COMBAT reporting is never a safe or simple job. But even for case-hardened veterans, the Nigerian civil war presents one of the meanest assignments yet. Merely getting in and out of Biafra is a dangerous and doubtful proposition. The irregular airlift from Lisbon flies through Nigerian antiaircraft fire to reach a makeshift airstrip that is only open at night. When correspondents finally manage to get in, they are shuttled off to quarters in the Progress Hotel in Aba, the country's provisional capital. When they are not in the field, they face the hazards of the Progress menu. This consists of yams--fried for breakfast, boiled for lunch, baked for dinner.

For TIME Correspondent James Wilde, a veteran of Algeria and Viet Nam, and for Photographer Priya Ramrakha, such hardships are hardly unusual. On and off, they spent four days with a Biafran commando unit behind enemy lines, crawled through the brush with a Biafran sergeant on a reconnaissance mission, joined white mercenaries leading a dangerous ambush. What really troubled Wilde about this assignment was what he saw happening to Biafra and its people. "A chaplain travels from village to village administering last rites to the dying and blessing the heaps of the already dead," wrote Wilde. "Vultures screech in the brooding, muggy sky. The air is fetid with despair and death. Reporting this story is depressing beyond description."

Covering the federal side of the conflict was rarely more pleasant for Paris Correspondent Friedel Ungeheuer. But as TIME'S former West Af rica correspondent, Ungeheuer was fortunate to find some old beerdrinking buddies among customs officials at Lagos airport to help him past the red tape and get him on a flight to Enugu, former capital of the Eastern Region, for an eyewitness report of relief operations. also had valuable background files from TIME'S Nairobi Bureau Chief Edwin Reingold and Ottawa Bureau Chief Alan Grossman. During two years in West Africa, Grossman covered the Ibo massacres that led to the present civil war. Among his more vivid memories, Grossman recalled walking along the platform at the Kano railroad station, "a handkerchief clasped to my nose to dull the lingering stench of more than a hundred Ibo corpses." For him, too, it was all a depressing experience.

Artist Jacob Lawrence, who is making his first appearance on a TIME cover, has been the recipient of a long list of honors since his apprentice days at the Harlem Art Workshop in the 1930s. His paintings now hang in many of the world's major museums. His cover painting reflects the observations of eight months' of living and traveling in Nigeria in 1964. Of the war, he says: "After talking to Nigerians from the east and west, we were not surprised when the conflict broke out."

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