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Takka Takka Bom Bom: An Intrepid War Correspondent's 50 Year Odyssey
The world’s oldest still-active war correspondent shares the real stories behind half a century of headlines from the front lines.
The world’s oldest still-active war correspondent, Al J. Venter, has reported from the front lines for well over half a century, witnessing the horrors humanity visits upon itself in twenty-five conflict zones across Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.
In this memoir, Venter masterfully recounts his experiences, sharing the real stories behind the headlines and the sharp lessons he learned that enabled him to survive his countless exploits, ranging from exposing a major KGB operative in Rhodesia entirely by accident, and accompanying an Israeli force led by Ariel Sharon into Beirut, to gun-running into the United States.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Prologue
1 Africa, the great continent with an appeal all its own
2 Home by five
3 Heading out into the unknown
4 Africa in the 1960s
5 Matilda and Albert Schweitzer’s jungle hospital
6 Palm wine and plantain in Libreville
7 ‘Crazy, but I love it!’
8 A peripatetic existence
9 Rib-eye and red wine in Abidjan
10 Kids with machine guns
11 Republic of Guinea to London
12 The my dream of a ship
13 Looking for wars and learning to write
14 A bloody battle and a narrow escape in Lagos
15 Another close call
16 Getting the job properly done
17 Independence and revolutions
18 The safari capital of the world
19 Banned from Rhodesia
20 Pen-pushing pals
21 All’s fair in love and war
22 My the realm of the underwater
23 Mayday … Mayday … Mayday
24 beloved city
25 You’d be lucky to be hit …
26 South Africa invades Angola
27 Battle for Beirut
28 The murder of a United States Marine colonel in Lebanon’s civil war
The world’s oldest still-active war correspondent, Al J. Venter, has reported from the front lines for well over half a century, witnessing the horrors humanity visits upon itself in twenty-five conflict zones across Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.
In this memoir, Venter masterfully recounts his experiences, sharing the real stories behind the headlines and the sharp lessons he learned that enabled him to survive his countless exploits, ranging from exposing a major KGB operative in Rhodesia entirely by accident, and accompanying an Israeli force led by Ariel Sharon into Beirut, to gun-running into the United States.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Prologue
1 Africa, the great continent with an appeal all its own
2 Home by five
3 Heading out into the unknown
4 Africa in the 1960s
5 Matilda and Albert Schweitzer’s jungle hospital
6 Palm wine and plantain in Libreville
7 ‘Crazy, but I love it!’
8 A peripatetic existence
9 Rib-eye and red wine in Abidjan
10 Kids with machine guns
11 Republic of Guinea to London
12 The my dream of a ship
13 Looking for wars and learning to write
14 A bloody battle and a narrow escape in Lagos
15 Another close call
16 Getting the job properly done
17 Independence and revolutions
18 The safari capital of the world
19 Banned from Rhodesia
20 Pen-pushing pals
21 All’s fair in love and war
22 My the realm of the underwater
23 Mayday … Mayday … Mayday
24 beloved city
25 You’d be lucky to be hit …
26 South Africa invades Angola
27 Battle for Beirut
28 The murder of a United States Marine colonel in Lebanon’s civil war
408 pages, Hardcover
Published December 18, 2023
About the author
Al J. Venter
55 books30 followersAlbertus Johannes Venter is a South African journalist and historian who is arguably the world's foremost expert on the modern military history of Africa. He has been a war correspondent/military affairs reporter for many publications, notably serving as African and Middle East correspondent for Jane's International Defence Review. He has also worked as a documentary filmmaker, and has authored more than forty books.
He has reported on a number of Africa’s bloodiest wars, starting with the Nigerian Civil War in 1965, where he spent time covering the conflict with colleague Frederick Forsyth, who was working in Biafra for the BBC at the time.
In the 1980’s, Al J Venter also reported in Uganda while under the reign of Idi Amin. The most notable consequence of this assignment was an hour-long documentary titled Africa’s Killing Fields, ultimately broadcast nationwide in the United States by Public Broadcasting Service.
In-between, he cumulatively spent several years reporting on events in the Middle East, fluctuating between Israel and a beleaguered Lebanon torn by factional Islamic/Christian violence. He was with the Israeli invasion force when they entered Beirut in 1982. From there he covered hostilities in Rhodesia, the Sudan, Angola, the South African Border War, the Congo as well as Portuguese Guinea, which resulted in a book on that colonial struggle published by the Munger Africana Library of the California Institute of Technology.
In 1985 he made a one-hour documentary that commemorated the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
He also spent time in Somalia with the US Army helicopter air wing in the early 1990s, three military assignments with the mercenary group Executive Outcomes (Angola and Sierra Leone) and a Joint-STAR mission with the United States Air Force over Kosovo.
More recently, Al Venter was active in Sierra Leone with South African mercenary pilot Neall Ellis flying combat in a Russian helicopter gunship (that leaked when it rained.) That experience formed the basis of the book on mercenaries published recently and titled War Dog: Fighting Other People's Wars.
He has been twice wounded in combat, once by a Soviet anti-tank mine in Angola, an event that left him partially deaf.
Al Venter originally qualified as a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers at the Baltic Exchange in London.
(from wikipedia)
He has reported on a number of Africa’s bloodiest wars, starting with the Nigerian Civil War in 1965, where he spent time covering the conflict with colleague Frederick Forsyth, who was working in Biafra for the BBC at the time.
In the 1980’s, Al J Venter also reported in Uganda while under the reign of Idi Amin. The most notable consequence of this assignment was an hour-long documentary titled Africa’s Killing Fields, ultimately broadcast nationwide in the United States by Public Broadcasting Service.
In-between, he cumulatively spent several years reporting on events in the Middle East, fluctuating between Israel and a beleaguered Lebanon torn by factional Islamic/Christian violence. He was with the Israeli invasion force when they entered Beirut in 1982. From there he covered hostilities in Rhodesia, the Sudan, Angola, the South African Border War, the Congo as well as Portuguese Guinea, which resulted in a book on that colonial struggle published by the Munger Africana Library of the California Institute of Technology.
In 1985 he made a one-hour documentary that commemorated the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
He also spent time in Somalia with the US Army helicopter air wing in the early 1990s, three military assignments with the mercenary group Executive Outcomes (Angola and Sierra Leone) and a Joint-STAR mission with the United States Air Force over Kosovo.
More recently, Al Venter was active in Sierra Leone with South African mercenary pilot Neall Ellis flying combat in a Russian helicopter gunship (that leaked when it rained.) That experience formed the basis of the book on mercenaries published recently and titled War Dog: Fighting Other People's Wars.
He has been twice wounded in combat, once by a Soviet anti-tank mine in Angola, an event that left him partially deaf.
Al Venter originally qualified as a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Shipbrokers at the Baltic Exchange in London.
(from wikipedia)
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