As I hunch down into my flak jacket, I am asked: 'What do you think about Hiddink? I think he'll be a good manager', writes CHRIS STEPHENin Dafiniyah, Libya
THE HUGE pall of black boiling smoke hangs high in the sky over the highway out of Misurata as we drive towards the front line, the crump of artillery very close. It is early morning. News has come through that Gadafy’s forces have launched an attack on Dafiniyah, the shell-shattered village that lies at the easternmost end of the Misurata pocket – and that is where the smoke was coming from.
As we get nearer the smoke climbs higher and the shelling louder until finally we are right underneath it, outside a mosque converted into a field ambulance station. As we jump out and head for the overhang of the front balcony, a battered black jeep screams down the road from the front line, its bonnet draped with the mangled blood-soaked body of a Gadafy fighter displayed like a hunting trophy.
There are fist pumps and shouts of “Allah Akbar” from the Shabab – or ‘Young Fighters’ as the rebel soldiers call themselves – clinging to the sides. And then a polite instruction from Mustafa Adil, one of a clutch of young medics, most of them medical students in green surgical scrubs, to please not take any photographs. We obey and the jeep roars off, the Shabab yelling that they had not only stopped the Gadafy advance but turned it back.
Then a radio call comes in to say a fighter is injured. Adil jumps into a grey ambulance and is off. My friend Eduardo de Flores, a Spanish photographer, accepts an invitation from some soldiers to go with them across to the frontline. My own nerve fails as a shells crash into some trees across the road.
“You are English?” asks Faras Mohammed (20) who has yet to start medical school – the rebellion came just before enrolment. In three months he has dealt with more trauma cases than many surgeons will in their lifetime. Possibly sensing my nerves as I hunch down into my flak jacket, he asks: “Do you follow Premier League?”
“Er, yes.”
“My team is Chelsea.”
“Mine too.”
“What do you think about Hiddink? I think he will be a good manager.”
A long burst of heavy machine gun fire sounds somewhere in front of me, my eyes scanning the road as four black jeeps crowded with Shabab hurtle past, the men giving V-for-victory signs.
“I’m sure he will.”
“I think Drogba will go. He is getting too old.”
As a series of howls announce the arrival of a chain of mortar shells that land with dry thumps, I couldn’t have given a damn about the prospects of my beloved Chelsea’s star centre forward. A loud crash, very near, has us both backing to the imagined safety of a stone column.
“Maybe we should go inside?” he suggests. Slumped down inside amid the cushions by the wall of the dark cool mosque, Muhammad sets out the strategic situation: the Gadafy forces are short of quality, having taken a pounding from Nato and three months of battles with rebels. Now the rebels are chasing them. What Gadafy is clearly not short of is artillery, and the building shakes to more loud crashes.
Venturing back to the porch, I watch as ambulances race away and return with two lightly wounded fighters. Then the radio crackles: the grey ambulance has been hit. Adil had been struck in the head by shrapnel. Another ambulance is rushing him to the main hospital in Misurata.
More howls, each ending in a crash. The howl, followed immediately by a series of sharp barks, is the most terrifying. “If you hear ‘boom-wow’, it means it is going out,” says Hamed Mustafa (23), with his Cheshire-cat grin. “If you hear ‘wowwww-boom’, that means it is coming in.”
The cacophony seems mostly of the wow-boom variety, but no one apart from myself seems concerned. “We believe, that is how we do it,” says Muhammad. “This is why we can stand there and not run away. We believe in Allah, he will be with us.”
And his family? His expression changes. “My parents, they are asking me don’t come here, my mother, sometimes she cries.”
This triggered a confession from Mustafa. “I’m always scared. Always I’m so sad.”
“But you’re smiling.”
“I am crying inside and smiling outside. You do this to show you are okay. But I’m so nervous, I’m not very well now, I need a doctor.” So why do you come here day after day?
“The Shabab need me.”
Then the world explodes. It is the loudest sound I’ve ever heard. Brave or not, there is a mass rush for the door, everyone – including me – shouting Allah Akbar as we tumble over ourselves on to the floor, then laughing hysterically.
Eduardo returns, bathed in sweat from his flack jacket, to report the headlong rout of Gadafy forces and the suicidal bravery of a unit of Shabab he had been with – one man so excited he ran into the road and unloaded a heavy machine gun at the enemy, stopping only when he ran out of bullets. The rebels have brought recoilles rifles that they are unloading on the enemy running headlong for the town of Zlitan.
Word comes that the medics are needed at the field hospital, seven wonderful kilometres behind the front line and its infernal shelling.
We arrive to find a bearded fighter lying on a stretcher, blood leaking from a bandaged head wound and dribbling into two pools on the floor.
The medics jump to it, one holding a suction device in his mouth, another pumping air into his mouth with a plastic bottle that doubles as a bellows. Instructions are shouted, surgical kit grabbed from pre-arranged boxes.
The machine registering a pulse starts to flat line. A medic jumps up on the stretcher, knees astride the patient, and bashes his chest with great force. A minute of frantic activity passes, then by some miracle life returns. More bandages are applied and the patient is wheeled outside and loaded into an ambulance for the drive to Misurata and proper care.
Five minutes later it is back, the patient has gone into trauma. Once more they struggle to get his heart going. A medic repeats the chest massage, the man’s eyes open slightly, and blood pumps out from his nose.
A word is spoken and all activity stops. The doctors stand back. Their patient is dead. A heavy-set man in a brown shirt, a friend of the dead man, is led outside, a doctor’s arm around his shoulder.
We are invited outside to join a group of medics for small glasses of hot sweet tea – the best I have ever tasted. A young doctor, Mohamed Teeka, sitting on a battered park bench, fixes me with fierce dark eyes.
“Where Apache?” he asks. “Where Nato?”
A good question. Nato had promised to unleash the Apaches on Gadafys forces whenever they showed themselves. And here they were showing themselves. As the shells and grad rockets rained down, however, the blue sky remained empty.
I was asked the same question in Benghazi, from an official of the rebel National Transitional Council who wanted to know why Nato’s support had been so selective. “Either Nato protects us, or else lift the arms embargo, let us buy the arms we need.”
For the time being Nato has decided to refuse either option. By day’s end five rebels are dead and 25 are wounded. One Nato source said it had no mandate to offer close air support unless civilians are in danger – a distinction lost on the Shabab who know that unless they do the bleeding, Gadafy will advance and carry out his promise to butcher their families.
Other doctors intervene, assuring me they have no complaint: without Nato air power there would be no Misurata and everyone would be dead. Then they ritually thank Eduardo and myself for braving the shelling to “tell the world” the situation.
It is time to leave. We hitch a ride in the back of a pick-up with two fired-up muscular Shabab in the cab, sharing the flatbed with a broken mortar that they wanted to get fixed in time to rejoin the battle.
Back in Misurata that evening there is some better news. Adil’s head wound is not serious, and he has discharged himself, not wanting to take up a bed. He will be back at the frontline within three days, such is the shortage of medics.