With my eye trained on the viewfinder, I had not seen the soldier break away from the group on the bridge in order to relieve himself in the bush. He had walked along the road, past where I was crouching, and now he was between me and the point at which I’d been intending to get onto the road. He was a giant of a man, far heftier than I, and his eyes were bloodshot. We looked at each other.

I’ve blown it, I thought. Now, I’m done for. Yelling at me in French, the soldier lunged forward and grabbed me by the arm, spinning me around. With his powerful grip, he pinned my arm behind my back and pushed me along in front of him — an excruciating way to walk when you are carrying a heavy camera. He pushed and prodded me towards his colleagues on the bridge — delivering me into the hands of the soldiers who had been passing the time of day executing other men.

The soldiers on the bridge all stopped what they were doing as they watched the two of us approach. All I could do was call out, “Press, press,” as though being a journalist somehow made me an innocent bystander. My stomach was churning with fear. I was cursing myself. I had a great story already; so why had I gone and blow it all for an extra scoop?

Now my only scoop, a few lines maybe on the inside pages of some newspaper, would record how Mohinder Dhillon has been expunged from the face of this earth. I could picture my wife Ambi in mourning, dressed all in white.

When we got on to the bridge, one of the soldiers — reeking of alcohol, and with murder in his eyes — stepped forward and took out his pistol. He might have shot me there and then, had it not been for the intervention of another soldier, who turned out to be the group’s commanding officer. The officer leapt in and punched the soldier, sending him sprawling and knocking the pistol clean out of his hand.

‘Not so fast,’ he seemed to be saying, ‘first, we must interrogate this intruder.’ It was my camera that particularly interested the commander. In French, he instructed me to hand this over, before barking out a barrage of questions, again all in French.

“Excusey, non parler Francais,” I muttered in reply; “ninaongea Kiswahili na Kiingereza pekee.” (‘Sorry, I speak only Swahili and English.’) In retrospect, this gambit probably saved my life. Swahili is widely spoken across much of the Congo, and its use, I have found again and again, and in tricky situations like this especially, has an almost instant mollifying effect, defusing tensions in a way the European languages cannot.

Softening visibly, the officer handed back my camera, and asked me in Swahili to open it and to give him the film inside. I told him I’d be glad to do this. But then, ever the journalist, I was still in a calculating frame of mind; still trying, even now, to contrive a favourable outcome. There were two spools in my Bell & Howell — one of unexposed film, feeding past the lens onto a second spool, which contained the precious exposed film. Surreptitiously, I snapped the film between the two spools, and handed over the spool of unexposed film.

The officer, who was a major, I seem to recall, was no fool, however. He took the unexposed spool, but then he reached for the exposed film and pulled that out as well.

Both strips of film now lay coiled at his feet like piled strands of spaghetti. A loud, whooping cheer went up, as the major, having gathered up the looping strands of film, threw the whole lot into the river. There went my scoop, but then at least it wasn’t my dead body being tossed over the railing to feed the crocodiles.

Once the film had been disposed of, the mood on the bridge changed. Most of the soldiers peeled away, talking and laughing among themselves. I stood there, hot, desperately thirsty and covered in sweat, yet glad to be alive. I told the major I was already late for my charter flight. The major sent for one of his soldiers.

“This man will take you to the airport,” he told me, “on my motorcycle.” I shook the officer by the hand, thanking him profusely. I then followed the soldier, and jumped onto the back of the small bike. As we rode off at breakneck speed, skidding around corners, it was all I could do, with my free hand, to hang onto the bike. In my other hand, I was clutching my trusty film-camera, which although disembowelled was otherwise, thankfully, still intact.

The soldier did not stop the bike until we were on the runway apron, beside the waiting plane. Still shaking from my miraculous escape, I thanked the biker, and I clambered on board, collapsing into my seat behind the pilot’s. It was not yet 11:00am. Now, I had to sit through a lecture from the pilot on time-keeping. He would have left me behind, he said — had it not been for Andrew, who had refused to leave the strip without me.

Feeling safe at last, I began to count my blessings. My kitbag, containing my stills-camera and the spool of film I had exposed in Stanleyville, were stashed in the foot-well beneath my seat. So Andrew would at least have the pictures and film footage of the butchered hostages and of the Belgian commandos to illustrate the reports he had been writing for the AP agency. Still, though, I could not help ruing the loss of my footage of the executions on the bridge.

But then, by comparison with what was to happen next, my ordeal on the bridge would come to resemble a mere picnic…

Albertville

The pilot was about to start the engines when Andrew made what seemed to be a perfectly harmless request. He handed me his camera and asked me to take a picture of him against the backdrop of the control tower. He wanted this photograph for the AP in-house newsletter. Seeing nothing wrong in this, I obliged. Having taken the snap, I was returning Andrew’s camera when a Congolese security officer tapped me on the shoulder. Taking photographs at this airport is not permitted, he informed me.

He then asked to see my passport. Reaching inside the plane, I extracted from the side-pouch of my bag what by now was a rather chunky jumbo-sized sandwich of three worn British passports, filled with visas and re-entry stamps and tied together with a fraying red ribbon. I handed this untidy bundle of papers to the officer, who began leafing through the pages.

He demanded that I show him my Congolese entry visa. I told him I had not been able to obtain such a visa, as I’d been obliged to leave Nairobi at short notice, during the night. The officer went on thumbing through my papers, shaking his head. Time was ticking by, and we were desperate to take off. Andrew thought the fellow might be angling for a bribe, and he started to drop hints to this effect. The officer did not rise to this bait, however. Instead, infuriatingly, he continued to flick slowly through my passport.

Then, after a lengthy pause, he looked up at me and asked me, calmly, whether I had ever been to Albertville. “No, never,” was my instant response. Albertville was then still in rebel-held territory, so of course I could not admit to having been there. Now, the officer thrust the open passport into my face. “Then what is this?” he asked aggressively, pointing to the rebel immigration exit stamp I had obtained on leaving Albertville.

I was dumbfounded. There it was: ‘ALBERTVILLE,’ stamped in bold capital letters. What I had thought of as an innocent souvenir from Albertville was in reality a ticking time-bomb, that was now blowing up in my face.

By once chance in a million, the officer before me — it transpired — was the same man who had stamped my passport in Albertville. He had, in the meantime, changed sides, having defected from the Simba rebels and joined the government as an intelligence officer. I had not recognised him, but he, clearly, had recognised me. And he had known exactly what he was looking for in my passport.

I had lied to him, and now he was going to make me pay. With no sense of irony, given that it was he (and not I) who had been a rebel fighter, he told me that he was taking me into custody for being a rebel sympathiser. In a cold voice, he asked me if I knew what form of punishment awaited rebels and their sympathisers. Having witnessed the events on the bridge, I was in no doubt as to what he meant. I was to be executed.

Andrew pleaded with the officer in French, offering him a wad of $100 bills. The sight of so many greenbacks was usually irresistible in Africa, but this man refused to take the money. He was in a foul mood, telling Andrew that he would not be trifled with. I had broken out in a sweat, for I knew now that I was in real trouble. I implored Andrew to leave without me. I told him to give my pictures to Ivor Davis, who would be anxiously awaiting our arrival at Nairobi’s Embakasi Airport.

Andrew was adamant that he would not leave without me. He would never be able to forgive himself, he protested, were anything to happen to me after he had left me behind. I summoned up a shaky laugh. “Don’t worry, I’ll be alright,” I told him. Andrew remained unconvinced. So I grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him onto the plane. I was still optimistic, even now, that somehow I’d be able to talk my way out of this crisis. The pilot wasted no time in starting up the plane’s engines. Soon after take-off, the plane disappeared into the clear blue sky. Only now did I start to consider my predicament.

I refused to believe that I, as an outsider, would be treated in the same way as a captured rebel fighter. After all, I had never aligned myself with the Simba rebels, or indeed with any political party or faction in the Congo. Surely, I told myself, my army captors would understand this. Alas, I was wrong. Shivers still run down my spine even now, more than 45 years after the event — just as has happened each time, down the years, I have tried to talk or to write about the terrifying ordeal that was to follow …

Once the plane was out of sight, the security officer turned decidedly hostile. He walked me over to a strip of concrete on the runway apron, where about 50 prisoners — some of them rebels, other hapless opportunists who had been arrested, probably for looting — were squatting, with their hands on their heads. There, I was ordered to squat down, hands on head, like the others.

It was an exceptionally hot, sweltering day. Glancing at my wrist watch, I could see the time was getting on for 1:30pm. I squatted down on the hot concrete and put my hands on my head. With the nervous tension, my mouth was completely dry. The water-bottle I was carrying was empty, and I was desperately thirsty. As a soldier walked by, I looked up and — foolishly — I asked him for a drink of water. The soldier promptly unzipped his trousers and told me to open my mouth, so that he could piss into it. When I declined, he just laughed at me and sauntered off. Clearly, I hadn’t yet grasped what it meant to be accused of being a rebel collaborator.

I wished I had become a game warden

Every few minutes, while squatting there, on the baking-hot concrete, we could hear volleys of gunfire coming from behind the airport hangar. One of the soldiers, noticing my watch, an expensive Timex that Ambi had given to me as a wedding gift, demanded that I give the watch to him. Surprisingly, I still had it in me to resist.

“Hapana,” I replied defiantly in Swahili, “No way.” With a derisory laugh, he asked me whether I could hear the gunfire. With every shot, he told me, there was one less Simba rebel. “You can keep your belongings if you want,” he said. “After we have shot you, we shall take them from you anyway — off your dead body.”

It is amazing, in such a situation, how many different thoughts and images flash through your mind, popping up at random like playing cards in a shuffled deck the brain is dealing up on auto-pilot and flicking through at breakneck speed. I thought of my dear Ambi of course, and of my family, which had been struggling to recover from the tragic early death, in a scooter accident just the year before, of my younger brother Inderjeet. I thought of my business partner Ivor, and I imagined how his jaw would drop on learning from Andrew that I had been left behind in the Congo.

Fantastical thoughts of other career paths I might have taken, also flashed across my mind. I wished I had become a game warden, and that I was living peacefully out in the African bush somewhere among wild animals. I thought of how, were I to survive, I would eschew forever the life of a news cameraman and instead open a paan-house — like the one opposite central Nairobi’s Jeevanjee Gardens, which did a roaring trade in paan made from betel-nut leaves imported from India.

I saw myself in the role of the Indian proprietor at the Jeevanjee paan-house, bellowing out orders in a mixture of Swahili and Hindi to a veritable assembly-line of African workers: “Khara mbili; mitha kumi; chuna tano, bila supari…” (“Two sour; 10 sweet; five with lime, no nuts…”) This and images of other possible vocations that had never entered my consciousness before now presented themselves, one after another, in vivid technicolour…

Dhillon tells his life-story in his memoirs, My Camera, My Life: Sir Mohinder Dhillon (published by Mkuki na Nyota in 2016). PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE

Final countdown

My wild, adrenalin-induced imaginings were interrupted only by the menacing comings and goings of the soldiers. One by one, we squatting prisoners were being singled out and frog-marched away, behind the hangar, to be executed. “This one,” the soldiers would decide, commanding the chosen victim to rise to his feet. There would be a pause. Then a shot would be heard, and the soldiers of the firing squad would return for another victim. And so it went on. Soon, there were only 19 of us left on the concrete apron of the runway.

By now, as if to lend added drama and foreboding to our collective plight, dark storm clouds were rolling in. Peals of thunder were rumbling and reverberating in the distance. Streaks of lightning were pulsing through the darkening sky. Gusts of wind were sweeping across the airfield.

A tropical storm, then, was to be my send-off. I pictured myself before the firing squad. Would I be blindfolded, I wondered, before being shot? What would become of my corpse? Would my drenched body be left out in the open to be torn apart by scavengers? Were there any vultures standing by, to pluck my eyes from their sockets?

Yet even now, in the final countdown to my demise, and with the first splatter of raindrops just beginning to fall, I was still hoping for some miraculous reprieve. My stomach was cramped with fear, my body numb. I had given up all hope of pleading for mercy.

I had thought of lunging for the gun of any soldier who came for me, and of shooting the man. Most of all, though, I clung to the hope that somebody — one of the white mercenaries perhaps, or some other white man — would suddenly arrive on the scene and call a halt to the executions. My eyes were darting about nervously in all directions, willing my saviour to appear.

Then, just before 4:30 pm, the rain started pouring down. The soldiers moved us at gunpoint into the dark interior of the hangar. My heart sank. What hope was there, now, of anybody’s noticing us? Inside the windowless corrugated-iron hangar, it was almost unbearably hot. I nearly passed out while in the act of squatting down, as before, and putting my hands on the top of my head.

The sound of the heavy rain, pounding down on the iron sheets overhead, was deafening. I could hardly make out what the guard, towering over my crouched form, was shouting at me. The bastard, it turned out, was still demanding my watch. There was a momentary distraction, as half a dozen new prisoners were brought in, dripping wet and bedraggled.

One of the new arrivals was still clutching what looked like a steel cash-box, looted perhaps from a shop. This dazed looter was pushed to the floor with such force that he fell onto another of the prisoners. The sharp corner of the metal cash-box left the squatting prisoner with a deep gash above the eye. The injured prisoner, blood streaming from his face, barely even flinched. He was a mere youngster, no more than a grown boy. Perhaps, like the rest of us, he was numb with fear and terrified of drawing attention to himself, lest he be next in line to face the firing squad.

The executions resumed; only now, with the pounding of the driving rain on the roof, I could no longer hear the gunshots. The soldiers started playing a grisly game with me. “Let us take the mhindi (Indian) this time,” they’d call out to one another. Then, cruelly, they’d pick out someone else. Each unfortunate victim was ordered, first, to empty his pockets, and to hand over any money or loot he might be carrying. The surrendered items were deposited on a table. The man would be frisked, just to make absolutely certain that every item of value had indeed been handed over. Then he would be beaten and kicked, before being led outside.

Brought back from the dead

Now, there were only eight of us left. I had given up every last vestige of hope. For the first time in my life, I knew there was no possible way out, that I was about to die.

My head dropped between my knees. I closed my eyes. My mind went blank. I was conscious only of the sound of my own racing heartbeat. I longed only for the peace that annihilation might bring.

Somebody kicked me gently, and my heart almost stopped dead.

Then I heard a British voice. “Mohinder,” the voice intoned, “What the hell are you doing here?”

I could not believe my ears. To be hearing a friend’s voice, at a time like this? Surely, this was too good to be true. But I had heard right. And when I looked up, it was my eyes I could not believe. Standing over me, legs splayed out in a protective posture, was the British ITN TV News cameraman Jon Lane. I was dumbfounded. It was as if I were being brought back from the dead.

Jon reacted swiftly. Without leaving me, he called over his sound engineer, Eric Vincent. Eric instructed his assistant to go outside at once and to fetch Sandy Gall. The mention of Sandy’s name was further music to my ears. Sandy was then one of ITN’s top war reporters. What were all these illustrious journalists doing here, I wondered?

While Eric and his assistant were away, I was able, after recovering some measure of composure, to blurt out, for Jon, a rapid summary of my ordeal. Amazingly, I realised I was doing this without stammering at all. Accompanying the soundman, when he returned to the hangar after a few minutes (although, in my altered state, he seemed to be away for an age), were Sandy and Mike Hoare, the famous mercenary commando.

What happened next has remained something of a blur. With the sudden release of so much pent-up trauma, I was simply too exhausted to care. Sandy later told me how, after vouchsafing for my identity, he — along with Mike Hoare (then a hugely influential figure in Congolese army circles) — had persuaded the soldiers and their allies, the Belgian paratroopers, to spare me.

Of that time, all I can remember is standing around helplessly like a zombie, while my fate was being discussed. The storm, I noticed, had blown over.

In the end, there were, besides me, only five other prisoners awaiting execution. So, if Jon and his crew had appeared even half an hour later, I might not have lived to tell this tale.

Part Two: How the media exposed East Africa's worst famine