Romanian Revolution through British Eyes/ Mike Brown’s memories

September 17^th 1989

Teresa and I arrived in Bucharest to take up our appointment in the Defence Section.

November

The 14^th party congress of the Romanian Communist Party was held during a bitterly cold period. Some cynically said that if that weather had continued through December there would not have been a revolution.

15^th to 17^th December – Timișoara

Embassy press and political officer and the US Embassy Human Rights Officer are with a crowd of around 400, outside the church of dissident priest, Lazlo Tokes with securitate officers disrupting the meeting. They manage to break through the police cordon and have a shouted conversation with Tokes who had appeared at a window in the church. Both Romanian and Hungarian ethnics were openly rebelling against the regime. In some books, written about the revolution, our Embassy press and political officer was reported as a ‘blond American’.  Both officers were escorted from the church and ordered back to Bucharest.

19^th December

The Christmas party started at our little house in Intrarea Bitolia/Piața Dorobanți.  At 9pm a colonel, an extra officer at the French Embassy, arrived ‘escorted’ by four securitate officers. It was a good party.

Browse our special photo gallery: The Revolution as seen by the international media

20^th December

The Christmas Hash (Hash House Harriers – fun run) through Pădurea Baneasa, near the Zoo, many nationalities took part. The Embassy press and political officer arrived tailed by six securitate cars.

21^st December

Non-essential members of staff and families were evacuated by Swiss Air flight from Otopeni.

Ceaușescu addresses a forced, bussed in, gathering of citizens from the balcony of the central party building. I stood on the pavement near the Athenaeum observing.  The Dictator announced that there had been an increase in payments to mothers. But more money meant not a lot if there was nothing to spend it in or on. There was a discernable murmur of derision and from the far side of the square from the Architectural Faculty the crackle of gunfire was heard. An ancient Dacia ambulance sped out of the square with a blue flashing light, the legs of at least one injured person could be seen.

I returned to the Embassy to report what I had seen and in the Embassy press room I found the now late Romanian press assistant. She was watching a large TV showing Ceausescu addressing the people. We had not spoken before that day; in a social sense we had never exchanged a word. She asked, “What am I seeing”, she was shaking visibly with fear. I went upstairs to the Chancery floor and removed the red yellow and blue ribbons from a large book and tied two armbands. I gave my colleague one of the bands and I put on the other and we became revolutionaries together! We watched on the TV as Ceaușescu faltered, he clearly was not winning anyone over.  We watched as his bodyguard approached and spoke to him and the big white helicopter landing on the roof of the party building.

Sometime during the day I managed to collect Teresa from the Embassy and take her to the home of the Defence Attaché.  She and the DA’s wife were tasked with recording everything broadcast by TVR. As we were approaching the junction near to where we lived, a young boy stepped into the road and waved us down.  He produced a Romanian flag with the now symbolic hole and a newly baked loaf of bread and gave the V for Victory salute. The cities bakeries were ordered by the revolutionary leadership to bake bread for free distribution. We still have that flag to this day.

As the activity continued, non-Romanian members of staff in the Embassy were allowed to go up to the top of Jules Michelet in pairs to see the events but were told only to spend ten minutes there before returning to the Embassy. I spoke to the Ambassador, Michael Atkinson, saying that it was important that our press and political officer, as a Romanian linguist be allowed by him onto the streets so that we could gauge the sentiment of the people. He had ordered her confined to the Embassy as a protection expecting that some form of action might be taken against her, because of her activity in Timișoara. I argued that a riot had ensued, shops had been set alight and it was important to understand the sentiment of the people. After all the only thing that could happen was being made persona on grata and expelled from the country. I said I thought that we had all earned that distinction by now! He thought and assented.

She and I walked down Michelet onto Magheru and witnessed the people streaming through from what is now Revolution Square onto Magheru. The corner shop window of a book seller offering books by Elena Ceaușescu, now a Vodafone shop, was smashed and set on fire. People were now becoming more animated smashing the poster boards that they had been given prior to the meeting and running here and there.

We managed to get into the office of the Turkish travel agency, which was on the fourth floor at the junction of Jules Michelet and Magheru and overlooked the junction, so that we could get a good view. The lady that let us in was terrified. A small stocky securitate major with a loud hailer was strutting around barking orders and attempting to control the crowd but without any good effect. The crowd visibly became more empowered and the major quickly realized that his position was increasingly endangered and he slipped from the crowd and strode off quickly towards Piata Romana.

We went back down onto the street where three Romanian Army APC’s ( TAB Armored Personnel Carriers) were stationary spanning the junction with their crews standing on top.  A group of around 20 ladies approached the soldiers.

The one lady said to a soldier, “You are not going to shoot us are you, we are your mothers!” the soldier took off the magazine from his AK47 and ejected the round from the breech of his rifle. He said an emphatic “No, I am not” and we all burst into tears, even the soldier. The lady then placed a flower down the barrel of his rifle and kissed him.  We all shook hands and smiled which quickly turned to laughter, which was due to relief more than anything else.

We then gathered together, a large crowd of some thousand and we walked towards Piața Romană reaching it as a large white helicopter passed overhead  and fluttering down came thousands of little pieces of paper like confetti with the words ‘reject the activities of these students and foreigners’. A little old lady next to me chuckled and said “me, a student at my age!”

We marched up Dorobanți gathering numbers as we went and at Piața Dorobanți I went to our house in Intrarea Bitolia to get some cans of drink.  At the TV studio the crowd surrounded the area with securitate troops guarding the building and looking bewildered. Somebody was throwing pictures of Ceausescu out of the tower part of the TV Studios. One large man carrying an axe walked up to me and said “hey foreigner, take care, leave this work to us Romanians”. He smiled and meant no aggression to us. I nodded.  A group of teenagers were standing on the statue outside the studio shouting “the army is with us”.  I handed out my cans of coke and sprite to them and we resolved to go back to the Embassy.  On the way we passed a family who asked what was happening and I told them “The Revolution”; they burst into tears instantly.

In the afternoon the Defence Attaché and I attempted to drive north towards the airport in the office CD vehicle. At Băneasa Bridge we reached a ring of steel three trucks thick.  “We are expecting tanks coming into Bucharest and will stop them with these trucks” said one of the leaders carrying a baseball bat. We explained that we were trying to see what the road was like to Otopeni airport so that we could plan an evacuation.  The guy half believed us and agreed that we could continue and after 20 minutes of maneuvering the trucks we got through. As we approached what is now Strada Jandarmariei we saw a line of coaches parked with blankets covering the windows. We continued to the turning into Strada Jandarmariei, a uniformed securitate major stepped into the road pointing his pistol at us and waiving us in. We lied that we had tried to get back into the city from the airport but the road was blocked. Pointing the gun at us he said nothing but you could see that he was thinking things through. Eventually he said that we could not continue in the direction of Otopeni and that the only way we could continue was down what is now Strada Jandarmariei and work out way through Bucureștii Noi. He made it clear that this was the only way we could continue. He kept looking at the line of coaches and clearly did not want us to go back past them.  He then said something to a sentry standing next to him and the soldier did something that has been practiced by military people throughout history. He whistled to the next sentry and the major waived us down the road as we passed by each sentry. We made it back to the Embassy without any incident but the streets were deserted.

Back at the Embassy, everyone was doing something and one of the British security officers was doing the cooking. (At that time we had 4 security officers and one senior security officer). The Embassy shop was underneath the building and was well stocked as you would expect for the approach to Christmas. One of the UK based security staff was doing the cooking in the Club. Upstairs, expecting the worst, sensitive documents were being shredded and burnt. Downstairs the telephone to the Foreign Office was alive and manned in London by several of the evacuated staff from the previous day and others that were on Christmas leave.

That night the revolution began proper which clearly at the time was between the Army and the Securitate. The Defence Attaché and I made regular forays to the centre of activity at Piața Universității. I saw ammunition for both sides being taken from the same truck.  I went with the Defence Attaché to the rear of the Intercontinental Hotel where we watched a hijacked truck which was being driven with young people on the roof of the truck.  Machine gun fire raked the people and the driver and the vehicle veered off the road into the front window of what was the Balkan Tourist office.

At some point we managed to hook-up with journalist Chris Stephen the Guardian’s troubleshooter (fireman). On our return to the Embassy that evening on foot we came under fire from nearby. It was likely that the target was the securitate group that we had passed through earlier but we didn’t hang around to find out. We ran and Chris said that he knew he was in trouble if the Defence Attaché and his assistant were running. We got back to the Embassy safely.

The Embassy became a mass effort of sleeping, cooking, eating and washing of clothes. Some members of staff only had the clothes they stood up in, not having been able to get back to their accommodation. Out in the streets centered on what is now Piața Revoluției firing was continuous and occasionally a stray bullet came into the compound but the Embassy didn’t come under any concerted firing. In any case the army commander, the late General Ștefan Gușă had called the Embassy underlining his continued protection. In fact the Romanian Jandarms that usually provided the outer guard of the Embassy had been trebled and became very friendly.

December 22^nd

The next morning we drove out of the Embassy in our 4 by 4 and headed towards Piața Universității through the backstreets, crossing Bălcescu towards the Architecture Faculty where a large number of people were sweeping with water being sprayed from a bowser truck. We managed to park the vehicle in a backstreet and resolved to do a circuit of the area on foot. We met two US Embassy guys doing the same thing, accompanied by three securitate.  We parted company but attracted no attention from the securitate goons who left with the Americans.

On our circuit of the Architecture Faculty we were continually being approached by people with handfuls of empty cartridge cases of all sizes. As we approached Bălcescu where we came across the sinister sight of a row of chest high bullet holes which are still there to this day, or were last time I looked. We returned to our vehicle and drove back to the Embassy through the remaining water.  An hour later we were called out into the Embassy compound by a group of British journalists who pointed to the wheels of our vehicle which were now stained blood red.

The BBC’s John Simpson arrived at the Embassy and chatted with us, had a cup of tea and then departed with pencil and notepad in hand.

We continued to do the same things but the gunfire continued outside though not so frequent.

23^rd December

Sometime during the afternoon of the next day a decision was made to evacuate the Embassy and go to the American Embassy which had evacuated the previous day but had left behind their armed US Marine Corps Detachment. We had stayed reasonably peacefully during the intervening hours, shooting became more sporadic. Our security officer was cooking up the world’s largest spaghetti bolognaise, the smell of which had pervaded the Embassy for hours.

Suddenly we got the notice out of the blue to jump into our cars and drive to the American Embassy which we did, leaving the evening meal and taking with us several frozen chickens and beef burgers. The Romanian guards at the British Embassy were dumfounded since they had instructions to defend us to the death.

The US Marines were bemused at the nature of their sudden company. On arrival we were told that the day previous a marine guard had shot an intruder in the Embassy grounds. This did not fill us with enthusiasm but seemed to explain why we had made the move. At least here we were defended by non-Romanian armed military. The problem came when we asked where the microwave cookers were – we were told there were none.

We did get to hear the evenings broadcast direct from President George Bush Senior who spoke to Ambassador Alan (Buzz) Green Jr and “my fellow Americans”. “Sorry no, we are the British” came the reply, the Americans have gone.

24^th December

Christmas Eve arrived, sleep had been sporadic during that night and we were told that the majority of us would evacuate by road south through Bulgaria to Sofia.

The next morning the convoy assembled outside the American Embassy with Teresa’s little white Opel Corsa taking up the rear emblazoned with a large Union Flag over the back door and the lead car also with a Union Flag.

The route agreed with the revolutionary leaders took us down to Șoseaua Mihai Bravu but at the junction with Strada Baba Novac we were stopped by two separate sets of revolutionaries.  We were searched by the first lot and then again by the second.  Documents were checked and an argument between the two factions continued.  The problem was that one faction was engaged in flushing out a sniper who was in a block of flats on Mihai Bravu in the stretch of road which now joins Baba Novac to McDonalds on Dristor. Eventually it was decided to let us take a detour around that stretch of road.

The rest of the journey down to the border and the Danube was uneventful. As we arrived on the Bulgarian side, we were met by the Deputy Head of the British Embassy in Sofia who would lead us to the capital and the Sheraton Hotel. It was Christmas Day.

The next day, our colleagues at the Embassy in Sofia confirmed that they had been informed that Ceaușescu and his wife had been shot by firing squad on Christmas Day.

The next day we flew to London.

 By Mike Brown

British businessman

Teresa Brown:  Memories that to this day remain with me, other than Mike’s account above

• The young boy who shoved a flag and loaf of bread through the window of our car on the way to Aleea Alexandru.
• While at the DA’s house recording the news, when making a coffee in the kitchen at Aleea Alexandru and glancing out of the window early in the morning to see a man in a suit, carrying a briefcase on his way to work or somewhere as if it were a normal day and then in the next street an APC moving in the opposite direction with the turret facing towards something.
• Helping with all sorts of tasks in the Embassy, even down to washing socks etc and putting them on the radiators to dry.  Several of us had come into the Embassy only in what we stood up in as it was impossible to get back to our accommodation.
• Being allowed by our security officers to go to the end of Jules Michelet/Magheru for a maximum of 5-10 min to see what was going on, with the proviso that we came straight back if things looked rough.
• Crossing the Embassy compound to go and eat in the Embassy club, which is now Corporate Services, with tracer bullets firing above us at something beyond the compound.  (The Embassy shop which was beneath the now Corporate Services was stocked full of food for Christmas and we could have lived from the freezers for several days)
• Being moved to the US Embassy to unfamiliar surroundings and for the first time feeling unsafe.  Until that point I had felt quite safe in the British Embassy.
• Being evacuated and having to leave our cat in the house with no food or water.  An American colleague of Mike’s managed to get into the house and feed her.  He told us later that in order to survive she had scratched her way through to some mandarin oranges in a crate which we had imported by air for Christmas.
• Feeling sad at having to leave Romania and the feeling of letting down our Romanian colleagues, even though socially we had very little to do with them until after 1989.
• On returning to our accommodation at Intrarea Bitola in late January with Xmas decorations still hanging in the house and finding several empty cartridges in the garden with several holes in the walls of the house and a knuckle duster also in the garden.  I immediately ripped all the decorations down and threw them in the bin.

 By Teresa Brown

Disclaimer: This account does not represent the view of the Her Majesty’s British Government, but is a personal recollection of the December 1989 events in Romania.