6 Minute English / Addicted to war

Note: This is not a word-for-word transcript.

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning English. I m Neil.

And I m Sam. In this programme, we ll be hearing about the extraordinary life of a well-known BBC journalist, Fergal Keane. As a BBC war correspondent, Fergal witnessed some of the most violent events in recent history. Fergal s reporting helped his television audiences make sense of the horrors of war, but underneath there were more personal reasons attracting him to the frontline.

Despite the danger, Fergal found himself going back again and again to report from war zones. It gave him something he couldn't get anywhere else a massive rush of adrenaline, and Fergal started to worry that he was becoming addicted to war.

In his new book, The Madness: A Memoir of War, Fear and PTSD , Fergal discusses living with PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, a type of psychological suffering that results from witnessing extreme violence. We ll hear about some key events in Fergal s life, and, as usual, we ll be learning some new vocabulary as well.

But first, I have a question for you, Sam. The term, PTSD, is quite new, but descriptions of the mental suffering of war go back to ancient times. Something similar to PTSD is mentioned in Viking sagas and in stories about both World Wars. So, what was the name of the PTSD-like condition suffered by many soldiers during the First World War? Was it:a) nostalgia?b) shell shock? or,c) combat stress?

I think the answer is shell shock.

OK, Sam, I ll reveal the answer later in the programme. Fergal Keane, who was born in Ireland, had seen violence ever since the early days of his career covering the fighting in Belfast. He had already reported from wars all over the world when, in 1994, he was sent to cover the civil war in Rwanda. But what Fergal saw there shocked him like nothing before, as he told Mobeen Azhar, presenter of BBC World Service programme, Lives Less Ordinary.

Fergal Keane and I began to have nightmares of Rwanda. And of course, at that stage, you know, it was obvious that I was traumatised but, again, did I go to a psychiatrist? No, I didn't. I kept doing the job.

Did you turn to other things?