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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.
. . . . . . .
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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