McCullin Page #7

And I saw some writing at the back, in the far distance.

And after I'd photographed the woman, who, believe it or not,

was only 24 years of age and she looked like 65,

I went and read the writing in the far distance on the wall

and it had on the wall, "Today I am reborn."

And that little inscription took my legs away from me.

You know, you can go through so much as a photographer,

you put yourself there.

You don't ask, you know, you don't ask why you are there.

You go there and the same time you put yourself there.

You could refuse if you want.

I went there, but when I went there, I photographed these people

to show they had more dignity than most of us will ever dream of,

that being in the last throes of their life.

His awareness of the futility of it,

as well as the direct sight of these people dying on their feet...

..moved him enormously.

He always had empathy, of course,

with the soldier who was shot, but here he was looking at civilians.

Men and women without any clue about what was going on,

dying because of the ambitions

of some of the power-hungry people in the country.

MUSIC:
"Free Bird" by Lynyrd Skynyrd

# If I leave here tomorrow

# Would you still remember me?

# I must be travelling on now... #

I spent my whole life travelling the world. I was really on the move.

You know, I was constantly at London Airport

and waving goodbye to my little family.

# And this bird shall never change... #

I was very eager, as always,

and ambitious to get to the front of the fighting.

And the next thing I know,

we walked into an ambush and all hell broke loose.

GUNFIRE:

There was tremendous, heavy AK-47 fire.

And I immediately ran down into the side of the road,

which is like a culvert.

And I thought, "I'm going to get my tail out of here."

Because, you know, what does one picture mean of a soldier under fire

if it's going to cost you your life?

For the first time, my nerve went.

I knelt behind a tube and there was an almighty explosion.

I was blown across the road.

I felt this terrible burning sensation in my legs

and everywhere from the waist downwards.

And all my past seemed to come before me and I thought, "This is it. I'm going to die."

So I crawled away for about 200 yards,

only to be put on the back of a truck,

having been stabbed with a morphine injection.

And then they filled the lorry up

with about half a dozen soldiers who were wounded.

I thought, "I'm going to take my mind off my own pain

"and I'm going to photograph what's going on in this truck."

They put the man on the truck right next to me

who took the full brunt of the mortar bomb that hit me,

but he got, unfortunately, all of it in his chest and stomach.

And he kept sitting up and trying to fight people holding him down.

He was fighting.

And he died on the way back in the truck to the hospital,

because I sat up and photographed him.

And I said, "I don't want you to take any more risks."

They took the risks as they judged fit

because they were independently-minded.

And I secretly rejoiced that they brought back what they did,

but nonetheless, the next time and the next time

and the next time, you thought,

"Pray to God that they are not playing Russian roulette with their own lives."

LOUD EXPLOSION:

It was strange for me to get on an aeroplane and fly to Belfast,

drive to Londonderry, check into the hotel.

And you could guarantee that once the pubs turned out

at about 3-something in the afternoon,

that there you braced yourself

and you knew exactly where it would be.

It was almost like a football match. You knew where the action would be.

SHOUTING AND SCREAMING

It was bricks and bottles and stones

coming at the soldiers, who then fired rubber bullets

and CS gas back, and I used to be gassed on a regular basis.

But from a photographer's point of view, you couldn't miss.

It was like a theatre, really. It was like a play.

You knew the plot, you'd seen it many times before.

This particular day, I knew they were going to charge

and I was standing there with my short telephoto lens

and I took this picture of the "let's go and get them".

I wasn't totally aware that in the shop doorway by this taxi company

was a woman standing there, holding her mouth with total shock.

That made my picture much more poignant, really.

I came upon this highway

and saw these dying soldiers in the road, and I was with a very

nice friend of mine called Michael Nicholson, who was an ITV reporter.

Their wounds were kind of melting into the tar itself on the road.

So hot.

We prised them off the road and we draped them

across the bonnet of his Jeep.

And I stood on the front of it and kind of leaned on them

and we drove them back to a first aid medical centre for the army.

And we went back the next morning to see how they were, but they had died.

And I did lots of pictures of men coming in on that road

with pieces of cardboard around their feet,

because they threw their boots away

and, of course, they didn't last long on that road.

The whole thing was the most appalling shambles.

It was like the retreat from Moscow. Terrible disarray.

And so, when the Sunday Times published these pictures,

the South Vietnamese Government put me on a blacklist,

which I never thought for one minute existed.

I was building this reputation as a war photographer,

which today I really detest.

I worked for it and then,

when I suddenly felt that I was being acclaimed as a war photographer,

suddenly I felt uncomfortable and dirty.

I felt being called a war photographer

was like being called a mercenary.

Looking back on all that, I thought my family suffered very badly.

I was always waving goodbye to them and one wonders in their mind,

were they ever thinking, "Will we ever see this strange man again,

"who is supposed to be our father?"

But, you know, I didn't want to weaken my strength

by thinking in a sentimental way.

I wanted to do my job and then hopefully go home to them,

but it was very selfish, now I look back on it.

And it eventually ruined by marriage.

GUNFIRE:

In Beirut's Christian stronghold,

Phalangist militiamen poured fire on neighbouring areas

held by Muslim leftists

and allies from the more extreme Palestinian guerrilla group.

Every day you had a twist in the Lebanon.

There is always something ghastly and new to kind of look at.

I did this photograph of all these Christians,

all proudly showing their manly side to them.

And the audacity was that they were wearing Christian crosses

and, you know, you think...

you expect more from Christianity

if you're displaying it in such a way than some of the terrible things

that they did in the name of Christianity.

On the political front, the situation still appears to be stalemate.

Efforts to implement a ceasefire clearly having failed

and parliament's attempts to hold a session...

The Palestinian areas, the kind of east side of Beirut,

right inside the Christian heartland.

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes