Regional press news – this story published 17.6.2000

Dunkirk spirit gets the news home

Covering an event that attracts worldwide media attention is nerve-wracking enough – without being in a foreign country on your first overseas assigment and at the mercy of new technology. Derby Evening Telegraph journalist Robin Johnson reports on his trip to Dunkirk.

If you’ve ever watched an episode of the classic BBC comedy Dad’s Army, you will be familiar with Corporal Jones’s phrase “Don’t panic! Don’t panic!” – and if you are reporting abroad for the first time you’ll be amazed how many times you say this.

Photographer Simon Bolton and I spent a week in and around Dunkirk covering the 60th anniversary of the Dunkirk evacuations.

We had travelled there with five members of Derby and District branch of the 1940 Dunkirk Veterans’ Association.

We made the decision to travel down to Dunkirk with them on the same coach, a move which caused us some problems in getting about after we arrived, but reaped dividends in the end.

The idea was that if we travelled with them, we would be accepted as part of the group and they would open up a bit more and tell us stories which they might otherwise have kept quiet about. The guys may be in their 80s but they’re not stupid! Thankfully, it worked.

It was Friday night when we arrived at our hotel in Bergues, about five miles outside Dunkirk. Bizarrely the veterans were staying at a hotel in Ostend, Belgium, a fair distance from Dunkirk.

We contacted our newsdesk and were told they were looking for an up-front picture and words for the next day. That caused a bit of a panic!

Simon had taken some great pictures with a digital camera of the veterans on the ferry and I had chatted to one or two, so we did have some material.

But then it came to the tricky bit, sending stuff back. Both pictures and words were being sent via e-mail.

We had with us two mobile phones, both of which had been switched to the French network. We had our list of instructions on how to send stuff, following a briefing by the IT department, and, most importantly, an adapter plug.

So it was all pretty straight forward… or was it? We connected one of the mobiles to the laptop and tried to get onto the network. B****! “Error 680. There is no dialling tone” “Error 678. The computer you are trying to contact with is not responding, try again later.” The fact that I can remember the exact wording of the error messages shows how many attempts it took us.

At last, a connection was established and a picture sent on its way. Unlike the words, which take only a couple of seconds to get through, pictures take at least 15 minutes and it’s quite nerve-wracking wait, knowing that the network connection could be lost at any moment.

It took hours for that one picture to be sent and in the meantime I phoned over 200 words.

The next day brought a parade and a memorial service at De-Paradies. It was there on May 28, 1940, that 97 British soldiers were herded into a small barn and executed by the Nazis.

We arrived to absolute chaos. There was no segregation whatsoever. It was just a confusion of media people, families and veterans, many of whom could not get near the service for the banks of television cameras. I know they’ve got a job to do, but when the people who are the subject of the event can’t get near because of television crews, it stinks a bit.

I found it best just to mingle in the crowd, chat and soak up the general atmosphere. Out of the thousands of people, we somehow managed to link up with the Derby and District veterans and stuck to them like glue for the rest of the day.

De-Paradies was just a taster for the events in Dunkirk the next day, Franco-British Day.

We got there nice and early and there were very few people about but an hour later, all this had changed. In the run-up, we bumped into former Derby Evening Telegraph photographer Mark Radford, who was out there for a Coventry newspaper.

He had a press pass, as did most of the other media. We did not, but this did not pose a problem. We stood with our veterans all the time, getting their emotions, pictures, while the rest of the world’s media were penned in a small section on one side.

Even when the Prince of Wales arrived, no-one moved us on, although I did give a few tentative looks to the marksmen on top of the buildings surrounding Jean Bart Square.

It was a real education seeing how massive the media is – banks of cameras and reporters everywhere, everyone from The Guardian and The Times to Sky TV. Mine and Simon’s plan was that if anyone asked who we were, we would say: ‘We’re from the Telegraph’, confident that they would not even think of asking: `Oh, would that be the Derby Evening Telegraph?’

As the parade started and we followed our lads, the gravity of the situation really took hold. There were thousands of people and the noise was incredible – this beat any summer fair or city council planning meeting.

Even better was to come as we went to the beaches of Dunkirk for another service. The weather was hot and the veterans in good form. We took our lads onto the beach for a picture looking out across the sea. No sooner had Simon started snapping away than the nationals began to swarm around like seagulls following a fishing trawler (thank you Eric Cantona – after all we were in France). We were a bit brassed off about this, but no reporter came up to them asking for their names or stories.

Among the highlights of our visit were the sight of the Little Ships circling HMS Somerset and a Lancaster bomber flying over, flanked by a Spitfire and a Hurricane.

We finally got back to the hotel at 5pm, but our work was just beginning. All night was spent sending over pictures and copy for the next day’s paper. Thankfully, the computer behaved itself and we were getting good at it.

By this stage, travelling was becoming a problem. The coach could not continue to pick us up because we were too far out of the way and we were getting screwed on taxi fares. So we decided to hire a car for the next assignment, in De-Panne, Belgium. Good chap that he is, Simon elected to drive and I was handed the navigation duties – it was nerve wracking but tremendous fun and it was with a real sense of achievement that we met up with the veterans in this Belgian coastal town.

The weather was foul, cold and wet, but thanks to the trusty checklist I’d made back in England, I got out my transparent plastic bag and put my notebook in it so I could continue writing.

After the parade, we drove back to the hotel across the border and did the same as the previous night – the computer was once again on reasonable form.

The final day was at the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres. The car was going very nicely and the tank was still al most full, but by now, Simon and I were running on fumes. Each day, we had been starting at about 9am and finishing at l0pm.

The final events at Ypres were extremely moving – it was the final event of the 1940 Dunkirk Veterans Association before it disbanded. It was difficult to detach yourself from these events and there were times when we both had a lump in our throats. We had also become very fond of the Derby veterans, who said that they liked having us around and enjoyed our company. Sometimes it’s more than a job.

The world’s media did not seem interested in the event at Ypres. Most of them had gone home, giving us licence to really roam about and get as much as we could.

The next day, the veterans left, but Simon and I had to stay behind for another assignment, a Dunkirk story that involved a Derby family coming over on a minibus, meeting up with us and going to the village of Incheville to see their father’s grave.

We took the car back to Dunkirk. It was in one piece and so were we. We had managed not to get lost once, but at the final hurdle this record was broken, as we could not find the place we’d hired it from!

By the time we returned to Derby, we were exhausted. We had been in France for a week and had worked solidly every day.< p>If you’re ever handed an assignment like this for the first time, don’t take any flak from fellow reporters about sun-bathing, drinking lots of lager on expenses and the like. It is very, very hard work – but extremely rewarding.

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