Photo by Tim Street

New York Times London Bureau Chief John Burns with students in front of the Frontline Club.

The first thing you notice about John Burns is his height. The second, his hair. The New York Times London Bureau Chief spoke to our group this morning at the Frontline Club – a restaurant and club where foreign correspondents frequently gather – after braving the British monsoon. (We had a nasty bit of weather with strong winds.) And, although soft spoken, Burns was anything but timid when talking about his life as a war correspondent.

"I just feel being a reporter is so exhilarating," Burns said. "I don’t think it’s just thrill seeking … but it gives a kind of sharpness to life that’s hard to duplicate."

The Pulitzer Prize-winner has been living his life in war zones since joining the Times in 1975. On September 12, 2001, he hopped on a plane and headed for Afghanistan. His next leap was to Iraq, where his coverage of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship earned him the label of "most dangerous man in Iraq." He earned this label because he reported what he saw; he told us he wasn’t worried about being kicked out of Iraq if he angered Hussein’s government. He just wanted to do his job.

To me, the time Burns spent in Iraq post-Hussein’s fall actually sounded more dangerous. He talked with us candidly about the New York Times’ fortifications in Baghdad, including concrete blast walls and armored vehicles, and about how the paper hired a small militia to protect its staff. He also talked about his kidnapping. In October 2005, he was traveling with a small group to what he thought was going to be an interview with Shia leader Moqtada al’Sadr. Instead, the group was ambushed by insurgents on a bridge and taken to the desert. Though their captors discussed killing them, they didn’t. Instead they took Burns and his colleagues to a house and left them there.

"I wasn’t really scared," Burns replied to a student who had asked if he’d been. "When you’re in a position of power, of authority, you learn that if you’re anxious you can’t let that show. You have to be resolute."

Burns’ resolution came, in part, from the fact his group had decided not to try to overpower their guards. When it became clear American forces knew where they were, Burns and his staff were released.

Burns also talked about the American forces in Iraq, and told us they were men and women we should be proud of. That led to the question of embedding. And Ernie Pyle.

"Ernie Pyle was embedded," Burns said, referring to the fact Pyle traveled with soldiers during World War II. "They didn’t call it that then, but it’s what it was. He was given rations, a uniform."

And it was an accepted way of doing things. Burns said he’d like critics of the current practice of journalists embedding with the military to not be so ready to condemn.

"Many of the critics of embedding lack an historical perspective," Burns said. "And the American military have placed no restraints on me. I’ve been able to do the things I wanted to do."

And Burns encouraged all of us to do the things we want to do, telling many of us as we left the Frontline Club to "be journalists."

Photo by Tim Street

The dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

After that, it was off to St. Paul’s Cathedral, Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece. I had visited the cathedral before and had forgotten just how massive it is. It looks large from the outside, but it’s only when you are swallowed whole by that mammoth bit of stone that you realize the enormity of the place. And, for all its size, it still feels airy and light inside. There are gilt angels and saints peering down on you as you walk through the endless nave. There also are the ornamented roses and clear windows you can find in St. Bride’s, only on a much larger scale.

The Brits came very close to losing St. Paul’s during the Blitz of 1940. One night, a bomb destroyed the area behind the High Altar. When it was rebuilt in the 1950’s, the British people dedicated it to the Americans who lost their lives defending Britain – the same Americans Ernie Pyle became so adept at portraying in his columns.

Pyle and St. Paul’s Cathedral have a relationship that’s born out in his columns, as well. It was Pyle’s article on the bombing of December 29, 1940 – in which that the London night was "stabbed and ringed by fire" – that catapulted him into a kind of superstardom in the States. That was the night the Nazis hoped to bomb the Brits into submission, and their main target was St. Paul’s.

Throughout the blitz of London, Prime Minister Winston Churchill was operating underground in his Cabinet War Rooms – and that was where we were off to next. This was an individual experience. We were handed personal audio guides that look like large telephones and walked through the warren of rooms at our own pace.

There was the Map Room, where men poured over large maps of the world, monitoring where the Allied Forces were as well as tracking the movements of the Axis. There were rooms where Churchill and his staff would meet to hammer out the war plan. There were offices that served double duty as sleeping quarters. To me, the idea of living in this dark place seemed like a kind of nightmare. Spending even one night there would seem too much. But, when bombs are falling overhead, I guess you want to be as far from them as possible, and a reinforced complex underground seems like a pretty safe place. Though, as safe as it seemed, I read something on one of the walls in the bunkers that said there’s reason to believe that had the place been hit directly during the Blitz, it may have been destroyed.

Tomorrow we travel to France via ferry from the "White Cliffs of Dover." I’ve always wanted to cross the English Channel on a ferry. We touch French soil in Calais and then drive down to Caen. Wednesday we tour Normandy. back to In the Footsteps

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