1950’s Fallbrook,
California As a young kid, I hawked the local village newspaper, The Fallbrook Enterprise, on the street earning 5 cents a paper. My family struggled. My father had multiple sclerosis, and my mother did clerical work at the Naval Weapons Depot. When I began high school, I got a job as a janitor at the newspaper and eventually advanced to melting the lead used to print the newspaper, boiling and cleaning it so it could be reused. At the time, I was an avid reader and had a great thirst for stories about the WW II in the Pacific and Europe. I was also interested in working on the school newspaper. I was fascinated with writing and began to believe my future would be in journalism and that I wanted to be a war correspondent. I’m not really sure why, but I was confident I would become a foreign correspondent. Others had their doubts. I didn’t get good grades and routinely challenged authority. I was kind of rough around the edges.
One evening while I was pushing a broom around the newspaper’s print shop, the publisher asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. I was either a high school freshman or sophomore. I told him I was going to be a foreign correspondent based in London. He laughed and said, “Don’t set your sights too low.” Mr. Wilbur Mackey, my first mentor, was Foreign Editor of the Washington Post during WW II. He was the real deal. His guidance and recommendations over the years were invaluable. He stressed that I must work hard, be dedicated, determined, ambitious and never, never give up on my dream.
It took 8 years for me to get my journalism degree from San Diego State. I worked full and part time driving to Palomar College and later SDSU. The last few years as the Enterprise’s advertising manager since I was good at sales. After graduating, I interned at KOGO TV & Radio where I polished my writing skills. Then I was hired fulltime as a cameraman, film processor, film editor and scriptwriter at KFMB-TV in San Diego where I polished my skills with the help and guidance of collegues and friends. I progressed to be an on-air reporter at KEYT in Santa Barbara where I continued as a cameraman, film processor, film editor, scriptwriter, substitute anchorman and the Santa Barbara correspondent for KNX New Radio in Los Angeles. I also freelanced TV stories to two stations in Los Angeles. Mackey had encouraged me to learn everything I could from each job and use it to take me to the next step, to keep moving up and forward.
After nearly 3 years, I got offers from KABC, KNBC and KTTV. I chose NBC and after a year of street reporting in Los Angeles, I was promoted to State Capitol Bureau Chief in Sacramento. Occasionally I did stories for the Today Show and Nightly News. I continued polishing my skills, voice delivery, tight informative scripts, on-air presence and interviewing techniques.
My coverage area was Northern California. I covered the Capitol and breaking news, like the Patty Hearst kidnapping and bank robbery trial.
After a couple of years, I was the first broadcast reporter at the site of the kidnapping of students on a school ,bus from Chowchilla, California. My story led NBC Nightly News and followed by another the following night. During the daily morning conference call with all the NBC Bureaus and owned stations around the country, one of the New York brass asked “Who is that guy Mallory?” A producer in Burbank told him I wanted cover the civil war in Lebanon. The resident correspondent there was taking a 6-week break, and they asked me if I wanted to fill in for him.
In less than a week, I was on a first-class flight from San Francisco to London where I was briefed on my journey ahead and the situation and operations in Lebanon. From London I flew to Cypress, where NBC staff gave me more detailed briefings. It was late afternoon when I boarded a 50-foot motor sailor with four other journalists and we set off across the Mediterranean. I was 33 years old, had never been in combat and never shot at. I was about to step into it and I couldn’t wait. My dream was coming true.
We docked in Jounieh, Lebanon the following morning, about 12 miles north of Beirut. The area was controlled by Christian Militias. I was briefed and introduced to my camera crews who were all combat veterans of many wars. My primary camera crew was British and the following day we set off to cover a major siege of a Muslem/Palestinian suburb of Beirut. A few thousand civilians and fighters were trapped and under siege and pounded by artillery, mortar fire and automatic weapons. They were running out of food and water and they were desperate.
There were not many cars on the highway as we raced to the area in the early morning. There were several blown apart and burned-out wrecks of cars to swerve around. Our driver, Joseph, was driving very fast and I kept hearing explosions nearby and finally looked back and saw artillery rounds exploding behind us. Someone was shooting at us. My concern seemed naive compared to my crew’s nonchalance as they calmly sat in the back seat reading newspapers totally ignoring the explosions. Finally, we exited the highway and into a suburban area where very few structures were untouched by battlescars. Every time we crossed an intersection, snipers would open fire. As we got closer to the front lines, some faction shot mortars at us. Fortunately, they missed. Another routine day driving to work.
My first day in combat was scary as “heck”. The crew were clearly assessing my reaction. They needed to know if they could trust me when the fertilizer hit the fan. Despite my fear, I did my best to remain calm. The boys advised me to keep total control of my emotions. Fear can get you killed if you can’t control it. They said, never show fear to anyone. Considering what was going on around us, I clearly was going to get some practice
During my 5 weeks in combat, we had many close calls, frenetic scrambling for cover, hugging the earth trying to get flat. Our car was hit by two sniper’s bullets on one occasion. Two bullets barely missed my head as we ran across a street. We dodged mortar fire and dove into trenches containing dead bodies. We took refuge in basement shelters from artillery fire and sometimes automatic fire. I saw countless decaying bodies rotting here and there, fighters and civilians, women, men and children. I watch men being executed, gunned down, some in cold blood. There were many wounded and dying. It was pure chaos.
We would leave the action shortly after noon and return to our hotel which was several miles from the combat. I would then write the script and record the narration. The package, along with other journalists’ stories was handed over to the captain of a midsize boat that would travel overnight to Cypress. From there the package was shipped on a flight to London where the film was processed and edited and satellited to New York for that evening’s broadcast.
Exhausted and coming down from the adrenalin high, we would then have lunch, drink a few very cold beers and take a nap. The three major network teams would usually gather at a Jounieh restaurant each evening for drinks, dinner and discuss the day’s events, sometimes with a gallows humor to take the edge off the day’s events. Often this would last late into the night but, by 7:00 AM the following morning, we would be showered, shaved, fed and heading to the front.
This was an unforgettable experience. I knew that when my 5 weeks in Lebanon were done, I would have to return to the verbal squabbles under the Capitol dome and the mundane life of a Capitol reporter. But, I was determined to do everything possible to return overseas.
More than a year later the Beirut job opened up and I got the position of Bureau Chief/Correspondent. My girlfriend enthusiastically agreed to accompany me. The legendary Commodore Hotel became our home. It was the headquarters of the foreign press. The hotel was owned by a Palestinian Christian family and its superb manager, Fouad Salieh arraigned all the critical needs of journalists, safety, communications, electricity, water, food and a circular bar that was crowded every evening with journalists, diplomats, spies, aid workers, UN peace keepers, assassins. No other place could offer all this. We lived there for more than a year while I covered the situation with an Israeli invasion and sporadic and deadly conflicts between various factions and between the Syrians and Christian Militias. At times, thugs roamed the streets and it was pure anarchy as factions clashed with each other, destroying neighborhoods and lives as they battled for territory.
During this time, I began my in-depth education of Lebanon and the region during this time. I learned about the many factions, the power structures, the militias, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the streets, potential camera positions, access and potential escape routes in future combat. We regularly visited fighters in the trenches who were waiting for the next conflict to begin. My NBC team and I stayed busy in Lebanon and covered other stories in the region including interviews with Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat, King Hussain of Jordan, Israel’s President Perez, Libya’s Gaddafi and others.
About a year after we arrived in Beirut, Kathy flew to Athens, Greece, to stay with friends during a particularly dangerous time in Beirut. The Syrian army was battling with Christian militias as they exchanged artillery, tank, mortar, and automatic weapons fire, back and forth over and in the city. It was chaotic and lawless. On a day when my Greek camera crew and I came close to being killed I learned that my father had passed away in California I made a major decision about my future life. Upon returning to the Commodore, I telexed the NBC Athen Bureau and got through to Kathy, who typed, “Hi darling”. I typed back, “Do you want to get married?” She consented and about a year later we were married in the foothills above Sacramento on the anniversary of our first date.
After the wedding, NBC moved us to London where we lived for almost 4 years. From this base, I covered stories in Europe, but, my primary work continued in the Middle East and particularly Lebanon where I had developed excellent contacts. In June of 1982, the Israelis invaded Lebanon with the objective of driving the Palestinian armed forces out of Lebanon. They relentlessly bombed the Palestinian neighborhoods killing thousands of civilians and some combatants. But most of the fighters were hunkered down in underground bunkers and in relative safety. Eventually the Israelis surrounded Beirut and proceeded to demolish the Palestinian neighborhoods
During this time, we were using video cameras. and we could edit the stories at the hotel and transport the competed video cassettes to “nearby” satellite uplink sites. Duplicate cassettes were driven to Damascus, Syria and Tel Aviv and a fast boat took cassettes to Cyprus. At least one always got through so the day’s events could be broadcast that evening. To get good video we took many risks. It was the nature of our job. One day, we based ourselves in the heart of one of the largest Palestinian neighborhoods and set up for recording the violence which usually began after 3 in the afternoon. We watched children playing in the streets, kids kicking soccer balls, a young girl playing with a hoola hoop, people coming and going to shops, cars passing, women on their apartment balconies talking and hanging laundry. I sensed that this situation was potentially too dangerous. It could be ground zero when the attacks began. We wouldn’t be able to take video, we’d be trying to survive/
So, we moved to the edge of the target area to a hospital where the injured would be brought. When the artillery and tanks opened up it wasn’t very long before the injured bodies were brought in. We photographed injured elderly women, the corpse of the hoola hoop girl missing the back of her head, two screaming babies who were totally covered in burn scabs and destined not long for this world. My cameraman, a veteran of countless wars, kept photographing while tears streamed down his face. I couldn’t take it anymore and went outside to record stories for radio with sounds of the battles. I was looking up at the Israeli jets overhead dropping their bombs, describing the situation into a microphone, when a single car zoomed down the street. The driver saw me and slammed on his brakes, spun around and drove as close to me as possible. The driver and his two companions jumped out and raced toward me, the leader brandishing a large pistol. I instantly knew they thought I was a spy and directing the Israeli pilots to their targets. I raised my hands in surrender as the leader screamed his rage while pounding my chest with his pistol. I couldn’t understand him, but, I knew what he was going to do. I was a dead man. He was going to kill me. I had carelessly got myself into this predicament. I thought my life was over. I shook my head, smiling and laughed. The young gunman was caught totally off guard and demanded an explanation. I pointed to my chest pocket seeking permission and he nodded approval and I brought out a folded paper that had my photo stapled to it. It was a Palestinian press pass explaining who I was and that I was a friend of the Palestinian people and to help keep me safe if I was in danger and to let me and my crew take videos. He was stunned and horrified. He began apologizing, hugged me and kissed me on both cheeks and hugged me again and he and his buddies left .
Not long after I left Beirut, Kathy and I decided that I had used up too many of my 9 lives and we needed to go to a less stressful posting. I negotiated to cover Moscow, Soviet Union for two years with some special benefits and a guarantee to be transferred to Tokyo afterwards. Moscow was very interesting and we had many good stories, including the shooting down of a Korean 747 jetliner. It was nice to stay in one place and enjoy work and life without much stress. Kathy returned to Sacramento to give birth to our first son Stephen. He got his passport when he was about 18 days old.
From Tokyo I covered a lot of Asia and the Pacific Rim. These were all very interesting locations, experiences and great stories. It was a good life. Our second son, James was born in Tokyo. One day, while on vacation in the USA, we learned that a legendary NBC News Camera crew were killed in an attempted coup in Thailand. They had covered many wars and we had worked together in many locations. It was a reminder of the dangers we lived with .
We covered attempted coups in the Philippines and some were very dangerous, and the student riots in South Korea were risky as well. Nothing as bad as Beirut. But, as the new satellite communications systems made it possible to work, live, around the clock, New York made greater demands, and the corporate political battles were tiresome. I was on the road more than 200 days a year. I was missing first steps, first words and more. Kathy said enough. It was time to go home. I knew this meant hanging up my reporting hat and beginning a new career. If you work for a network, you’re owned 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I had to reinvent myself.