Battle stations

With conflict in Iraq looming, the BBC has been sending journalists on safety-training courses. Fergal Keane reports on getting ready for war

Until one pivotal moment, I'd never thought too deeply about my own safety. I went to lots of dangerous places and saw lots of war victims. But the idea that I might ever cross the line between observer and victim was, if not unthinkable, at least a scenario I didn't want to contemplate. Bad stuff happened to other people. Then came a fateful afternoon in a township east of Johannesburg. Hundreds of people were dying in the ongoing war between the African National Congress and the followers of Chief Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party.

That afternoon, a large posse of camera crews, print reporters and photographers was accompanying some ANC leaders on a fact-finding tour of the townships. As we passed near an Inkatha stronghold, shots rang out. I headed for the cover of a wall next to some abandoned houses. A group of ANC gunmen appeared and began to return fire in the direction of the Inkatha base. The next thing I became aware of was a group of men half dragging, half carrying a body. As they came closer I recognised the man they were dragging. Abdul Sharrif was a freelance photographer and one of the kindest, gentlest souls in the Johannesburg press corps.

The men were pulling him out of the line of fire, but I don't know what effect the rough handling had on his wounds. He had been shot in the back and was in a very bad way. Abdul was dead on arrival in hospital.

Following this experience, I said yes to every safety course the BBC offered. Certainly practical experience in places such as Angola, Afghanistan, Rwanda and Sri Lanka was important, but I believe the BBC was right to insist that everybody who is deployed to conflict zones had to undergo safety training courses. The courses on Battlefield First Aid and Hostile Environments were invaluable. They were run by salty ex-military men, who were given the unenviable task of turning me into someone who might conceivably be able to save my own or somebody else's life. The hazards I learned about on those courses had to do with conventional warfare, for example how to react if a gunbattle breaks out around you, what happens if a colleague takes a round in the chest or is hit by shrapnel, what to do if you are confronted by drunken gunmen on a lonely Bosnian road.

But now the possibility of a new conflict in the Gulf and the threat of al-Qa'ida present an entirely different range of hazards: chemical and biological weapons. The BBC has been sending its staff on CBR – chemical, biological and radioactive – courses since the Gulf war, but with the renewed threat of war against Iraq there has been an upsurge in media organisations seeking training. The president of CNN International, Chris Cramer, recently said media organisations that couldn't afford the cost of training shouldn't send their staff into dangerous environments. Most of the major broadcasting organisations and newspaper groups now provide training and offer counselling for staff operating in war zones.

There were about 20 of us on the CBR course I attended last month. We spent two days learning about what various chemical and biological agents can do to the human body, and what we could do to avoid the danger. The man who runs the courses is Dave Butler, a former soldier who works for Bruhn NewTech, a private company which operates from MoD premises in the English countryside. "Making people aware of the dangers posed in these environments can go a long way towards ensuring they don't harm their health in the short or long term," he says. Butler and his colleagues have already trained in excess of 1,000 journalists from a wide range of media outlets and demand for places on the courses is constant.

He was too polite to say so, but I suspect Butler has been shocked by the level of journalistic ignorance about the dangers posed by weapons of mass destruction. On a trip with a BBC team to cover a nuclear accident in Japan, he saw one Japanese reporter using a handkerchief to cover his mouth, not realising that contamination was still going in through his eyes.

"I have heard some classic sayings from journalists who've operated in these kinds of environments. They say things like 'I was only smelling it not breathing it' or 'The smell here is really bad we won't stay long'". The truth is the slightest exposure can have serious health consequences.

The Bruhn NewTech course is broken down into a mix of illustrated lectures and practical exercises. We were shown examples of what these weapons can do: mustard gas attacks the skin and inner linings of the body and is carcinogenic; smallpox is a viral infection that is immune to antibiotics, covers you in terrible lesions and kills up to 30 per cent of those infected. These are only two of the potential delights that might lurk in Saddam's armoury.

My own bumbling incompetence (and that of several colleagues) was exposed when we had the mock gas attack. Releasing smoke into the atmosphere, Dave Butler shouted "gas, gas", at which we were supposed to immediately don our gas masks. On the first try I was slow and... dead. Second time around, slightly quicker but still dead. However, by the following day when Dave shepherded us into the sealed room for our "live" test with teargas, I was competent, able to change breathing apparatus without gulping in any of the noxious gas. That was entirely down to Butler's patient teaching.

We were also shown how to give first aid to ourselves or colleagues in the event of contamination. All staff deployed to the Gulf in the event of a war will be issued with full CBR kit – the new lightweight suits, gas masks, gloves and boots.

But how much difference does the training really make?

"A few days of training isn't going to offer you all-round protection – of course it isn't – but it may help you to keep out of harm's way, see potential danger more quickly and have a better idea of what evasive action to take," says the BBC's foreign editor, Jonathan Baker.

No sane person feels safe when contemplating the threat of chemical or biological weapons. But I do feel considerably wiser. What I've learnt may just make the difference between life and death.

The writer is a BBC Special Correspondent