‘CHRISTOPHER WAS MORE INTERESTED IN SEEING HISTORY BEING MADE THAN READING ABOUT IT IN TEXTBOOKS’
Just a few hours after he was born, Chris was lying against his mother’s shoulder. It was evening, and a nurse pulled at a string cord to put the light on. Chris’s eyes tracked the cord as it swung like a pendulum. “Oh, my goodness, we have a live wire here!” said the nurse. She was right: from his first moments, Chris showed a curiosity about the world and the people around him. He loved stories.
We lived in an upper middle-class district of Philadelphia but as a teacher and a pastor, we never had as much money as our neighbours. While the other kids went on cruises during the holidays, we went hiking or camping. Chris grew up in a diverse environment, with a mother running a charity helping poor kids, he asked piercing questions about values from early on.
When he was around 11 years old, a group of “popular” kids from school walked past our front window. Chris’s mother assumed he’d feel left out, but he had a wisdom beyond his years. He said: “Mum, if you knew what I’d have to do to be part of that group you’d be glad I stayed inside.”
Three years later, at a school meeting, his maths teacher told us: “Your son is always looking for the exception to the rule rather than just learning the rule.”
Chris loved the bicultural nature of his family and that we – an Englishman and an American – had met while we were travelling in Israel. John would be out teaching kids to play cricket in our street and we would go to England to see Grandma from the time Chris and his brother were small, so his world was always very big.
Chris studied history and had a year in Europe on a programme headed by Leiden University in the Netherlands, in conjunction with the University of Oxford and the Sorbonne in Paris, spending a semester in each city.
It was in Oxford that a professor said to him: “I think you are more interested in seeing history in the making than reading about it in textbooks” – and that really resonated.
In 2014, he picked up a camera and went to Ukraine. The Russians had just taken over Crimea. He got a train to Donetsk, which was now separatist territory. It was in turmoil, the separatists were breaking down doors at City Hall and at the police headquarters, and Chris was right there with them.
It was transformative. He became a leading English-speaking authority on the situation in Ukraine. After the downing of flight MH17 he was one of the first people at the crash site, while it was still burning. His report was published in
The Telegraph.
In the summer of 2017 he went to South Sudan. The conflict there was not getting a lot of publicity as everyone was concentrating on Isil. Chris spent three weeks embedded with rebel fighters. We knew South Sudan was dangerous but we knew he had done a lot of planning. We were more worried about food poisoning or lack of clean water.
The night before the attack he was frustrated because after those weeks of living among the rebels, who had told him the story was his alone, some other journalists had turned up. He felt betrayed.
We were in California when we got an email from the State Department asking us to get in touch and heard the terrible news. It was made worse by the accusations coming out of South Sudan that Chris was a mercenary. It was untrue and added so much to the pain.
The British FCO and embassy in South Sudan were totally silent. Though Chris was a dual national, they let the US lift the load. Our focus was on getting his body back home. It was traumatic; all-consuming.
Over the next few months our local senator tried to help us, setting up monthly calls with officials in South Sudan who were supposed to be investigating, but we did not learn anything of value. In the fog of war there is bound to be confusion and we are thankful for the calls for an investigation: we won’t give up until we find out what really happened.