Entebbe marshaling the Crowd

Also by V.M. Frost

By Conscience Bound

The Boy In Wellington Boots

Despatched

Just Add Alcohol

Front Stack

Double Locked

Back To Back

Rear Stack

Palm To Palm

Farewell To Boots

Mowing It When Like

Dismissed With Thanks

A Handful Of Frost

A Bird in my Drain

This book is dedicated to the memory of Father Valente, former rector of Mount Carmel College, Santa Venera, Malta.

When the tyrant came knocking for me one last time, you turned him away from your door and for that, I am eternally grateful...

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V.M. (Jack) Frost was born in Stamford, Lincolnshire. Moving with his Air Force parents to the Mediterranean island of Malta in the 1960’s, he remained there until 1976, when he returned to the UK to complete his education. Leaving school with negligible qualifications, he joined the British army where, after completing several operational tours, he left as a senior non-commissioned officer. Since then, he has undertaken such diverse work as: grill chef, baker, mechanic, and builder. After a period working as a residential social worker with troubled adolescents, he became a police officer; firstly with Thames Valley Police, and then later the Metropolitan Police, where for the remainder of his15 years service, he served on the front line carrying out both investigatory work and public order duties, including the quelling of the 2011 Tottenham riots.

He now lives in Malta, where he is increasingly involved in film making, both as an actor and assisting with production. Entebbe – Marshalling The Crowd, is his eleventh book.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Nicole Blackman and Nicole Cuschieri for having given me those early opportunities that gave me the bug and led to my fledgling new career in the crazy world of film making. Thanks also, to all of those background actors from Malta, Serbia, Macedonia, The Czech Republic, Africa, Bulgaria, Britain, Brazil, Venezuela and, adventurers from other far-flung countries that I may have missed. It has been a pleasure to have worked with you, both as a fellow background artist and your marshal.

You are the often-unsung heroes of the film industry. You endure extreme temperatures at both ends of the mercury scale and are so often treated as nothing more than a film set’s furniture, to be moved and moved again at the whim of a director. As far as Entebbe was concerned, with so few actors involved, without you hostages and soldiers, there quite literally wouldn’t have been a film to make. In the absence of credits, or any other public recognition, I say:  Here’s to you – cheers!

Thanks are most definitely due for the impressive photos provided by Alan Pickering.

Last but not least, my thanks go to my fellow crowd marshals from Entebbe – Jesmond Said, Marilyn Scicluna, Chelsi Cefai, Michael Borg, Rick Heckenlaible and Sean Decelis for their help, support, laughs, and the occasional steer in the right direction.

Note from the author

While this story is predominantly about marshalling the crowd – aka – attempting to herd cats, for the movie Seven Days In Entebbe, I thought it only right that before I get on to that movie, I should recount the road that led me to be part of the crew for it. To that end, I have started my story chronologically, with my first forays into the world of film.

The cover illustration, though it may seem an unorthodox choice for such a subject, was photographed by the author, in situ in the actor’s Green Room on the set of 7 Days In Entebbe. It was the work of the film’s actors during their down time while waiting to be called on set. In the main, from what I saw anyway, much of the artwork was done by actor Denis Menochet, who played the part of aircraft engineer Jacques Le Moine and relates to his and his fellow actors experience on Entebbe.

I’m not sure what became of the board upon which the actors exhibited their imagination, but I last saw it leaning up against a wall prior to the set being dismantled. In the unlikely event that the actors ever read my story, I hope that they will take some pleasure from my appreciation of their ad hoc work.

The poem "She’s sold her cattle," is dedicated to the ones that made it across the sea and onto Entebbe’s film set.  

She’s sold her cattle and sold her soul

Herded onto the tiny boat

last minute fears silenced by a finger drawn across a throat 

She's sold her cattle and sold her soul,

to get away from that war-torn dust bowl

Prodded along and pushed into the hold

exhausted and scared, she tries to be bold

The chattering around her, she understands not

as she tries in vain to find a dry spot

The wild-eyed men, AK’s in hand,

have promised to take her to that far off land

where the people will hate her and spit and curse

a situation impossible, soon to be made worse

Stomach sickened by waves and the smell of dead fish

all she had wanted was food on her dish

She's listing and rolling, that old bath tub

they're shouting and screaming a terrible hubbub

Her world upside down, the hold fills with water

her eyes brim with tears at the thought of the daughter

she left behind in that arid dust bowl

oh God please, have mercy upon her soul

Her fingers tearing at the wood of the door

in salt water bubbles, she breathes oxygen no more

The Italians in masks gently lift her body 

and wring their hands at the wreck, so shoddy

SCENE ONE

Before Entebbe (London)

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The UK TV series Waking the Dead marked my first foray into the strange world of TV and film. A sound editor friend, who had been working on an episode that revolved around an army camp, asked whether I would be interested in providing background sound for four scenes. Since the show was well known, and even better, the sound studio was at Pinewood Studios, my ego couldn’t let me pass up the opportunity to tread the same ground that, over the years, several James Bonds had traipsed across before me.

Enlisting the help of an ex-army police colleague, we met at the strictly controlled gates to Pinewood and made our way over to the studio. Entering the cavernous space, I felt like a fraud. The screen that dominated the rear of the studio was the biggest I’d ever seen, and as I stood before it I was dwarfed.  When the sound editor ran the reel to which we were to add our voices, I wondered whether I’d been up to the job. My mind was soon put at rest when I realised that I had only been required to sync my voice to the background and not to an actor’s voice. As long as I filled the relevant frames with the required sound, the editor would fit it to the finished product later.

The first scene, for which my dubious talents were demanded, featured the main actor arriving at the guardroom to an army camp. Me and the other ex-army man were asked to make general guardroom conversation. We got a bit carried away in our attempts to provide a genuine squaddie atmosphere and were told off several times for swearing. The same happened when we’d been asked to provide background conversation in a pub, but after a few goes, we got the hang of it.

The next scene – still on the army camp – had featured a PT session, involving a squad being run past the actors and we were asked to bark both commands and encouragement to the running troops. We never did confess to my editor friend, that during that one, we called out the names of friends, shouting at them to buck their ideas up, get a move on and so on. We had been under the illusion that our commands would be broadcast at full volume on the TV for our friends to hear. No darling – this is background. I will try and tweak it a bit on the final cut, but don’t expect to hear too much.

The last scene featured the sounds of troops being drilled on the square, and having had a bit more experience at giving drill commands than my mate, the floor was all mine. There hadn’t been any actual footage of soldiers on a drill square, but the producers had asked for a drill soundtrack to cement the notion that the case was being investigated in an army camp.

Turning away from the now blank screen, I was put next to a microphone and in a studio at Pinewood, I bellowed out commands to invisible soldiers. I turned them left, right and about. I ordered them to shoulder arms, slope arms, present arms and to change arms. Despite having had such a miniscule role to play in the making of a TV series, I think it had been then, as I stood in front of that giant screen, that I’d got the bug for the film game and I was soon to be given another taste of it.

Harry Brown, starring Michael Caine, had a scene where a sink estate was about to be raided by cops, leading to a mini-riot. A friend of the Waking the Dead editor had asked me whether I could scout out a location and a few other cops to provide a realistic soundtrack for the on-screen police raid. He said he’d pay us fifty quid each and it hadn’t taken me long to enlist the sergeant and three other lads from my team to run the scene after work.

Winging it, I spoke to the manager of a rugby club near Barnes on the banks of the Thames. The club had access to a large open area and I told him a little white lie. Would he mind if we borrowed his clubhouse and the field in front to make a police training video? Although a bit hesitant, he’d eventually agreed and so one day after work, we’d gathered at the club. When the editor arrived, he showed us the actual pre-production reel of the police action and after a quick confab we worked out our actions.

We put voices to the pre-raid briefing, shouted POLICE! at invisible criminals before breaking down their doors, and then formed up in police support unit shield positions, while the skipper called out genuine commands to defend ourselves against the on-screen petrol bombers and clear the street of them.

At the end of our admittedly impressive role-play, the editor had been ecstatic with the recording he’d made, so much so, that he’d thrown in another fifty quid for the fixer – aka – me.

Before my dodgy debut as voiceover artist, I’d had a couple of other flirtations with the entertainment industry. The first had been a rather inauspicious appearance in a BBC series with the self-explanatory title of, Drunk and Dangerous. I’d still been a police officer back then, with Thames Valley Police and Aylesbury, the town where I worked at the time, had been chosen as one of the towns that for obvious reasons, had been a goldmine when