My Transylvanian horror

My first taste of proper street violence came in a Transylvanian town square 30 years ago. Ethnic Romanian and Hungarian villagers were going at each other with pitchforks, knives and strips of wood they had ripped from park benches. In an attempt to separate the two sides, the Romanian army had driven half a dozen armoured vehicles into the middle of the square. Just as things seemed to calm down, a group of villagers came running out of a hotel, pursued by fired-up Hungarians. As I ran to avoid the melee, a man appeared holding a chunk of wood and hit me over the head. For a second I was stunned. Then my survival instinct kicked in. ‘I’m English,’ I shouted in my best Hungarian. ‘English!’ He stopped mid-swing. His intention had been to crack a Romanian skull, not bruise a British one. But soon his compatriots had gathered around, weapons raised, and they weren’t in the mood to listen. Protest as I might, the noise of the armoured vehicles drowned out my shouts of neutrality. Then I had a stroke of luck. A local Hungarian TV journalist, well known to my assailants as that-guy-on-the-telly, recognised me and began clapping and cheering. ‘Hero!’ he shouted. ‘He’s an English hero.’ The mob froze. ‘Now’s your moment,’ the journalist said into my ear. ‘For God’s sake, don’t run.’

The spell held. A half hour later I watched as the mob caught another man – this one a real Romanian – and beat his head with rods. Eventually the beatings began to sound like a boot stepping into soft mud. The fight, the first violent story I covered as a journalist, took place in a town called Targu Mures. I was one of the few foreigners present and the next morning my account, delivered down a scratchy telephone line, ran at the top of the BBC news.