Contentedly sitting in the White Horse, enjoying a casual pint and reminiscing about his time at St Anne’s, Oliver Poole mixes excited chat about his newborn baby with talk about his five gruelling years in Baghdad. It’s hard to believe that somebody who has witnessed pure horror is able to speak in such an easy, almost carefree manner.
“I was reading an article about those journalists who had been in Baghdad.” Poole begins. “And there was this photograph with it. It circled the heads of everyone sitting by the poolside of some hotel in the Green Zone.
Next to these circles were little arrows. And they read – ‘kidnapped,’ ‘post traumatic stress’ or just… ‘’shot.”
As the first British daily news reporter to travel with the US Army, Poole endured the toughest posting the Daily Telegraph could hand him: Iraq Correspondent. Poole was able to experience the war at astonishingly close quarters and, having survived unscathed, recounts everything in his new book – ‘Red Zone’.
In his opening chapter Poole describes his decision to return to war-torn Iraq after his initial tour in 2003. “It was whilst I was playing some pool in Hackney that I realised with utter certainty I wanted to go back. Even surrounded by people enjoying their Saturday night out, I could not forget the bodies I had witnessed.”
During the interview, I tried to gather an insight into the mind of old Oxonian turned war reporter. What exactly was it like to live in Baghdad? How does that affect the way Poole looks at human nature? And what does it feel like returning to Britain?
“Once I began to live permanently in Iraq, there was nothing more astonishing for me than coming back to Britain and seeing everybody carrying on as normal” Poole explains. “I’d get on a plane in Amman and would be on the tube in about four and a half hours. For the first few days, I’d derive complete wonder and fascination at every day normalities of life back in England…It was kind of good to know that despite everything, things were carrying on as normal back home.”
Poole admits that after witnessing events in such candid detail, the adjustment wasn’t always that simple. “I’d be really intolerant of small complaints-a friend getting worked up about her mother-in-law or somebody chuntering about a burst boiler. Luckily I had enough self-awareness to realise this was my problem, not theirs, and I had to just keep my mouth shut and deal with it.”
More than anything, ‘Red Zone’s’ uniqueness is in Poole’s closeness to the people of Iraq. “Despite everything they’re no different from us”, he says. “The astonishing thing about speaking to people in a war zone is that they still chat about the same things. How their business is going. How their kids are doing at school. Their ambitions-what they’re going to make for supper. It’s become a bit of a cliché, but it’s said that there’s no Iraqi you can’t speak to about Beckham for two and a half hours-everybody has an opinion on him.”
With so many Iraqi friends, Poole was able to associate the war not just with horrendous atrocities but with a heightened respect for the goodness in people. “Everything was completely stripped down-people were reduced to complete rawness. All relationships involved risk. People were putting themselves at risk when they invited me into their homes. I put myself at risk going there. I trusted them not to contact somebody and get me kidnapped, and they trusted my discretion. It’s a strong bond.”
Before Poole arrived in the war zone, his expectations of the reality of war were mainly derived from war films: “I watched all these films. I think it’s a male thing, but I always wondered how I’d react if I was getting shot at.” After his time in Baghdad, Poole says that the reality of war is undeniably different from its portrayal in cinema.
“There are two main things you’re not prepared for”, he explains. “Firstly, wars don’t happen in isolation. The fighting occurs in people’s lives. Where they were born. Where their grandparents were born. Where their favourite restaurants were. Where they’d bought their favourite clothes from. The second thing is that the sophistication of modern warfare means that war’s more and more anonymous. Snipers can pick people off from three quarters of a mile away. Tanks can fire from two miles away. It’s not personal. The first thing people know about it is that they’re dead.”
In 2006 the Daily Telegraph closed down Poole’s office. After five years of war correspondence and two books describing his experiences, what did Poole feel he’d achieved? “I don’t claim to have made any huge difference, but I’ve come away with pride,” Poole muses. “Nobody else was there-they’d all pulled out. It was just me and the Times. There was all this bollocks coming from Blair and Bush, and in my own little way it felt good to be able to provide some sort of factual content. It was just a pebble in the ocean. But it felt good.”
‘Red Zone’ is available for £12.99 from Blackwells or www.reportagepress.com. Part of the proceeds go to International PEN.
