Modern technology has become the best friend of the foreign correspondent who, in this 21st Century, wanders the world and its war zones in search of news to keep newspaper readers and TV watchers in immediate step with international political and other major events.

These dedicated journalists of today have the use of the latest mobile phones, iPads, bullet-proof vests, digital voice recorders, paid interpreters, a security man, big dollar debit cards, managerial assistance for both hotel bookings and flight tickets, and the ability to hopefully call in immediate protection when facing a tight and dangerous situation in enemy territory.

By comparison with when I was working as a foreign correspondent during the middle 20th Century years, we “old fashioned” news scribes on the move around the globe were only equipped with a passport, a portable typewriter, a shorthand notebook, a pencil and a small sliver of American Express travellers’ cheques. We could also be further bolstered by the somewhat dubious words of “good luck” muttered to us by our respective editors!
On many occasions, getting our news items and photographs into print took weeks to achieve from the wilds of East, Central, North and West Africa. For a start, pre-booked long-distance Press Collect telephone calls from these regions were only possible at a handful of major settlement areas. Some African post offices also had government censors who were always on the alert to find letters and parcels addressed to foreign media outlets and were all too happy to ensure they were mysteriously lost or destroyed.

Even when operating in Media-friendly states, ticker tape telegrams were restricted to only 40 words at a time which invariably was an impossibility for a 2,000-word urgent news message. As a result, we newsmen sometimes had to resort to a few nefarious ways of sending our reports out of a particular country.

These included having to coerce unsuspecting passing-by airline pilots and travellers to accept our bulky envelopes and small parcels of unexposed photographic film for personal posting or hand-delivery on arrival at a ‘big smoke’ destination overseas.

In those days of yore, even travelling from Britain to some African news centres was a major time-wasting operation. If you had to move, for instance, to the world’s biggest equatorial continent in 1950, you had to board a slow passenger ship generally taking at least 10 days and more to complete the journey or fly in an Empire Solent flying boat over four or five days to get you to where you wanted to go.

The reason for this was that there were, as yet, few or no aerial navigational aids —  and pilots had to navigate their way by only flying at low altitudes during daylight hours and were all too often forced to visually follow coastlines, railway tracks, roads, rivers and mountain ranges.
My needs for travelling between England and East Africa were originally satisfied by becoming a flying boat passenger from Southampton to Kampala on Africa’s mighty Lake Victoria inland sea.

We would spend each night with stops and hotel accommodation on the French Riveria or on Sicilian waters, on Lake Como in Italy, at Alexandria on North Africa’s Mediterranean coast, on the River Nile at the ancient Egyptian city of Luxor or at desert-bound Khartoum before arriving at Kampala, nestled on the edge of the world’s biggest inland lake named in honour of Queen Victoria by hardy old-time explorers.

From Kampala, I would transfer to an ageing propeller driven Second World War Dakota aircraft that carried me to Tanganyika’s former German capital of Dar es Salaam on the azure blue Indian Ocean. On my first such occasion, my aircraft had to urgently abort its intended landing on the tarmac at Dar es Salaam’s secluded airport while an energetic rhino chased our aircraft’s shadow on the tarmac to a point where animal and man would have eventually met with frightening consequences.

My next even more disturbing experience was my being taken by a local taxi to “the best hotel in town” which was a brothel in disguise and had the words “pretty girls — “10 shillings” typed at the end of the dinner menu.  Quite unbeknown to me, I had nonchalantly ordered a dish of this fare as I thought it was the local equivalent to mouth-watering petite fours, those delicious toffee covered fruits found in plush Parisian restaurants.

I was unfortunately totally confused as  this particular establishment, The Chez Margot, was run by a dumpy French woman of the same name and I stupidly thought she had translated her tasty offerings for the sake of the many young just-out-of-school English government officers in training who appeared to me to live there permanently!

On this occasion, little did I also know that I would soon be pitched into the Mau Mau rebellion in neighbouring Kenya,  followed by having to report on 12 more wars and social upheavals between Cairo and Cape Town. These big news events included the Suez Crisis and the Congo disturbances where I was under attack by forces under the control of Cuba’s notorious Communist terrorist, Chez Guevara, employed by Soviet Russia to liberate Africa. This particular incident later ended in me completely losing my sight in one eye.

A lack of modern communications technology was also the cause of my arrest by British Colonial officers at Maseru airport in Basutoland’s high mountain country when I followed British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, on his well-known “Winds of Change” tour down Africa, heralding the end of British Colonialism.

I had to deviate from the tour at one stage to cover another important news event in South Africa and had to charter a small aircraft to take me from Johannesburg to Maseru. My pilot, my photographer and I were advised by the local air controllers to arrive at our destination by 11am at the latest as the primitive Maseru airstrip had no radio control and the Prime Minister’s aircraft would land there at 12pm the same day.

We duly arrived over Maseru but were immediately greeted by volleys of fired pistol shots warning us that the airstrip was most definitely closed. My pilot’s only comment was “we can’t not land as we do not have sufficient fuel to take us to the nearest airport some 400 miles away.” With a gulp of air and gritted teeth, I told him to “land and to hell with the consequences.”

We duly landed, and our aircraft had hardly come to a stop when we were surrounded by a score of armed police and soldiers, were forced at gunpoint to leave the aircraft and were pushed into a paddy wagon and taken to the local watch house.

There, we were told we had been arrested because we had endangered Macmillan’s life as his aircraft was early and had arrived only minutes after our very nasty welcome to the landlocked British colony and enclave within South Africa. Our aircraft was also impounded.
After many hours of heated haggling, we managed to calm down the very heated situation and establish our identities before being released but our pilot was charged with having severely ignored airport instructions.

As a roving correspondent, one has to be ready for literally anything that may overtake you. But little did I plan for my arrest in Ghana for merely speaking with a local about its newly seated President, Kwane Nkrumah. I had met my informant in a bar and the bartender — apparently a tip-off man for the Ghana Security Police — had quietly reported our conversation. On this occasion, I had to spend a weekend in gaol before being released following diplomatic interventions and with a threat to leave the country and never return.

Another example of the many serious difficulties that face the average foreign correspondent each day was my interrogation by a bevy of South African police after I had been present at the attempted assassination of South Africa’s one -time Prime Minister, Hendrik Verwoerd.

That event occurred in 1960 when the country was in the middle of a national State of Emergency and I and a couple of other journalists went to the opening of that year’s Rand Easter Show in Johannesburg. We attended the event as the Prime Minister was to make an official opening speech and we guessed he may have some important statement to impart to a politically unsettled country.

On arrival at the show, I and my companions were ushered to a Press box within 10 metres of where the Prime Minister and his bodyguard were seated. There, I met a well-known socialite and businessman, John Pratt, who I had previously interviewed, and we exchanged a few pleasantries.

After Prime Minister Verwoerd had officially declared the show open without any startling national announcement, we journalists — with the exception of one newcomer to our business — strode a few feet away to a member’s coffee bar. 

While having our drinks, I heard three sharp cracks like those made by a wagon driver’s whip. As this was an agricultural show, I naturally thought the noise had come from a nearby cattle ring. But within seconds, the young new journalist we had left behind called our urgent attention by shouting “Verwoerd has been shot.”

This ghastly event was somewhat hidden from our view at the coffee bar and I and my companions immediately ran back to the scene. There, we found the Prime Minister slumped on a table in front of him with blood gushing out of a gunshot wound through his right cheek. Next to him, also slumped as if he was dead, was his bodyguard, a Colonel Richter. As I took in the ghastly scene, Johannesburg’s current Mayor, Ian Maltz, was wrestling a gun off Verwoerd’s would-be assassin.

With a couple of other people, I rushed forward to assist the Mayor — only to find that the man with the gun was my acquaintance, John Pratt, who I had spoken to only an hour earlier.

Within a few minutes of the shooting, a horde of police, security guards and ambulance men arrived to apprehend my previously cheery Pratt and to save the Prime Minister’s life. Verwoerd fortunately took one or more revolver bullets through his cheek, missing his teeth, jawbone and brain. He was hospitalised for a time, only to be later murdered in Parliament in Cape Town by a paid government messenger who stabbed him to death.

My friendly conversation with Pratt that day caused me to be repeatedly and heavily interrogated by South Africa’s top security chief and others who had suspected that we newsmen knew more about Pratt’s murderous plan and the revolver he had carried hidden in a breast pocket.

Pratt was charged with attempted murder and was sent to an asylum for life where he eventually died by his own hand.

But what of the new journalist who had caught our attention? As Desmond Bagley, he later became relatively famous as the author of 14 well-known adventure novels and successful Hollywood film scripts, including the widely read “The Golden Keel.”

Financed by the repeated very successful publication of his books, Bagley later retired to Britain where he bought a castle on Guernsey Island before passing on in 1983 at a relatively young age.

But he probably gained more from the Prime Minister’s attempted assassination that day than any of us present at the scene. He had always stuttered badly, which was an impediment to his journalistic activities, but the shock of actually seeing Verwoerd shot right before him caused him to lose most of his fairly serious speaking problem.