"As I lay there half-reclining, with blood streaming down from my head and hands, a North Vietnamese soldier appeared literally a metre away over a slight rise. My first reacion was, ‘What a fantastic shot!’ "
A white-bellied sea eagle, Queen Elizabeth Cape, Bruny Island. June 2021. One Crowded Hour by Tim Bowden Neil Davis was the kind of man that I suspect would be decidedly out of place in the modern world. A Tasmanian who found himself struck by wanderlust in the 1960s and set out to southeast Asia to record the seemingly endless turmoil and upheaval seen there. Encompassing the Konfrontasi , the early ruptures of fighting in South Vietnam, the full-blown war in Vietnam, the overthrow of Suharto and descent into the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66, the flow of neighbouring wars into Laos and Burma and, most vitally to Davis himself, the destruction of Cambodia, the madness of the Khmer Rouge genocide and subsequent invasion by Vietnam. As close a friend to Neil Davis as anyone could be, Bowden has done an exceptional job compiling this autobiography. I did not expect to find so much joy in his formative years, which often feel like a makeweight in such books. Sorell and Hob...