The Great Crusade: Reds Part III Prologue

_The Great Crusade
Reds Part III_​

London, 1989

He was waiting for us as we drove up to his house. We could see his figure over the bushes. He was wearing an orange and green striped cardigan, brown khakis, and oxfords. He was smoking an ornate pipe. As we got closer, we could see his face, framed by large spectacles and a grey, receding hairline. He smiled as we pulled up to his yard and sauntered down as we exited the vehicle. I got out of the car to greet him.

“Henry Kerrigan?”

“Yes, you must be the one I spoke to on the phone.”

“Yes, Rajesh Bhaghav.”

“Please, come in for some tea while your crew gets the equipment ready.”

It was a very modest home. Standard staircase at the front, a doorway to the loo on the left and his sitting room in the far back. Looked like a standard home for an elderly man. Adorning the walls were various photos of him and his family. His mother and father, posing for a photo; him with his parents during his youth in the aughts; him at various locations during the war; and especially a lot of photos of him and his wife, and their two daughters.

Some of his honors were adorned on the wall. Some of the wartime Times papers with his headline stories. Photos of him testifying in front of the Parliament Select Committee on Communist Activity. A photo of him with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. Him with Arthur C. Clarke and Patrick Moore sometime during the Space Race. I stopped to examine a photo of him with a famous British band on their famed American tour, particularly for an inscription:

“To the journalist of our time, and of all time.- Paul McCartney”

“I did that entirely for my daughters.” Kerrigan laughed. “I tried to get as many photos with them as I could.”

As he walked to make us tea, we looked around the sitting room. He had a bookshelf full of very diverse authors: Plato, John Milton, Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Benjamin d’Israeli, HG Wells, John Maynard Keynes, Agatha Christie, Langston Hughes, Gore Vidal, CLR James, Grace Lee Boggs, Norman Mailer, Betty Freidan, Fredrick Forsyth, Michael Moorcock, Truman Capote, John Cromwell. Even a more recent biography of Premier Fred Hampton.

“I like to be well-read. Keeps me informed about the world.” He said as he walked in with our tea.

There was a small television to the side with a LEGO Game-It and Phillips attached.

“Heather’s kids come by often?” I knew she had been busier because of the divorce. She couldn’t come here today because she had to go to another custody meeting.

“Unfortunately, yes. They’re actually living here for the time being.”

“Heather says they liked that you were portrayed in that new World War II picture. The Comrades ”

“They enjoyed it. I didn’t much care for the film. It definitely never happened like that.” Kerrigan offered. “Then again, the pictures never get it right. Remember Chariots of Fire?”

“Won the BAFTA and Cannes, right?”

“Full of nonsense. I was at that Olympics, and knew Eric Abrahams.[1] It never happened like that.

“So.” I interjected, “where are the kids now?”

“They’re in school right now. Alanna offered to also look after them, but… I don’t think Heather would approve.”

She told me as much before the meeting. Alanna’s position as Hughes-Welch news producer made her “politically unreliable” (ironically enough) to have around their children, especially with her choice of house guests.

“Can I just say,” my producer, Godfrey, intersected, “I just admire you for what you did in Rhodesia.”

Kerrigan laid his pipe down as Godfrey continued: “Almost 80 years old, you went into a war zone to report.”

“It… wasn’t easy. My daughters were not fans of the idea, but I felt the compulsion to do so.”

As they talked, the camera and lighting crews shuffled in. My eye slowly wandered to a photo on the side of his couch. It was another war picture, a brownish black-and-white. Him with an American Red Army soldier. Short hair. Her face was sullen and clearly marked by tragedy.

Kerrigan noticed me looking at the picture, and grabbed it.

“You know who she is?”

“Yes, Jane Schafer. You and her were associates.”

Kerrigan chuckled. “Indeed. ‘Associates.’”

“You talked about her at times in your coverage.”

“You do your research well.”

“To the best of my abilities. I tried to contact her a few times for this documentary, but she apparently doesn’t do interviews.”

“Definitely in her nature.”

“Just for some preliminary stuff before the full interview: You and Jane were close?”

“She was an integral part of my experience during the war. Without her, my tales of the IVA soldiers might not have gotten back home.”

“Did you ever meet again after the war?”

“After the war ended, we only spoke a few more times.” Kerrigan sighed, fidgeting with his wedding band.”One of those was the Quarrymen concert in Metropolis, where I got that autograph.”

“When was the last time you spoke?”

“A few years ago, actually. She called me when I was in the Rhodesian war zone. She found out that I had gone in, and got back into contact with me.”

“What did you talk about?”

Kerrigan laid back. “Mostly how little things had changed.”

His tone became more resigned.

“I’m asked sometimes why I went to cover the Bush Wars and the collapse of South Africa at my age. The simple answer is that I felt people had forgotten the cost of war. What it really does to people on the frontlines and the true brutality of it when you’re in the middle of it. The news coverage on television, the way Hughes and Kennedy warped the coverage, and made it fit whatever agenda they happened to be pushing. It infuriated me, and I felt the same compulsion I had when I went to finally help the war effort in Europe.”

Kerrigan sighed again.

“I was reminded of that brutality when I was there. Seeing the Azanian and IVA soldiers go into battle. Watching them become hardened and detached. Seeing them injured or die. Watching the villages the Rhodesians had destroyed, whether directly or by chemical and biological weapons. Hearing about the brutality of Rhodesian soldiers towards anyone, especially Africans, they captured, whether soldier or civilian. Hearing about the work camps and seeing for myself how merciless the Rhodesians and the Afrikaans were to anyone who they saw as an enemy. I remember telling Jane how what bothered me most was how much it reminded me of the war. The weapons were more destructive, the desert more cruel, but still the same feeling of despair in the middle of it all. The Rhodesians and the Nazis are honestly interchangeable. The same feeling I got watching in the months I spent in the front, and experiencing first hand the chaos and disillusionment. ”

“What did she say to that?”

“She reminded me of something we had discussed when we met up again on the front. Something that reminded me that I had more value telling these stories if they and I actually got out. I had gotten the coverage of the Bush War I had needed, so the next day, I got a truck back to Cape Town and flew back to London.”

We talked a little more before the cameras were formally set up, and the crew was ready.

The cameras started rolling, and I began my spiel: “For the documentary feature Premature Anti-Fascists for the Entente Broadcasting Corporation, we are talking with Henry Kerrigan, former reporter for The Times of London , former IVA war correspondent, and one of those persecuted during the Smithers era. To start, Mr. Kerrigan, by your own admission, you were and still are a staunch Liberal.”

“Familial tradition I merely carried on into university and journalism.”

“So, how did you get involved with the IVA Brigades and covering the struggle of socialist volunteers?”

He breathed in and prepared to tell a probably well-rehearsed story.

“I was assigned to go to Metropolis by my editors….”

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[1] Deliberate error here: Due to poor memory, Kerrigan is merging the names of the two leads of Chariots of Fire , Eric Lidell and Harold Abrahams. *[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation