← From Our Own Correspondent
From Our Own Correspondent
Mort Pour La France
00:28:11
The news -- with added insight, colour and perspective. In this edition, the unsung up...
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Transcript12 lines
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You've downloaded from our own correspondent, which was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady.
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Hello. Today, where have all the children gone? In the self proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, They've left fearful of an assault by Ukrainian government forces. Patriotic hero, dangerous revolutionary or American stooge? Libya's split over the man who says he'll rid the country of its Islamist militias. Medieval combat is back on the plane in Spain. But why haven't the Russians been invited? And is it espionage, seduction, money laundering or just plain catering? We're in a North Korean restaurant finding out what really goes on behind the dog meat casserole. Thousands of Second World War veterans are this morning making their way home from France after the ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of the D Day landings. The Queen and President Obama were among those who paid tribute to the thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen who died capturing the beaches of Normandy in 1944. The French have also been remembering their citizens killed in the Allied bombing raids which helped bring the war to a close. Historians say 57,000 of them were killed in those bombardments. This compares with 60,000 British civilians who were killed in air raids by the German Luftwaffe. It was, says John Laurenson, who lives near Paris, a French blitz inflicted by France's allies.
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My wife was breastfeeding our baby when she was startled by two men who appeared at the window. They'd heard there was a British person living here. Yes, I said, coming down the stairs. Monsieur Laurenson, yes. They introduced themselves. Lt. Col. Duprez and Warrant Officer Cinquet, war veterans. This year is the 70th anniversary of D Day, they explained. And we want to to honour the two British airmen buried in our village cemetery. They always have a ceremony to mark the Allied victory in World War II, and this year they wanted the British to take part too. They'd drawn up a list of all the British people in the village. Sixteen of us, apparently. They got a British flag and everything. Would I like to take part? How nice. I said. Yes, please. In fact, I'd known about our dead airmen ever since we moved here. But the cemetery where I discovered two well kept RAF gravestones must be a good place to rest in peace. Behind a line of lime trees and a handsome stone wall, on farmland where deer graze in winter and which in summer is a blaze of yellow rapeseed, quiet like it must have been after their Halifax bomber, hit by a German fighter, roared out of the sky and smashed into the hard earth of France. It was June 3, 1940. Four, three days before D Day, the Germans found five bodies in the wreckage and transported them to a military cemetery in Normandy. Local people found the other two and buried them here without the Germans knowing. The Gestapo were occupying an old mill house nearby, where, say the locals, they used to torture people. But I was told more than a hundred villagers came to our airmen's secret funeral. There are red poppies and white fern flowers in the fields by mid May. And then, just before D day, come the blue cornflo. In a bit of bucolic patriotism, we usually go with the children to put flowers on their graves. On June 3, in another village not far away, two families died when American bombs smashed into their farmhouse. It's a car park now. Two young boys who were in the street at the time were killed too, along with a donkey one of them was leading. But you know what the mayor tells me? No one ever talked about it. No one mentioned whose bombs did the killing either. This village, like mine, had its dead Allied serviceman, an American, secretly buried again in a grave the vil covered with flowers while the Germans were still here, and next to which they flew an American flag after they'd gone. So many of those thousands of French civilian deaths were caused by inaccurate bombing. When Bomber Command went for the marshalling yards by the Gare du Nord in Paris, for example, stray bombs killed 670 civilians, more than in the German bombardment of Coventry. But the Allies didn't only have wayward bombs, they sometimes had wayward tactics. In September 1944, the RAF reduced the port city of Le Havre to a pile of ash, killing some 5,000 people. British infantrymen overran the German fortifications at the port a few days later, but many believe they would have done that anyway. A long time ago, a girlfriend took me to have Sunday lunch with her family, who lived in a small town in Normandy. But before we'd even finished the soup, her mother had brought up the bombing of Le Havre. And it was only thanks to her father moving the conversation onto Rugby, that we managed to get through the meal with everyone still around the table. In my village, 30 or so villagers, French and English, bowed their heads and lowered flags by the tombs of Flight Officer C.D. taylor and Pilot V Kumar, who, incidentally, was Indian. And then we all went off to the French war memorial in front of the town hall, where school children sang the Marseillaise. War veteran read a long, long list of the local casualties of war. He paused as another man after each name intoned, maure pour la France died for France. It was like A drum roll. So many brave men and women died for France and died for freedom, which, as any French patriot knows, is the same thing. V Kumar died for France. So did C.D. taylor and the 55,000 other Allied bomb crew casualties. And the French civilians too. The boy with a donkey the family sat round their kitchen table, all morts pour la France. On D day, at least 2,500 Allied soldiers were killed, approximately the same number of French civilians too. They weren't heroes, perhaps, like our men who landed at gold and sword, but the French who died in that desperate struggle in Normandy, they too gave up a terrible sacrifice for liberty.
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And that was John Laurenson in France. The gathering of world leaders there for the D Day commemorations saw a flurry of diplomatic activity over the crisis in Ukraine. Messrs. Cameron and Hollande met the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, and urged him to stop interfering in Ukraine. Mr. Putin then talked to the man who this morning was sworn in as the new Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko. The west believes Moscow is backing an insurgency in some eastern Ukrainian cities. Steve Rosenberg, who's in one of them, Donetsk, says many there fear the consequences of being caught up in a power struggle between east and West.
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At the headquarters of the self proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, the Minister for information tells me about his holiday. I've just come back from East Germany, alexander Khryakov says excitedly. It was such fun. Among the minister's holiday adventures was a musical car journey down memory lane. I got chatting with a German taxi driver about the old days, alexander recalls. And before I knew it, the driver and I were singing the national anthem of communist East Germany. Then Alexander had taken part in an I Love East Germany festival. Not everyone's idea of holiday fun, perhaps, but then Alexander has fond memories of the German Democratic Republic. He did his military service there. He was a musician in the Red army band. Like Alexander Khryakov's East German holiday, the Donetsk People's Republic is in many ways a nostalgia trip. It calls its parliament the Supreme Soviet. Like parliament back in the ussr, the walls of its headquarters are festooned with dramatic posters From World War II imploring the Soviet people to rise up and kill the fascist aggressor. And when I speak to one of the leaders of the People's Republic, Denis Pushilin, he invokes the past to explain why Russian volunteers are coming to help pro Russia groups here fight against Kyiv. We and Russians, we're one people, he tells me. We were born in the same country, the Soviet Union. We grew up with the same ideals we have, the same heroes. It was our fathers and grandfathers who defeated the Nazis. But a glorious past doesn't guarantee a successful future. Kiev has labelled the Donetsk People's Republic and its sister breakaway state, the Luhansk People's Republic, terrorist organizations. It suspects that both are part of a Kremlin project to destabilize and divide Ukraine, and it has vowed to crush them. In recent days, Ukrainian forces have stepped up their military operation against the separatists in the east of the country. The city of Donetsk has remained relatively calm, but many people have left town, fearing that heavy fighting will break out here soon. Where have all the children gone? Pensioner Nadezhda Petrovna asks me. There are usually so many kids out enjoying the sunshine. I'm sitting with Nadezhda and her husband, Yuri Petrovich, on a park bench near the headquarters of the People's Republic. Like many of the people I've spoken to in Donetsk, Nadezhda and Yuri are critical of central government, but they don't believe that breaking away from Ukraine and will make their lives any better. Yuri is dismissive of last month's local referendum on independence from Kyiv. It's like children who shout out, we want to be more independent. We want to do everything ourselves, yuri explains. But those children still want their parents to feed them and buy them clothes. It's exactly the same situation. The People's Republic still expects Kiev to pay all our salaries and our pensions. Yuri used to be a coal miner until he had an accident down the mine and lost a leg. Now he receives a disability allowance. How is the People's Republic going to find the money to pay that? He wonders. I ask Yuri whether he'd like Donetsk region to become part of Russia. Russia already has lots of coal mines of its own, and it's closed many other ones down, Yuri tells me. Why would Russia want to take responsibility for us and for our coal mines too? But the leaders of the Donetsk People's Republic are counting on Moscow for help. We've asked Russia to dispatch a peacekeeping force, Denis Pushilin tells me. If there were Russian peacekeepers here and a no fly zone over our territory, this would help the situation. I ask Mr. Pushilin whether he thinks the inauguration of a new president in Kiev will. Will change the situation. Could negotiations with President Poroshenko resolve the conflict? Dialogue is possible, he replies, but only about two a prisoner exchange and the withdrawal of all Ukrainian military units from our territory. Kiev is unlikely to agree to that. For now, this conflict rages on the prospect of airstrikes and heavy artillery in their city and terrifies Nadezhda Petrovna and Yuri Petrovich. My neighbour told me that the Almighty had turned against us, nadezhda tells me. But that can't be true. He's never abandoned us. He loves Ukraine, and I believe that there will be peace in our land. We don't deserve to die.
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Steve Rosenberg in eastern Ukraine, it's been a week of gathering violence in Libya. In one incident near Benghazi, a former general who's launched an operation against Islamist militias survived an assassination attempt. A suicide bomber drove a car packed with explosives into a villa where Khalifa Hiftar and members of his staff were meeting. Three of his guards were killed. Mary Fitzgerald says the former army man is accused of having links with the CIA. He has the support of many Libyans, but he's also made many enemies.
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The crowd surged around the makeshift coffin as the chants rose higher on Tripoli's Martyrs Square. The clamor was against Ansar al Sharia, the hard line militia whose name was scrawled in the symbolic wooden coffin. Protesters carried it up to the ramparts of the square's landmark Red Fort before hurling it over. As the coffin smashed on the ground, a new cry went up, this time in support of Khalifa Heftar, the renegade general who has declared his own war against Ansar al Sharia and other Islamist militias. Go, go, Iftar. Show Ansir al Sharia what you can do. The crowd yelled. Among them was a young activist from Benghazi, the troubled eastern city where Haftar launched his offensive with air and ground assaults some weeks ago. The activist supports Heftar's actions, even though he has friends who are members of Ansar al Sharia. This is the only solution, he says. Benghazi has suffered too much. It's a frequently heard refrain across Libya as Heftar's campaign, which he has dubbed Operation Dignity, gathers support from a diverse bunch ranging from disaffected army, police and air force officers to politicians and tribal militiamen. All have united against what they perceive as a common foe in the powerful Islamist militias and their alleged political backers, whom Haftar accuses of hijacking the country's fragile democratic institutions. Haftar's offensive has triggered some of the deadliest violence, but also some of the largest demonstrations Libya has witnessed since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. More than 90 people have been killed in Benghazi alone. This is the worst we have seen since the revolution a medic told me, his voice cracking with emotion over the phone as he counted bodies in a morgue. The Operation Dignity slogan has taken on a wider resonance with a public fed up with lawlessness and the grip of militias. Over the past year, militiamen of different ideological stripes have briefly kidnapped the prime minister, repeatedly attacked the elected Congress, abducted foreign diplomats and blockaded eastern oil ports, slashing the country's main source of revenue. Three years after the uprising against Gaddafi began there, Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, finds itself pulled in several directions. Deteriorating security has resulted in a spate of assassinations that Iftar blames on the militias he is now targeting. The black flag associated with Ansar al Sharia and other radical groups can be seen fluttering over streets or painted on walls in some of Benghazi's poorer neighborhoods. US Surveillance drones are a regular sight and sound over the jittery city. On a recent visit to Benghazi, one of the tribal militiamen now cheering Heftar told me libya needs Assisi, a reference to the former Egyptian army chief whose military last year overthrew and elected Islamist president and cracked down hard on his Muslim Brotherhood. Heftar's name now dominates conversations in homes and cafes across Libya, but many are hostile towards him. Former allies say he is an opportunist, while others, including Islamists, accuse him of attempting a coup. Some locals question Haftar's tactics in dealing with militias whose members have deep roots in the city. Ansar al Sharia has transformed itself through charitable and religious work from a simple armed group into a broader social movement with a support base that runs the thousands. Ansar is of the people and for the people, one teenage member, an earnest university student with a wispy beard, told Libyan. Authorities have long been divided over whether such groups are best tackled through dialogue or force. Haftar has now tipped the balance on that debate. Ansir al Sharia has denounced his campaign as a war on Islam backed by the West. It is warning America not to interfere or it will face worse than the conflicts in Somalia, Iraq or Afghanistan. With foreign fighters streaming to Libya, Heftar has now survived an assassination attempt. But with both sides growing more belligerent, the stage is set for a long and bloody battle.
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And that was Mary Fitzgerald. Now I wonder whether you've been to one of those battle reenactments. There'll be lots of them taking place around the country this summer. For those taking part, it's an opportunity to dress up, have a day out, swish a sword, perhaps observing, of course health and safety requirements and celebrate and event which helped shape British history. Elsewhere in Europe, though, there can be somewhat tougher affairs, where the fighting can look distinctly realistic and where injuries can and do occur, as Tom Holland's been finding out in Spain.
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Standing on the great 15th century battlements of Belmonte, a castle so flamboyantly medieval that Charlton Heston was filmed there for the 60s Hollywood epic El Cid, the view is still one that Cervantes might have recognised. The interminable duns and khakis of La Mancha are the same that Don Quixote roamed across in his crack brained quest for adventure. On my drive south from Madrid, I'd seen wind turbines serried on the horizon and wondered if even Cervantes knight would have been mad enough to charge such giants. But at Belmonte there are still windmills. There are also convents and churches, stone gateways and winding streets. If you absolutely must dress up in armour, then I suppose it's as good a place as any to do it. Which was just as well. I'd come to Belmonte to attend what was grandly named the first International Medieval Combat Federation World Championships. To be honest, I wasn't expecting much. I'd been to battle reenactments before and always found them rather pointless. Making my way through the castle to the tournament ground, I saw nothing initially to change my mind. Women dressed as princesses chatting on mobile phones, check. Men in Robin Hood caps, check. Striped refreshment tents selling mead, check. I prepared to be, if not exactly bored, then at any rate justified in my mild hauteur. I could not have been more wrong. An opening ceremony, which fused Eurovision with Game of Thrones, saw national teams from as far afield as Japan and the US parade down the steep hill from the castle, trailed by pages and wimple clad wags. And then it was down to business. And what business? I knew that I'd been wrong in all my presumptions the moment I got to see my first piece of night on night action. Five massive Frenchmen taking on five equally massive Swedes. The action was a whole dimension away from the staged minuet of battle reenactments. It was a bit like rugby, only played in full armour. It was a bit like hockey, only with swords and maces. It was a bit like boxing, only with any form of contact up to and including smacking your opponent around the head with a poleaxe permitted. It was violent, it was intense, it was viscerally a sport. 30 seconds in and I knew I loved it. I'd come to Belmonte to cover the championships for Radio 4's Making History, with the aim of exploring what light the staging of combat in full armour today might shed on medieval tournaments. Plenty was the answer. When I talked to the contestants, I realised that they had come by an understanding of what it was to fight in plate and helmet that no amount of books could provide. But I soon realised as well that the championships were situated on the fault line of an altogether more contemporary question. The resurrection of medieval combat as a sport had begun in Russia and the Russians were notable by their absence from Belmonte. There had been, I soon discovered, an east west schism. For the Russians, it's about winning at all costs. Adam Navrot, the German captain, told me this more in sorrow than in anger, when not dressing in immaculate plate and eagle crested yellow surcoat. Adam runs a travel company in Berlin, but he studied the medieval Norman kings of Sicily at university and he has a specialist's fascination with chivalry. The Russians, I learnt, tend to be less keen on the ideal of knightly camaraderie. The previous year they had taunted the Poles by brandishing a regimental flag decorated with the hammer and sickle. They had complained about the presence of the Americans on the grounds that the US had no medieval history. Their chief administrator had once reached through the fence of the combat area and held up a Russian knight by his belt to prevent him from falling onto the ground altogether. More Putin then, than Sir Lancelot. But Adam and the other knights at Belmonte too, didn't really want to talk about it. They wanted to enjoy the moment, and I couldn't blame them. As the sun set, heraldic banners fluttered against the blood red sky and the lists were crowded with steel sheathed giants belabouring one another in a spirit of knightly friendship. There probably hadn't been a scene quite like it since the end of the Middle Ages. Certainly, all I could feel was very jealous. I would have given a great deal, I realised, to be taking part, if only I found myself thinking I weren't quite so lanky and weedy. But then again, it never stopped Don
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Quixote Tom Holland there amid the interminable duns and khakis of La Mancha. Now, North Korea is not known for offering outsiders many glimpses into its life and culture, but there is one exception to that rule. The Pyongyang restaurant chain. These eateries were launched in the 90s and you can now find them if you want to, in countries across Asia. They don't just provide visitors with North Korean food. And drink. They also feature nightly stage shows given by the waitresses. Ed Butler recently dropped into one of its larger outposts in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.
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I have travelled the world quite a bit, but I can honestly say that I've never encountered restaurant staff quite as talented as these. After depositing their plates of food, waitress after waitress stepped up onto the stage to deliver a series of virtuoso numbers. Young with her operatic arias, Gu on the violin, and Li Na with her remarkable whirling dervish routine, balancing a pot on her head. All of these performances were served up to a thumping electronic beat, while rose tinted images of the dear homeland flashed up on a screen behind them. I have to admit I became quite transported by it all, but perhaps this was the beer and the enthusiastic crowd who clapped and cheered throughout. We'd been served tasty but overpriced Korean dishes, dog meat, casserole and pine nut gruel among them. And there was a range of exotic $50 beverages flavoured with ginseng and sea cucumber, plus herbal pills, which the waitress told me really could cure anything. But the question is, and I suppose the reason many foreigners like me wander into this place, what exactly are we coming to be cured of? The night I went in was packed overwhelmingly with South Korean or Chinese expats, mostly large gangs of them, drunkenly flirting with the staff. The servers would dance elegantly between the tables in their colorful peasant smocks, smiling as they sidestepped the occasional groping hand of a client. It led me to ponder one circulating theory that this was all a complex form of espionage. The talented and attractive waitresses have been placed here to seduce high value visitors like me, perhaps to extract valuable state secrets. To test that idea, I ventured a conversation with Yong, the waitress serving me, who did speak some English. How are you? I broached. Where are you from? Pyongyang, she replied. Ok, so that was a pretty stupid question. How long are you here in Cambodia? Three years. I go home in one year. You like it here? You want to stay here? No, I miss Pyongyang, she replied. I wasn't sure, but did I detect a slight clenching of her jaw there? She was polite, but a little stiff. If this was seduction, I was Kim Il Sung. I tried a more direct approach. Where do you live? Upstairs. Gosh, how many of you live up there? A secret. It's a secret. She smiled icily and then more firmly as I moved to pull out my camera. No. No photos allowed. So instead I turned to an elderly South Korean doctor sitting nearby. He told me he'd recently been asked to treat a couple of the young ladies when they got sick. They were not normally allowed out, he said. They were all highly trained at the state arts college. He told me they were the most talented girls. But here they find themselves watched night and day. The waitresses watch each other. The chef is watching the waitresses. Someone's even watching the chef. I decided to do some Googling on my phone. Reports of defections from these places are actually pretty few and far between. The staff, of course, have families back home, and experts say that it could go very hard on them if anyone tried to run away. Although one or two restaurant managers had been known to abscond with bags of cash on those occasions, I learned restaurants had been shut down entirely. The working assumption, according to most reports, is that the Pyongyang chain is primarily there to make money to feed the North Korean leadership's desperate need for foreign currency. Some speculate that the restaurants are, in fact, directly under the wing of the secretive Bureau 39, an agency that allegedly launders cash for the government through ventures that include arms sales and methamphetamine production. But to be fair, there was absolutely no sign of that here. And anyway, given all the staff, pleasant decor and equipment, it occurred to me that this little place was hardly going to provide that much of a boost to the nation's struggling balance sheet. I turned back to the Korean doctor. What did he think? Could these women be spies? Or was this just a money laundering operation? He shrugged doubtfully. Maybe it wasn't about money or politics at all, he said. Maybe the North Koreans just want to put on a show, to smile and to sing. They just want to be loved. Maybe. I'm pleased to disclose that after some persuasion, one waitress, Li Na, did relent. She posed for a photo with me. In the picture, she can be seen smiling in her peasant frock. I'm smiling, too, in my jeans. And behind us, next to an epic mural of a rising Korean sun, stands another waitress watching us.
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And with Ed Butler enjoying, I think he was enjoying, a night out, North Korea style. We've reached the end of another edition. I'll be back with more stories from around the world on Thursday and on Saturday of next week. And I do hope you'll join us then. Goodbye.