THE life of a respected war reporter from Northern Ireland will be celebrated next week.
Olga Craig (67) from Co Tyrone was among the first reporters in Basra after the start of the Iraq war in 2003.
Remembered as both an intrepid reporter and “great craic,” a former colleague called her one of the “last great characters of old Fleet Street,” who loved sharing gossip with colleagues in the pub after deadlines.
She died on August 21 after a short stay in a London hospital, with a celebration of her life to be held in Omagh Golf Club on Monday at noon.
An obituary in The Times described how Ms Craig had been camping in the desert for a month along with a photographer when they witnessed coalition forces crossing a bridge into Basra in the early hours of March 20 2003.
A roving correspondent for The Sunday Telegraph at the time, she wasn’t embedded with an army unit and was one of the first journalists to follow inside the city walls.
Speaking to the Press Gazette in the weeks after, she recalled the chaos as British and American forces dealt with Iraqis in civilian clothes who could suddenly open fire.
With hostility also directed towards journalists, she added: “You could never relax. You always had to be on the lookout for mortars, bombing or fighting and if you weren’t in the thick of that, you always had to be on your guard about locals.”
When her van was robbed by a large crowd, she said her team was nearly shot by an SAS unit who mistook them as the enemy as they made their escape.
Born in Omagh in 1957, she grew up in the village of Gortin with her bus conductor father Ernie, bookkeeper mother Jean and brother Tom.
Starting out as a trainee reporter on the Derry Journal, she established a reputation for human interest features at the News Letter before Fleet Street came calling in 1989.
After time with the Daily Mail, she joined the now defunct Today newspaper for which she covered the Gulf war in 1990/1.
Former Today colleague Catherine Sian James said she had been “an oven-ready star” form the moment she walked into the newsroom.
“I was re-reading some of your interviews and features last night. What struck me was that firstly, that they were beautifully crafted and observed and secondly, that you never dodged the difficult questions,” she wrote on Facebook.
“The end result was invariably a penetrating profile or a colour piece, rich with humanity and understanding. I always trusted your judgments on places and people. But you were much more than a grown up and a safe pair of hands. In the great circus tent we call journalism, you were a daredevil, high-wire act.
“You were, like all journalists in foreign fields, incredibly brave as well.”
Ms Craig later returned to Northern Ireland to cover the Omagh bombing in 1998 and in 2001, she also visited a republican pub in south Armagh the day after a car bomb exploded outside the BBC’s London headquarters.
Her later career also included jobs with the Sunday Times, The Sunday Telegraph and The Mail on Sunday as assistant features editor.
