Retired journalist recalls war horror

A RETIRED Northside journalist has recalled his time reporting on the famine and civil war in Nigeria 50 years ago in a new online podcast documentary series.

Veteran reporter Des Mullan (86), from Howth, was interviewed for ‘S.O.S: How Ireland Helped a Nation’, a new three-part podcast documentary from Irish aid agency Concern Worldwide.

Des told of the extraordinary response from Irish people to the crisis in Biafra, East Nigeria where, at the height of the crisis, an estimated 10,000 men, women and children were dying every day from hunger and disease.

“They brought out their poor little bodies and buried them straight away. It was horrific,” recalled Des, who saw thousands of people searching for food after they were displaced by shootings, bombings and a blockade that prevented food being imported.

The humanitarian disaster caused by the Biafran war resulted in the formation of Concern and – with reports from journalists like Des – galvanised Ireland to help with the relief effort.

“The response from the Irish people was incredible,” said Des, who at the time, flew into Biafra from São Tomé Island off the Nigerian coast on a “secret flight” that landed on a narrow makeshift runway with its lights off to avoid detection and attacks from fighter jets.

“Occasionally there was a crash and pilots were killed,” he said.

Des first went to war-torn Biafra in July 1968 and spent a month  sending harrowing reports back to the Evening Herald, Irish Independent and Sunday Independent with images taken by late photographer John O’Neill.

Not long after landing, Des saw half-mile-long queues of extremely thin and emaciated adults with children that looked like “little skeletons” waiting for treatment from volunteer Irish doctors and missionary nuns and priests in one of the 650 refugee camps that dotted the region.

Food was extremely scarce and he recalls on his second trip to Biafra how he innocently brought a large supply of chocolate for children – which he regretted as hundreds of hungry Biafrans surrounded the vehicle he was in hoping to get some of the sweet treats.

He was then confronted with cries of desperation and despair from a mother, who was too late to reach the vehicle.

“We were leaving and from the mission you had to drive along a long avenue – a boreen – and crossing this big field was this poor woman and she had about three or four children and was trying to hurry, but we had nothing left,” he recalled.

“Fr Kevin [Doheny] said: ‘look, there is no use stopping, we have nothing to give them,’ and the poor woman stood there crying. I always break down when I think about it.”

• This is Concern’s first podcast series and can be listened to at concernworldwide.libsyn.com/