Thursday, April 29, 2010

One of Our Boys Is Missing - Chapter 3, The Civvy in the Bivvy: Part 2

Charlie 'Terminal' Moraine is a former special forces soldier who served in the legendary (especially since it's now defunct, along with most of the legendary British Army regiments) 53 Assault Reconnaisance Squadron in some of the world's hot spots (well they were hotspots if you were a special forces operative anyway) including Northern Ireland, Oman, Columbia at the height of the drugs war, and Chelmsley Wood in the West Midlands. The Puumaja Crew is proud to present, in serial form, his new book, 'One Of Our Boys Is Missing', covering his life story and over 20 years in the front line of one of the deadliest units since the Ottoman Janissaries.
a recap from the end of the last part, our anti-hero has just passed out, and then, terrible news about one of his birds gives keeps us on course for the two to three tragedies per chapter quota.

Then I saw it...a local newspaper hoarding, the words seemed to scream at me 'Decapitation of Tragic Natalie: Pictures'. I knew it was going to be her even before I read the article; it turned out she'd been sucked into one of those giant hairdrying machines they used to have in hairdressers, whilst she was getting ready to come to the parade. Apparently her last word was 'Char...'. I just ran and ran in the pouring rain, not knowing where to go, until my feet literally dropped off.

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The situation in northern Ireland had been ever-present in the background when I was growing up. We had colour TV by the time the troubles started, so it was with this televisual wallpaper that we’d go about our daily business, eating breakfast, making packed lunch for school, doing homework, whilst the violence escalated. What had begun as a simple protest against British rule in the province grew very quickly into total war.

By the time I was a squaddie in the Calthrops we were into the era of carpet bombing, napalm and agent orange, mass global outrage and marches on the streets of major cities the world over. Catholic priests were committing self-immolation in protest against the regime, and the British Government was keen to spread the war further into the Republic of Ireland, or even further afield into Scotland, citing rebel activities there as their justification. British Army units tended to work on a rotational basis to give everyone a crack at 'em, and in June 1977 it was our turn. To me 'the province' had never been anything more than a far away country about which I knew nothing, and hadn't ever impinged on my life in any way. True, one of my grandparents had come from Ireland, but to my mind that hardly counted. I mean come on, imagine somenody English, maybe a sports person or something, claiming some sort of link with Ireland purely on the basis that their grandparents hailed from there. 

The first impression I got of Ireland was not that which was often portrayed by those most qualified to speak about Ireland, the English middle-classes, especially if they've never been near the place. I found that the stereotype we'd been fed, a barren, treeless land of awe-inspiring, ice-capped mountain ranges, glaciers, volcanoes and geysers, lonely farmsteads and fishing trawlers, was false. In fact it struck me, as I gazed out of the window of the C130 Hercules as we flew in, how similar it looked to my native Warwickshire. Then I realized it was my native Warwickshire - I'd been asleep, and losing all track of time, didn't know that the plane had just been circling for a few minutes following our takeoff from Brize Norton. Nevertheless, the real thing did indeed seem more familiar than expected, and as we looked out at the brooding Clannaghy Hills, there was one thought on our minds . Unfortunately as we were going to be patrolling in a Catholic area, that was all it was going to be, a thought, and we were going to have to put it to one side. I could fully understand why the people hated us there. I'd been pushed around myself in the past and I didn't like it much either. It was a no-win situation for us, and I came to feel that everyone was the victim of history, like some kind of mad game of musical chairs down the ages, with the music stopping in June 1977 with muggins here without a chair

A Welsh Guardsman returning from his tour as we were embarking on ours advised me that northern Ireland was 'a piece of cake mate. A piece of cake filled with broken glass and sulphuric acid, but cake nonetheless'. Our lack of experience – hell we were only just out of Thrushingfold – hardly counted in our favour. We were all so young as well. In world war two the average age of the combat soldier had apparently been somewhere in the mid twenties, but in northern Ireland he was twenty one. We were stationed in a maximum security base in South Armagh, an area known as bandit country owing to its proximity to the border with the Irish Republic, making it an area where the IRA was very active, and also due to the fact that many IRA members (known as 'players' in our parlance) were easily recognisable from the big sombreros, ponchos and drooping moustaches they sported.

Patrols were the bread and butter of life in the province. There was no getting away from them, particularly for the ordinary people who lived there, out and about on their everyday business, who had no connection with terrorism. It was always with a heavy heart that you had to step up to the next car at a VCP, not knowing who was going to be inside it or whether you were going to be greeted by the rattle of the Thomson gun. I felt like a chicken without doubt feels when it is about to be slaughtered.

Some of the local farmers were a laugh. They had been living with the troubles for some time now, and tried to go about their lives notwithstanding the unwanted attention from ourselves and the paramilitaries. Unless you've tried to build a house of cards on the deck of a yawing ship in a force sixer, you can't really understand the difficulty. Often the farmers' barns would be used by the players to store weapons, sometimes knowingly, usually not, and that was a job in itself, checking under the hay (not like in the films, with our bayonets) looking under any suspicious trapdoors for hidden weapons caches, some of which might have been there for decades.

It was also important to respect local people’s religion when carrying out these checks. We’d always offer rice or some sweets to the ubiquitous Buddha effigy that adorned seemingly every building we ever came across, and we’d take care not to drag our feet or trip over as we stepped through doorways (which, instead of being flush against the floor, had a small raised piece of wood along the bottom, ostensibly to keep out evil spirits). We were far from home. This, and also the sheer scale of what we were up against was brought home to me in one of the most horrific incidents I’ve ever experienced on active service, and I’m speaking as a man who’s seen someone fully defrangulated on a strat, whilst still breathing... 

To be furthered, or perhaps not..

 

Oh, the previous part is here.

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