You have to work out which of those purposes and duty you are there for.

It's very difficult too.

You want to take this picture, and you want to stop it.

And it's a very difficult thing.

It came up more and more my life,

seeing people executed in front of me.

GUNFIRE:

RAPID GUNFIRE:

There was a man called Mike Hoare

who was battling on the other side of this river, the Lualaba.

He was in charge of Fifth Commando,

these mercenaries I had teamed up with.

So, I arrived on the other side.

And then, Mike Hoare came to me and said,

"What are you doing, who are you? Where have you come from?"

And I said, "I have to be clean with you now,

"I'm working for the Observer newspaper."

He wouldn't have understood the German magazine, Quick.

I immediately fell back on my English heritage.

So, he said, "I'll deal with you in the morning,

"I'm going to hand you over to the Congolese military."

Which one knew right away, that would be curtains.

He said, "I admire what you have done, but I don't condone it."

And then he totally switched his whole kind of attitude

and offered to take me on this journey

chasing these Simbas who had abducted these nuns.

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