Barrel Of A Gun: A War Correspondent's Misspent Moments In Combat

by Al J. Venter

"Anybody who says that the pen is mightier than the sword hasn't spent time in Somalia, or in Beirut during its bloody heyday." So begins this fascinating memoir of a journalist, filmmaker, and just plain raconteur who has made a career of examining warfare-on the ground and as the bullets are flying. While the average citizen is aware of violent conflicts broiling all around the globe, Al J. Venter-from some strange compulsion unexplainable even by him-has felt the need to see them all in person, preferably at the center of the action.Born in South Africa, Venter has found no shortage of horrific battles on his own continent, from Rhodesia to Biafra, and Angola to Somalia. He has ridden with the legendary merc group Executive Outcomes, jumped into combat with South Africa's crack Parachute Regiment (the Parabats), and traipsed the jungles with both guerrillas and national troops under whichever strongman in the country then held power. During Sierra Leone's civil war he flew in the government's lone Mi-24 Hind gunship as it blasted apart rebel villages and convoys, his complaint being that the Soviet-made craft leaked when it rained.In the Mideast he went into southern Lebanon with the invading Israeli army as it encountered resistance from multiple Muslim groups, including the newly formed Hezbollah. Curious about the other side of the hill, he joined up with General Aoun's Christian militias while that conflict was at its height. Touching down in Croatia during the Balkan wars, and in Congo during their perpetual one, as well as the Uganda of Idi Amin, Venter never lost his lust for action, even as he sometimes had to put down his camera or notebook to pick up an AK-47.In his journeys, Venter associated with an array of similarly daring soldiers and journalists, from "Mad Mike" Hoare to Danny Pearl, as well as elite soldiers from around the world, many of whom, he sadly relates, never emerged from the war zones they entered. The creator of countless documentaries and books, from warfare to shark diving to nuclear proliferation, Al Venter has here offered the reader his own personal combat experiences, in all their multi-faceted fascination.http: //www.talkradioeurope.com/index.php?opt... al-venter&catid=160

Genres: Africa, War, Biography

480 pages, Hardcover

First published October 19, 2010

About the author

Albertus Johannes Venter is a South African journalist and historian who is arguably the world's foremost expert on the modern military history of Africa. He has been a war correspondent/military affairs reporter for many publications, notably serving as African and Middle East correspondent for Jane's International Defence Review. He has also worked as a documentary filmmaker, and has authored more than forty books.

He has reported on a number of Africa’s bloodiest wars, starting with the Nigerian Civil War in 1965, where he spent time covering the conflict with colleague Frederick Forsyth, who was working in Biafra for the BBC at the time.

In the 1980’s, Al J Venter also reported in Uganda while under the reign of Idi Amin. The most notable consequence of this assignment was an hour-long documentary titled Africa’s Killing Fields, ultimately broadcast nationwide in the United States by Public Broadcasting Service.

In-between, he cumulatively spent several years reporting on events in the Middle East, fluctuating between Israel and a beleaguered Lebanon torn by factional Islamic/Christian violence. He was with the Israeli invasion force when they entered Beirut in 1982. From there he covered hostilities in Rhodesia, the Sudan, Angola, the South African Border War, the Congo as well as Portuguese Guinea, which resulted in a book on that colonial struggle published by the Munger Africana Library of the California Institute of Technology.

In 1985 he made a one-hour documentary that commemorated the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

He also spent time in Somalia with the US Army helicopter air wing in the early 1990s, three military assignments with the mercenary group Executive Outcomes (Angola and Sierra Leone) and a Joint-STAR mission with the United States Air Force over Kosovo.

More recently, Al Venter was active in Sierra Leone with South African mercenary pilot Neall Ellis flying combat in a Russian helicopter gunship (that leaked when it rained.) That experience formed the basis of the book on mercenaries published recently and titled War Dog: Fighting Other People's Wars.

He has been twice wounded in combat, once by a Soviet anti-tank mine in Angola, an event that left him partially deaf.

Al Venter originally qualified as a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers at the Baltic Exchange in London.

(from wikipedia)

Reviews

[Vincent Andersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Long, but consistently interesting.