When young New Zealander Derek Williams first landed in Hong Kong, he was dressed in polyester — a bad choice for the Asian heat — with little idea of what he was doing.

But he learnt quickly and went on to forge a career as a soundman and cameraman that spanned four decades.



Now, after 40 years covering everything from the Vietnam War to Tiananmen Square, and countless Thailand coups, he and his wife are leaving Asia.

Liam Cochrane sat down with him and together they looked back over his career and life in the region, which he said began with a three-month trial working for CBS in Hong Kong.



"I arrived, a young New Zealander with a cardboard suitcase," Williams said.

"And I was picked up by the CBS correspondent who took me to the Mandarin Oriental, probably the most expensive hotel in town. And as I sat there I thought, my god this is a bit rich.

"Within two days, I was in India, it was rainy season, it was hot, I had all the wrong clothes, they were all polyesters. I was sweating like a pig, I had diarrhea — I was miserable."

Derek Williams (R) in Benares India, with soundman Dexter Leong and correspondent Steve Kroft. ( Supplied )

'You have to grow callouses on your soul'

It was the time of the Bangladesh refugees, 1971 — the independence war was being fought and Edward "Ted" Kennedy had come out to visit the refugees.

"The press and the foreign press corps and the Indian press corps formed this great moving mass that advanced backwards through the refugee camp in front of Edward Kennedy, as photographers do," he said.

"And I looked around and I noticed we were stomping all over the refugees.

"I mean we destroyed more of the refugee camp just getting shots of Kennedy walking through.

"I remember that night going back to the hotel and I couldn't sleep, I was feeling sort of ill, and I felt, is this right? Is this how I want to spend the rest of my life, almost being a vulture?

"I was doing sound with a very professional German cameraman, who just said, 'Hey, you'll used to it. You know, you'll get a rhino-skin in this job'."

And just like the German cameraman had told him, as time went on and he learnt to block everything else out as he focused on getting the footage — he got used to it.

Derek Williams on the India Bangladesh border in 1971. ( Supplied )

"That eyepiece becomes a filter between you and the real thing, so you pretend you're not really seeing it, even though you are," he said.

"So I filmed an open heart surgery, and wounded people and Phnom Penh hospitals after the rocket attack, stuff like that.

"You definitely get callouses on your soul."

Dealing with trauma pre-PTSD

These days there is a growing understanding about the effects witnessing trauma can have on journalists and camera operators, and news organisations regularly offer people counselling.

But it was relatively unheard of in those early days, and Williams said while he did not know what it was called at the time, he suspects he experienced the effects of PTSD.

"We self-medicated in the bar, which was probably the wrong thing to do," he said.

"I don't recall anyone ever offering psychiatric help to anyone who had been through a traumatic thing."

Derek Williams in Afghanistan with the Muj 1990. ( Supplied )

He said some of the most traumatic experiences he witnessed and dealt with happened in Thailand.

In 1976 he covered a student demonstration at Thammasat University — considered the Oxford of Thailand — where the military police and right wing royalists attacked the university.

"As we pulled up in front of Thammasat University, there was a unit of border patrol police firing a bazooka in through the front gate of Thammasat," he said.

During this time the violence was intense and "vicious"; Williams said there were people being strung up from trees out in the Sanam Luang, in front of the royal palace.

"And then beaten to death with folding chairs," he said.

"Because that was where the market was in those days, and there were food stalls along there and people all stood there folding furniture underneath the trees.

"Then when the military and their accomplices made it inside the quadrangle of the school, they ordered all the students out, face down on the quadrangle.

"And they walked around and anyone wearing glasses, they just stomped on their glasses because their glasses were a sign of being an intellectual or a communist."

Experiencing frustration and fear

Williams was behind the camera when a reporter from Al Jazeera interviewed the then prime minister Samak Sundaravej.

"The reporter asked Samak about how many people were killed at Thammasat. He said, 'Oh one or two'.

"It was just so much rubbish, we had filmed probably 20 being murdered in front of us.

"Countless others tried to swim the river and got shot like fish in a barrel.

"It was just really quite disgusting and then, what was even more frustrating was we ... got in the car to come back, [and] we had to get the film up to Hong Kong.

"We were driving back here up the road and there were housewives out shopping like it was just ... another day."

Derek Williams, well-known cameraman and soundman in Beirut, 1982. ( Supplied: Tom Hartwell )

Williams said he felt genuine fear during what was called the Easter Offensive of 1972 in Vietnam.

"We were staying in the city of Hue, and we had to drive up to Quang Tri, 60 or 70 clicks up the road through a very, almost sandy landscape.

"And we'd get up earlier and earlier because what was happening was the Vietnamese communists were booby-trapping, putting landmines on the road.

"So you'd wait until the first South Vietnamese truck had gone up the road, then you'd follow them up, and I'd be sitting at the edge of my seat when that was going on, or sitting on my flight jacket.

"But there is very little you can do about stuff like that. I had some dear friends killed on that same road."

Neil Davis, the 'larger-than-life ladies' man'

One of Williams' good friends was Neil Davis, the legendary Tasmanian cameraman who was famous for getting on the other side during conflicts and becoming good friends with the non-American fighters.

"He was definitely larger than life," Williams said.

Williams recalled how Davis was famously known for his habit of "bludging cigarettes" from everyone around him.

After surviving a landmine incident, Davis had sworn that he would never buy a pack of cigarettes again.

The story goes that he was saved by a blood transfusion with a green coconut.

Neil Davis in the Anambas Islands, Indonesia 1979, covering the plight of Vietnamese refugees from the Communist regime. ( Supplied )

"Because there was enough in the coconut milk, there was enough bulk to keep the body pumping," Williams said.

While Davis kept to his word and stopped buying packets, he did continue to bludge cigarettes off friends and colleagues.

Williams said one night on his birthday, the entire press corps decided to chip in and buy Davis a carton of cigarettes.

"And he just got up, there's a carton of cigarettes [and] everyone he'd ever bludged a cigarette from, and [he] gave them [all] a pack.

"Then, within two minutes [he] was asking people for a cigarette."

Neil Davis filming aerobatics from Chipmunk aircraft in Hobart in 1961. ( Supplied )

Williams said he could not believe it when Davis was killed "in that stupid coup attempt".

"Everyone in the building who knew Neil, everyone was crying and it was just a dreadful scene."

He said one thing he would never forget about Neil was the fact he was "definitely a ladies' man".

"I will never forget the scene at his cremation. I was standing there, looking at the congregation and it was nearly all female," he said.

"And it was everything from bar girls to diplomats' wives, everything. And I looked and I thought, you dirty old bugger!"

Getting married as Saigon falls

Williams had only been dating his soon-to-be wife, a former chief stewardess of Air Vietnam, for a year or so when he was convinced by various intelligence officers that Saigon was going to fall.

"My wife is Vietnamese… [she] didn't want to leave, she'd either leave with me or with her family, but not alone.

"She was not going to let me put her on a plane by herself. So there was only one thing for it, so we got married.

"I'd won a bunch of money in a poker game in the radio room of CBS news… [so] I bribed the registry office to stay open on a Sunday.

"And the registrar was blind and deaf in one ear and really quite a character.

Derek Williams on the Strait of Hormuz during the 'tanker war', Iran Iraq war. ( Supplied )

"The only one in the audience was the cleaning lady who thought my sister-in-law was the bride because she was wearing a beautiful ao dai [Vietnamese national dress], and my wife and I were wearing blue jeans.

"We stopped outside the Caravelle Hotel where our office was and I rushed up the stairs and yelled out to the officers, 'Hey I just got married, does anyone want to come for a wedding breakfast?'

"Everyone said, 'No no, we gotta work'."

The next day he went to the New Zealand embassy and explained he had just got married and needed a passport for his wife.

But the city was falling apart around him and the embassy staff were frantically packing everything up into crates to load them on to freighter planes.

"Frank [someone at the embassy] breaks open a crate, pulls out a passport and says, 'You got a photo?' And I said, 'Yep'."

"He's got some glue, stuck it on, stamped it, signed it and said, 'OK, she's got six months to get legal'."

"I mean in those days it was loosey goosey."

'I knew so little when I started'

Looking back after his 40 years of work, he does wish he had known what he knows now when he first started.

"Because quite frankly ... in our business you learn so much by doing things, by being in places," he said.

"I wish I had read more about the region before I came up here.

"My mother saved all my letters home that I ever sent. I read some of them and I realised how terribly informed I was at the time."

After all of his time in Asia, Williams said Thailand and Vietnam held a particularly special place for him.

"I was thinking the other night, we had a huge rainstorm and I woke up and I was listening to the frogs in the garden," he said.

"We have one big bullfrog in our garden and he breaks into song at the drop of rain, and I was thinking if there is one thing I'm going to miss from this place it's going to be the sounds of the tropics."