In October 2017, a random internet search about the Biafran Airlift led me to an article with the unusual title ‘The World is Deep – Uwa De Egwu,’ written David L. Koren. A further search on Facebook showed him in a photograph with Okey Ndibe, Author and Scholar. Smiling, I said, “Aha!” A few days later, introductions were made via email and I became acquainted with David, who was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Umuahia, South East Nigeria, between 1964 and 1966. He left Nigeria just before the war broke out but in 1968, with the war in full bloom, he answered a call by the United Nations to work as a United Nations Field Service Officer, a job which entailed organizing and flying relief material from Sao Tome into Biafra.
His experiences, captured in ‘The World is Deep,’ is the first eye witness account about the airlift to be published in mybiafranstory.org. It can be found in the category THE BIAFRAN AIRLIFT. With his permission I have edited the article for brevity and broken it into two parts. David has also published a book ‘Far Away In The Skies,’ which is a more detailed account of his experiences working on the Airlift. It will be on sale in Nigeria in March 2018.
Below are email exchanges between David and I. They serve as a preamble to the article.
D.L.K.- I grew up in a working class family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Through hard work and living on the financial edge I became the first in my family to earn a university degree. Seeking to know more about the world, I joined the United States Peace Corps, and I was assigned to teach English at Ohuhu Community Grammar School in Amaogwugwu near Umuahia, before the war. I served there for three years, having the best time of my young life. For me, and for most Peace Corps Volunteers immersed in a different culture, we learned as much as we taught. Nigeria became my second home, with a new family. So, in 1968 when UNICEF asked me to return to work on the Biafran Airlift, I made the easy choice and volunteered again. Afterwards, I followed a career as a counselor in a mental institution. For a second career, I went back to school to study physics and astronomy, then worked designing optical lenses for industrial lasers. Now I keep busy on my six acre mini farm with my wife and two tractors.
V.O.- In a nutshell, what are your views about war, crisis and displacement?
D.L.K.- People gain more through diversity and synergy than brutal warfare.
V.O.- What are your fondest memories from living in Ohuhu? Any names of families, friends or colleagues you would like to mention?
D.L.K.- I have fond memories of my student librarians: Matthew Nwuba, Onyema Obilo, and Patience Igweonu; also our senior prefect, Okon Nkanta Abijah; and our principle, Wilber O. Nsofor. I still have my grade book from 1964, 65, and 66, with all the student names, and at the end of my book, Far Away in the Sky, I published all their names. At a convention of the Ohuhu Union in Houston, Texas, last May, I met some of them and asked them to sign my grade book next to their names. What an emotional high.
V.O.- You said, “…we learned as much as we taught?” What were the most important things you learned about the Igbo society at the time?
D.L.K.- I learned the friendliness of the Igbo people and their warm acceptance of strangers like ourselves, the strength of family ties, the desire to learn and the skill to apply their knowledge. I learned about Igbo philosophy through slogans and proverbs: profound expressions such as “The World is Deep,” “Life is the Main Thing,” “God Gave Me Hands,” (also “God gives me a hand in my need”), as well as the patience, perseverance, and acceptance implied by “Who knows tomorrow?” Most importantly, the assurance of protection and safety in the kola ceremony. Even after 50 years, I still feel comfortable in Igbo company.
V.O.- Was it your experience in the Nigeria-Biafra war that qualified you to be a counsellor in a mental institution afterwards?
D.L.K.- After I returned form Biafra, I earned a master’s degree in Rehabilitation Counselling and I scored very highly in a state-wide entrance exam for the position. But no doubt my experience in the war strengthened an attitude in me of acceptance for people in need through no fault of their own. Mentally ill people especially need reassurance that in spite of their disability, they are people of worth.
V.O.- But I’m lost with “Life is the Main Thing.” Does it translate to ‘Ndubuisi?’
D.L.K.- Yes. I should have written: Uwa di egwu, Ndubuisi, Chinyere m aka, and Onye ma echi.
UWA DI EGWU – THE WORLD IS DEEP – PART ONE
BIAFRAN AIRLIFT
David L. Koren
March 2007 (Revised January 2018)
The first time I went to Africa the sun was rising over an endless stretch of palm trees as the Pan Am Boeing 707 banked steeply on approach to Lagos, Nigeria, January 1st 1964.
The second time I went to Africa, two years later, the captain of the green and white painted Nigeria Airways/Pan Am 707 announced that we were denied permission to land at Lagos, because there had just been a military coup.
We circled for some time before we were cleared to land. Soldiers with guns watched us disembark. I was supposed to make a connecting flight to Enugu, capital of the Eastern Region, where I had been stationed for the last two years as an American Peace Corps Volunteer. I was just returning from home leave.
Nobody knew what was happening. Arriving passengers were escorted to the Catering Rest House, where we were to put up for the time being. Later, I went to bed, in a small room, in a distant land, unable to adumbrate any sense of future.
***
The next day a flight was arranged to the Eastern Region. We landed at Port Harcourt with no problems. The airline arranged for a small bus to transport passengers to Enugu. I got off in Umuahia and took a bush taxi – a Morris Minor – to my school, Ohuhu Community Grammar School in the village of Amaogwugwu.
The school was started by Dr. Michael I. Okpara, a prominent man from the village, and also the Premier of the Eastern Region of Nigeria.
News began to unfold of what happened with the coup. Peace Corps Volunteers got news from the local newspaper and from what we called time-n-newsweek. The international editions of Time and Newsweek were available in Umuahia, and we bought both of them from the news boys, onye akwukwo.
After six months another coup ousted all the Igbos (Ironsi was shot, Gowon was installed), leading to the massacre of Igbo civilians in the North and a mass exodus of refugees back into the Eastern Region.
Trains arrived from the sabon garis of the North carrying refugees; on one there was a headless body. All of these people were absorbed into their villages of origin. New huts were constructed and donations of food and clothing were requested. We all contributed. Although this was a great burden on the local population, it was effective in caring for the refugees. And therefore there were no refugee camps with deplorable conditions to catch the attention of the world media.
Toward the end of 1966, there was increasing talk of war. I discussed it with my students. I told them that war would be very bad. They were less concerned about it. One student said, “We will fight them. If we win we will rule them. If they win they will rule us.”
***
Dr. Okpara hosted a send-off celebration for me and my fellow PCV, Ric Holt. He conferred on us the honorary title of Bende Warrior Chieftain, along with the appropriate garments – a wrapper and jumper of fine cloth and a woven cap.
I stood up in my new clothes to give thanks.
“Bende kweno!”
“Ha!” (The response).
“Bende kweno!”
“Ha!”
“Enyi mba enyi!”
“Ha!”
“Enyi mba enyi!”
“Ha!”
Dr. Okpara and the other dignitaries and guests seemed amused.
At this time the commercial planes were still flying between the regions, and I left Nigeria with the memory of soldiers at airports.
***
The third time I went to Africa, October 1968, I flew in an old DC-6 propeller plane from Amsterdam to Tripoli to Ivory Coast to Sao Tome, bringing relief supplies for Biafra.
I joined three other former PCVs on Sao Tome; we were to act as cargo masters on the relief flights. We were officially known as United Nations Field Service Officers, and we were kept busy while waiting for clearance to enter Biafra.
Food donations came to Sao Tome by air and sea and were delivered to thirteen different warehouses around town. As each shipment arrived it was dumped in a warehouse with no organization, no inventory. Preparing a plane load of relief supplies was difficult, because no one knew what food was available and what condition it was in. The four of us Field Service Officers worked with Sao Tomeans and a Danish relief organization to organize the warehouse.
The relief effort on Sao Tome was put together by a group of Northern European churches, Nordchurchaid, representing the Protestant World Council of Churches and Catholic Caritas International. This was distinct from the International Committee of the Red Cross – ICRC – which operated from the island of Fernando Po. WCC and Caritas were established entities, but the airlift they put together for Biafra took form as it went along. They created a company called ARCO to buy and charter planes, while a German church group called Das Diakonische Werk was designated to provide flight operations. The United Nations contributed a handful of Field Service Officers.
***
These donations were well meant, but inefficient. A DC-7 carrying 10 tons of canned goods would be carrying 7 tons of water and metal. A pharmaceutical company sent a shipment of sun tan lotion. It was said that they wrote it off as a charitable donation. Other medical donations were more appropriate. Things changed when we began receiving 50 pound bags of dried food and powdered milk. The food was called CSM, for a mixture of corn meal, soy beans, and milk. There was a similar mixture called Formula II. By the time I began flying into Biafra we were carrying those bags, bales of dried stock fish, medicines, fuel and batteries for the lorries used to distribute them.
***
We flew at night to avoid the Nigerian MiGs. The Nigerians also had a night bomber that would drop its bombs when we were coming in for a landing. We took off from Sao Tome while it was still light and timed the flight to arrive over the coast just at dark. We could see the burn-off flames from the oil wells in the Niger River delta. From my seat near the back of the plane I could also see the bright traces of antiaircraft shells arcing up toward us from below. The planes flew without navigation lights, so the gunners had to track us by the sound of our engines. The pilots didn’t seem worried about this. When I mentioned it to Captain Delahunt – he had been a carrier pilot in WW II – he banked the big plane around to identify where the AA was coming from. The bombs didn’t fall at every landing, but often enough.
***
Each day either WCC or Caritas would choose the cargo for the flights that night. The trucks would go to the warehouses, load, and return to the flight line. My job was to help supervise the loading, in terms of what went into each plane and the distribution of the cargo within each plane.
All flights for the night would be either WCC or Caritas, alternating from night to night. WCC and Caritas had separate distribution networks in Biafra.
The four of us UNICEF volunteers took turns flying into Biafra. We would go in with the first plane, help with the unloading, and come out with the last flight. Those who stayed in Sao Tome helped load the planes.
***
My first landing in Biafra was uneventful, but emotional. The night air was fresh and tropical and familiar. It felt, in a sense, like coming home.
My job was to supervise the young Biafran Airforce fatigue workers who were hustling to get the food out the door so the planes could escape the bombs and return to Sao Tome for another load. Sometimes I held the torch light and sometimes I joined in heaving the food onto the lorries.
After the first plane was unloaded I got down and waited in the night for the next plane to arrive. Sometimes the wait would be a couple of hours as the first wave of planes returned to Sao Tome for a second run. It was kept very dark. If someone showed a light, even briefly, there were shouts from unseen soldiers all around, “Off de light! Off de light!”
***
When the bombs started falling you could hear them screaming down. After some experience with this it became possible to tell by the Doppler shift and intensity of the scream whether a bomb was going away from you or coming toward you and about how much time you had before it got there.
One night after I had unloaded the first plane and climbed into the second one, the bombs came. The air crew and the soldiers who had been gathering outside the plane went for the bunker. By the sound I knew that the bomb was coming my way, and I judged that I didn’t have time to climb down the ladder and get to shelter. There were sacks of CSM piled neatly on either side of a narrow isle in the center of the plane and I dove in there, hoping they might absorb some of the shrapnel. The blast shook the plane and deafened me, but we escaped damage. The next day on Sao Tome, I walked around the plane for a closer inspection. I found a few hits, one near a tire, but none more than nicks or scratches.
Immediately after that bomb went off, a second one hit further down the runway. We kept unloading the second plane as the first plane, which I had come on, was preparing to take off. I heard the engines rev up, and I heard it roaring down the runway. But then it stopped all of a sudden. As soon as we finished unloading I ran down to see what was going on. I saw a Canadian relief plane sitting on the runway with its nose wheel yards away from a huge bomb crater. Captain Patterson and a WCC missionary, Reverend William Aitken, were examining the hole. Reverend Aitken had heard the explosion and thought it was near the runway. He found the hole and also saw the aircraft starting its run toward him. From the edge of the crater he ran straight at the accelerating plane waving his arms frantically with a flashlight in each hand. The pilot told me that the flashlights were very faint from his perspective in the cockpit, but he could tell that there was something on the runway, so he throttled back and stood up on his brakes. He blew a tire but didn’t hit the crater or Rev. Aitken. The plane maneuvered around the crater and took off. There was enough runway left for it to get airborne.
I only had a few contacts with Reverend Aitken, but they were significant. After the plane took off he asked me to come with him, and we went to find the flight line officer. We found him in the dark, and we all drove to a house near the airfield. The officer pounded on the door. “Wake up! Wake up! You’re holding up the Nation.” The man emerged tying his wrapper. He was in charge of airport maintenance. We drove him to his bulldozer, and he filled the crater. Tomorrow he would pave it, but tonight planes could land and take off on it.
Reverend Aitken was tall, slender, and earnest. He never said much, but he listened attentively. After a bomb fell beyond the end of the runway one night, he came out of the dark and said, “Come with me.” The bomb had fallen in a village compound. Five members of the same family had run out of their house seeking cover when the bomb hit. A boy of about 20 years was dead. Two children lay dead with ragged shrapnel wounds in their foreheads and bellies. A boy of about 6 was hit in the leg. His leg was twisted at an odd angle. His eyes were open, but he made no sound. A young woman was bleeding from several places. She was singing. The song was high, plaintive, haunting, and continuous. We put them in the station wagon and drove them to the hospital at Awo Amama. When we left them the woman was still singing.***
On Sao Tome the four of us UNICEF Volunteers – Larry, Barry, Leo, and I – met the others who had gathered for this airlift. Missionaries. Mercenaries. Air crew and mechanics. Portuguese. Biafrans. Diplomats. Journalists. Africans of Sao Tome.
The mercenaries preferred the Hotel Salazar, the high ground. Most of them had little to say: they sat quietly and drank and watched. Johnny Correa, a Puerto Rican American from New York City, breezed in once in a while, always ebullient. Taffy Williams, gregarious for a clandestine fighter, boasted of their exploits. He told of Steiner leading a few Biafran fighters through enemy lines to blow up some planes in Enugu. He said that Biafrans were the best fighters in Africa. “With a company of men like that we could make it all the way to the Mediterranean, and no one could stop us.” I thought, why the Mediterranean? Why not Lagos? Or Port Harcourt?
The four of us would sit at Costa’s and talk about the motivation of those who came to the airlift. Some people were there to make money. Many were there because they were compelled by their religion to help the poor and suffering in the name of God. Yet many of these, missionaries included, openly distained or detested Biafrans. It was an abstract duty and the objects of their charity were irrelevant.
It did not occur to the four of us, not then, to consider why we were there.
As an aviation job, the Biafran Airlift attracted a fraternity of fliers from all over the world. ARCO hired a DC-7 captain from Lapland who used to herd reindeer. Crews from Iceland were there flying off the equator. A few men had recently flown with the other big aviation job at the time, Air America in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The CIA had conducted a food relief operation in Laos with Air America. But no one talked about that, much.
***
PHOTO CREDIT – INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE RED CROSS
PHOTO CAPTION- DC4 CARRY TONS OF MEDICINES AND VITAMINS TO BIAFRA
DATE TAKEN – 27th May, 1968
My Biafran Story 