Friday 7th September - Feeling reflective

‘How was your summer?’ ‘Great, we went to France, Spain, Italy, Thailand…’. Kids well, work OK, sun shining, loving the Olympics and Paralympics…. Life’s good. Do we all know how lucky we are? I often think the greatest lesson I have learned from filming in India, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Angola and so on is just how extraordinarily fortunate I am – and how most of you too. We don’t spend hours collecting water from streams; we don’t eat a meagre diet; we can get on planes; we can go on holiday and laze on a beach; our kids don’t die of diarrhoea. Why am I a bit reflective today? I get the daily news reports out of Afghanistan – and it’s hard to bear. A war – and it is a war – that barely gets a mention in the US elections (how must you feel if you are the family of a US service-person in Afghanistan??). A war that, daily, kills and maims. The following is one random report that, like many others, touched and saddened me. I was in New Zealand earlier this year screening my Haydn and my Mir films. Such a beautiful country – and so far from Afghanistan. How did those Kiwi soldiers feel flying away from their homeland on a great, scary adventure? Excited? Reluctant? Scared? I’m sure, once they got there, they soon fell in love with the landscape and the people. And there they died.


The three New Zealand soldiers killed in Afghanistan last Sunday have been welcomed home in a ramp ceremony, with a memorial service to follow at Burnham.

An all-female group of army pallbearers carried the body of Lance Corporal Jacinda Baker off an air force Hercules, in a poignant ramp ceremony at Christchurch airport. Lance Cpl Baker, 26, an army medic from Christchurch, was the first female New Zealand soldier killed in a combat zone since the Vietnam War when a roadside bomb killed her, Corporal Luke Tamatea, 31, and Private Richard Harris, 21, last Sunday in Afghanistan. A guard of honour greeted the Hercules carrying their bodies as it touched down on Thursday afternoon. Soldiers, chaplains and close family boarded the plane to pay their respects privately. As the caskets were carried off to hearses soldiers performed a haka. The three soldiers killed on Sunday were part of the 140-strong New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Bamyan province. Two weeks earlier two other PRT members Lance Corporals Rory Malone and Pralli Durrer, both 26, were killed in a firefight in the same northeast area of the province. Chief of Army Major General Tim Keating said he was privileged to stand beside the families of Cpl Tamatea, Lance Cpl Baker and Pte Harris, and "honour their sacrifice with the dignity and respect they deserve". "I pay tribute to their selfless courage and sacrifice that they have made in the name of world peace," Maj Gen Keating said. Allied commanders, including US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff General Martin E Dempsey and commander of the International Security Assistance Force General John R Allen, were among those to farewell the three New Zealanders this week at a ramp ceremony at Bagram air base.

Final arrangements are being made for a memorial service expected to be on Saturday at Burnham Military Camp. The families are expected to hold private funeral services later next week.

An Incident

There were two doors – an In and an Out. They were clearly marked. The Out had that familiar red circle with a white line. I couldn’t miss it. Big official building on Capitol Hill, central Washington DC. Very Roman – all big walls and columns. Police cars and blocked-off roads. A city in fear of terrorist attack. Two doors and I was there for a TV interview about war in Afghanistan, poverty & education in Afghanistan, a young boy’s life in Afghanistan. Someone came out of the Out door and while it slowly closed I nipped in. ‘Other door, sir!’ A large man in a crisp blue shirt with official letters across the chest as well as keys and phones and maybe even a gun. ‘Other door’. ‘So sorry’, I said and started to walk to the desk. ‘Out of the Out door, and come back in the In door’. ‘You’re joking’, I said, knowing he wasn’t. ‘You want me to go out that door and come back in the one next to it?!’ ‘That, sir, is what you will do’. Another crisp blue shirt took up position behind me. And another gazed my way, aware of a slight disturbance and eager to somehow participate. Now some things wash over me; I don’t care. But this kind of petty nonsense always winds me up. ‘That, sir, is the height of stupid-ness!’ I decided in a split second not to say ‘stupidity’ as ‘stupid-ness’ sounded more appropriate. ‘That door sir is the way in’. I saw the producer of my interview plead with her eyes for me to swallow my indignation and retrace my clearly all-too-vital steps. I did, laughing out loud to show I had the moral high ground. The man who was there to provide security had, in his incredibly small way, done quite the opposite. Crisp blue shirts no longer suggest order and calm; they now say to me needlessly aggressive, short-sighted and stupid. Then I talked on TV about the war in Afghanistan.