The Fab Four. Members of the Mines Advisory Group out on the front line in Laos.
Peter Newman finds a 1000 pounder just yards away from a village.
(1 X 50’) Channel 4
Narrator: Dervla Kirwan
Director: Michael B. Clifford
Producers: Sunandan Walia & Yugesh Walia
Photography: Peter Rance
Strand Editor: Charles Furneaux
Starnd: TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
Winner: Royal Television Society (Midlands) Award for ‘Best Independent Programme’
During the period of the Vietnam war, neutral Laos was devastated through land fighting and a secret air war. The USA dropped an equivalent of a B52 plane load of bombs every 6 minutes for 9 years. A third of these failed to explode. Laos today is littered with all kinds of unexploded ordnance, or UXO’s, from grenades to 3000 pound bombs. Decades after the bombing stopped these bombs still pose a lethal threat to the population.
The film tracks members of MAG (Mines Advisory Group): Peter Newman, John Devine and their teams as they head eastward towards the Vietnam border helping to clear up one of the most bombed places on the planet, the Ho Chi Minh trail.
“It makes me wonder how a supposedly civilised nation could bomb innocent people. They weren’t at war with them, they just happened to be in the way” – John Devine.
You can watch a clip here
