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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Paul Conroy
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February 13 - February 21, 2019
It sounds grand, but she believed that without war correspondents governments could conduct themselves as if in a vacuum:
For all her prowess as one of the world’s greatest war correspondents, Marie was also a Luddite when it came to technology.
It’s one of the hardest parts of any assignment – the waiting. It grinds you down, saps your energy until you transmogrify into a frustrated, lethargic subhuman.
It’s a morale-sapping process – the soul-destroying wait for the go call.
gormlessly.
they“
Death would stalk every footstep of our crossing.
Dumb
Dr. Mohamed Al-Mohamed.
GRAD missiles
A single rocket was capable of removing an entire house.
I knew from experience what was about to happen.
where
could do nothing that would make an immediate, practical difference. I
10 × 15
10 meters = 32 feet
15 meters = 48 feet
240mm
9.5 inch
Worse still, Iran had provided Syria with the curse of modern warfare, the drone, or pilotless aircraft.
Fear is rarely a topic of conversation among war correspondents – no one shows it and its name is never mentioned – yet it was manifest in the silence of all those who lined the decks that cold, overcast morning.
Marie hated these weapons. The screeches and screams they made as they flew overhead were enough to end even the most battle-hardened veterans’ conversations mid-flow. Rather naively, Marie believed that she would be able to escape one of these rockets. “At least you can hear them coming and run for cover if one is about to hit you,” she once told me confidently, as we attempted to merge with the sandbank we were sheltering behind.
“What? I’ve spent years convinced that I’ll hear one coming and be able to dodge it, you bastard!” she half-joked.
He looked devastated, as though he had withdrawn a hundred years into himself.
Our logic was simple: even the wire services like Reuters and Associated Press had left, so if we were to leave now the siege of Misrata would once again go unreported.
For both Marie and me, Misrata was a foundation course in the school of high-explosive supersonic death.
“Teeny weeny airlines,”
6 × 4 meters,
20 x 13 feet
one shell close by and we’re going to be sleeping in the world’s largest liquidizer.
five hundred meters
1640 feet
