I probably don't have much to say about the bombings in London that you probably haven't already seen elsewhere.
The media coverage has been naturally irresponsible (on CNN
international, which I can get here: linking the bombings to the G8
meetings or the Olympic announcement without any evidence whatsoever;
repeatedly trying to elicit feelings of anger and hate from the
survivors; treating this one ratings-grabbing incident as if it's the
only thing that happened on Earth for the last 48 hours; etc.). The
politicians have been entirely predictable in seizing on the tragedy to
advance whatever their position was before the event. Comments from
fellow Americans I've encountered have been deeply disappointing,
occasionally even calling for nothing short of genocide against entire
peoples they know little about.
All of this is pretty much what you'd expect, I guess. It's all bullshit as usual. And I don't know what I'd add.
But I do know somebody with a more direct experience, and what he has
to say gives me a bit of hope. Maybe it'll do the same for you.
It's a measure of how small this planet really is, once you start
wandering a little, that at the moment I first heard of the tragedy, I
was actually wearing a shirt with the British Transport Police logo.
It's a recent gift from my Aussie friend Jono, who is currently working
for the BTP in London and just two weeks ago gave me the nickel tour of
the place.
Jono and I met up that afternoon, in fact, near his office, which is about a block from where the bus was blown up.
There's a shady little park right there. Jono tells me that this park
contains a peace memorial of the Hiroshima bombing and a statue of
Gandhi.
These monuments are now accompanied by nearby bits of shrapnel from a civilian bus.
Goddammit. I am so sick of irony being this brutal.
After a bunch of tied-up international phone lines and bad cell
connections, I finally got to talk with Jono tonight. It feels like
the kind of evening you'd buy your friend a whole series of beers and
sit around just venting.
The guy has a right to vent. Jono and his office mates were not only
the government agency most directly concerned with the tragedy, but
also physically dead damn in between all the big kabooming.
So Jono knows vastly more than I do about all this. What follow are
his words, from an email he sent to friends around the world to let
them know he's OK, which he has kindly allowed me to excerpt at length:
Some of you might not know that I have
been working for the British Transport Police since late last year
implementing some software. This means I was in the thick of it
yesterday when it all kicked off. My office is in BTP Force Head
Quarters in Tavistock Place.
We were in the office and there was a slight buzz going around. We had
heard there was a “collision between two trains at Kings Cross” (of
course this wasn’t correct) and that there were “multiple fatalities”.
Then all sorts of reports started coming through about gas explosions
and of course terrorist attacks. We still didn’t know what exactly was
going on.
I was in my office when the bus bomb went off. The sound was like an
enormous thunderclap. When we heard the explosion, we didn’t need to
ask. We knew it had kicked off and that “it” was a terrorist attack.
The bus had exploded office at a spot where I walk past every day to
get to work. An hour earlier I had been walking past that same spot.
The explosion on the tube happened about 500 yards in another direction
between Russell Square and Kings Cross, putting us right up close to
two explosions.
Because we are a police station, the injured people started coming in
and anyone with first aid training was asked to go downstairs and
help. A couple of ladies arrived who were on the lower floor of the
bus, and they had somehow survived. One was deaf and the other had a
strong ringing sensation in her ears. Another guy was on the bus was
in constant tears. I hate to think what he saw.
I was amazed at the lack of panic from everyone. The cops were
amazing. Words cannot describe how calming they were. If you didn’t
know, it might have seemed almost like another day in the office. No
running, no screaming, no yelling…. just a bunch of dudes (and
dudettes) getting to the job at hand.
Nobody actually said anything; everyone just started reacting to
officers' needs. Clothing, equipment, food, hotels, taxis, flights,
rental cars -- whatever you could see they needed, you got for them.
Rules went out the window; people thought instantly about what they
could do to help.
I started by delivering food and water to the officers and the victims
at the sites. My first point of call was the bus explosion. I don’t
want to revisit what I saw because it was so horrific; needless to say
it’s not something I ever want to see again. I remember speaking to an
officer and saying, “I have some food and water for you and the
victims” to which he replied, “All the victims here are dead, mate.
It’s just us”.
I can’t even remember half the stuff I did yesterday, except that it
was a day of extremes, a day of extreme horror but then also a day of
extreme amazement. I saw the British people at their best. Whenever a
Brit would ask me about what I liked about them I would say that “you
can always count on them in a crisis” and I was right. The public was
amazing, all the bad service and negative attitude I complain about
went out the window. The question they all had now was “what can I do
to help you?”.
One day later I feel physically drained, like I’ve done a hard workout
at the gym (if I can remember what that’s like!). Every muscle aches,
but I’m one of the lucky ones. Lucky is my word for the day:
Lucky because my tube train goes through Edgware Road every day and I missed the bomb by about 45 minutes.
Lucky because I walk past where the bus explosion was every day and also I missed it by about an hour.
Lucky because I was in a position where I could do something to help.
Many people wanted to contribute but couldn’t; I was able to do
something, small as it was.
Most of all, I am lucky because I’ve been able to see the British at
their best. I will always remember this day and how they stood up and
said, “You haven’t beaten us, guys. It’s business as usual”.
I mourn the loss of life but I believe at least it made the sense of
community here stronger. It showed the legendary British resolve in
adversity, something people speak of often but you don’t get a chance
to see.
As for the terrorists I don’t feel anger for them -- I feel pity. Pity
that they are ignorant enough to think that the taking of innocent life
somehow validates their arguments or that they might think this type of
activity will actually achieve something positive for them. I’m not
sure what it is they really expect to achieve but I do know that
yesterday’s actions just succeeded made this multicultural society much
stronger.
I don’t hear the average person on the street complain about Muslims,
or even blame Muslims. It’s not a consideration for us. We all know
and acknowledge that this is the work of a minority of idiots who act
in a name of a religion they have no right to take.
I guess than means that yesterday, Britain showed why the word “Great” often precedes it.
As an editor's note, Jono is the guy from whom I learned my love of
cricket, and the Aussies have been losing to the British side a lot
lately. So Jono praising the British at the moment is a bit like Nixon
going to China. Means something.
Once again, the instinct of hundreds of people when confronted by
crisis was to help in any way they could. And despite what the TV is
going to try to hammer into our brains, that instinct remains properly
color-blind.
This is a very small planet, and getting smaller. I am writing you
this from a ship docked in the Baltic Sea, uploading these words via an
extremely slow but remarkable (to me) satellite uplink. Unimaginable
not long ago.
I have spent much of the last week talking with people who until a few
years ago I had been instructed by my government to fear, now finding
them to be more like Americans in many ways (good and bad) than my most
granola-munching liberal whimsy would have thought likely.
I don't have much else to add.
I just hope that someday peace memorials to bomb victims and statues of Gandhi won't have any more goddam irony.
Bob Harris is currently visiting Europe on an extended vacation with his partner Jane Espenson.
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