Читать книгу Fishers of Men - The Gripping True Story of a British Undercover Agent in Northern Ireland - Rob Lewis - Страница 10

For me the beginning of August 1980 was a very trying time. I had transferred to the Royal Armoured Corps to start a new career that I hoped would culminate in commanding armoured vehicles on exercises in Germany, never really expecting to go to war, and reaping the benefits of duty-free living with perhaps the occasional trip to Canada and Cyprus thrown in for good measure. It never really dawned on me that I might have to go to Northern Ireland as an infantryman. In all honesty the thought worried me, and I am sure I was not the only soldier involved in the training to have similar misgivings about our new role.

Sennelager, which was quite often referred to by British soldiers as ‘the world’s worst lager’, was going to be our squadron home for the next two weeks. We were located at the somewhat corny but aptly named training camp known as ‘Fort-Nite’, a name that some senior officer must have spent ages thinking up. Prior to the entire squadron deploying to this infantry training establishment we undertook our own internal troop training in the general area of Hohne Garrison, running around the place in heavy flak jackets and riot helmets, attending numerous lectures on the complexities of the Province, and generally pretending to know what we were doing in all matters relating to infantry patrol techniques and internal security measures.

Most of the internal security instruction carried out during this run-up phase was given by our own regimental instructors. The regiment itself had carried out a number of emergency tours in Northern Ireland as a complete unit, in 1974, when they were deployed to Londonderry for a four-month tour, and then again in 1976, this time covering the area around Armagh and East Tyrone. In between those duties and the impending two-year tour various troops had seen service in the Province, individually attached to a number of infantry battalions as part of our battle group commitment within 1BR Corps in Germany. Some of these troops had completed short tours in the city of Belfast some months previously, and were quite up to speed with the internal security tactics required and the generalities of what was going on in Northern Ireland. Most of the initial training we received was based on their experiences. There was also an NCO presence from one of the infantry regiments based in Celle, a large town only a short distance from our garrison. These guys were well up to date and were extremely good instructors who assisted enormously with our training in camp prior to us going to Sennelager. Some of their older blokes had carried out eight or nine tours in the Province.

The initial training concentrated on the improvement of our general fitness. The physical training instructors had their hands full turning the ‘fat tankies’ into a bunch of Seb Coe racing snakes. Daily runs and gymnasium sessions became the order of the day, and we carried out extensive weapons handling with the 7.62mm SLR (self-loading rifle), which would be our personal weapon for the tour. First-aid lessons took on a more serious role, with particular attention being paid to the treatment of gunshot wounds and trauma. We also spent long periods practising a variety of other skills such as map-reading and infantry patrol fire and movement, sessions held by both day and night. As we were an armoured reconnaissance regiment, map reading was second nature to the majority of us, the only difference being that it was now carried out on foot as opposed to on top of a Scimitar or Scorpion light tank. As someone who had transferred to the regiment with the intention of commanding tracked armoured vehicles, this new side to my army life came as a major culture shock, but I, along with my fellow cavalry soldiers, soon got the hang of it, and towards the latter part of the training I actually began to enjoy it, with only certain reservations.

We moved lock, stock and barrel as a squadron to the Northern Ireland Training and Tactics school at Sennelager to be greeted by a rather well-built, gruff-voiced infantry officer who was immediately christened ‘Captain Chaos’. His modus operandi, along with his directing staff (DS), was to saturate us with criticism about all the bad drills we had carried out during the various internal security exercises and realistic scenarios, and on more than one occasion he insisted that most of the squadron would surely be wiped out by a terrorist attack en masse if we were to carry out our patrolling techniques in the style we had acquired.

One of the more novel ways of debriefing he used was to run video recordings at the end of the day showing various members of the squadron in a multitude of highly embarrassing situations that they had been caught in during their day inside the training area. My troop sergeant and I had been caught by the short and curlies one day lying up in an observation post. We had been lying there slagging off the squadron leader in no uncertain terms. In the evening, just as the debrief was due to start, it became apparent exactly which video Captain Chaos was going to be playing to the attentive audience. The other guilty party and I just glanced at each other. I had a quick laugh to myself. After all, he was the senior rank and was likely to be in more shit than me, and luckily enough he had done most of the talking while the tape had been running. His face and neck went bright red in anticipation of the situation we were about to face. At the crucial point, where the barrage of our verbal abuse was just getting around to the question of the officer commanding’s parenthood and the fact that we both assumed that his right hand was used more than his wife for sexual satisfaction, the video player broke down. Thank Christ for that. Lesson learnt again. If there is a video about, keep your trap well and truly shut.

My troop corporal had an equally embarrassing situation broadcast to the entire squadron the following evening, but gained a bit of respect back for the way in which he dealt with it. He had been involved in a scenario where a ‘pretend’ member of the public had approached him and had informed him that he believed there was a bomb in the street the patrol were in. The corporal concerned looked at his aide-memoire and carried out the confirm, clear, cordon, control routine while the video rolled. Unfortunately for him he had done the clearing before the confirming and had established his incident control point in the doorway of a betting shop before finding out where the device was actually located. The video continued to roll. As the situation developed, Captain Chaos started talking to the NCO, asking him questions about the problem he had encountered and the actions he had taken. As the corporal knelt down, using an old jerry-can for support, and began to reel off a highly acceptable appraisal of the situation, Captain Chaos asked him if he had confirmed where the suspect device was located. With bluff and bluster, our troop corporal pointed up the street to the area of the baker’s shop and with a fair degree of certainty explained that it was in the doorway some hundred metres away from the control point.

After Captain Chaos had milked the situation as far as he could, he told the bloke to look under his arse. There for the entire world to see was a block of plastic explosive, a battery pack and a jerry-can full of petrol. Steve, the troop corporal, looked at the smug face of the infantry captain and grinned while remarking on the fact that he carried out this action purposely to test the observation skills of the younger soldiers in the troop and that they obviously had a lot of training to go through yet. As he walked away from the makeshift explosive device he sarcastically bollocked all the troopers for not picking him up on the mistake he had made to test them.

The exhaustive final exercise eventually came and went. The squadron had somehow managed to get through, and the next time we would be trudging around on patrol it would be in the Province for real. The thought of this really did nothing for me at all. I pined for the warmth and dryness of my tank turret. In October 1980 my troop arrived in Lisanelly Barracks, which had been a British Army camp for years, situated on the northern outskirts of Omagh, County Tyrone. In the middle of the night we took over our accommodation from the outgoing regiment. The following day was spent having a multitude of intelligence briefs, updates on the movements of known or suspected terrorists and general orientation lectures on the area we were to cover. In total the regimental responsibility was to cover 784 square miles of the Province, including over fifty miles of the border area with Eire. Along this border area there was in excess of thirty crossing points, of which only one was approved by the authorities; the others had all been cratered by explosives laid by the Royal Engineers to try to stop smuggling activities by the locals, and also to cause problems for terrorists looking for a quick getaway across to the South after they had carried out an attack. It was a joke. One day the illegal crossing would be impassable, the next day the locals would clear an area around the craters with their tractors or fill them in and carry on their routine as normal. My troop’s area of responsibility covered quite a large expanse. In particular we had a patrol commitment to a small republican town about sixteen kilometres to the east of Omagh called Termon Rock, more commonly known as Carrickmore.

This little town harboured a hive of hardliners and was to take up more of our patrol time than anywhere else. It was to be the first place I had bricks thrown at me by the local schoolkids, the first place I saw a petrol bomb thrown, and the first place I witnessed a rubber bullet or baton gun being fired. Love at first sight, as they say. The locals made no bones about their support of the republican movement, which encouraged terrorism, and everyone who lived there despised us. Exactly one year prior to our arrival the Provisional IRA had virtually sent an open invitation out to journalists, including a film crew from the Panorama television programme. The invitation was allegedly telephoned to their hotel in Eire, and informed them that if they wanted to see how the Provisionals were controlling republican areas they should go to Carrickmore. What the television team found was an organised patrol of black-hooded and heavily armed ‘volunteers’ from the Provisional IRA running their own illegal vehicle checkpoints in the area just outside the town in broad daylight. This was some distance away from the border areas, where this type of activity could be expected, and the whole escapade showed that the people we were likely to be up against were in no way afraid to show their strength in public, and in the worst-case scenario they would obviously be prepared to take us on face to face if they so wished. These were professional, dedicated and capable soldiers.

Life in the Province somehow went on as usual. Daily patrols became normal and there was even a decent social life. Omagh was considered to be a fairly safe place for a regimental two-year residential tour. The married soldiers’ wives took shopping trips to Belfast and other large towns and cities, their children went to schools in the local town, and we had free access to a wide range of pubs and clubs. A number of the lads played sports for the local rugby and hockey teams. This fraternisation did not extend to the Gaelic football or hurling teams, though. There was still a line to be drawn. The only major threat came from the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), whose younger male members were not too enthralled with the way their female population tended to ignore with some vigour their remonstrations against going off with ‘the Brits’. Fights in certain nightclubs in the town were commonplace. It was just like being back in Hohne again.

One Friday evening I was just lazing about in the accommodation block, doing nothing in particular, thinking about that night’s possible entertainment in town, when I was disturbed by my troop sergeant, a friend of mine. He came up to me and asked whether I would mind helping with the manpower required for the QRF (quick-reaction force). The duty of the force was to be on stand-by for any situation requiring extra manpower, to support troops on the ground and to react to incidents anywhere within our regiment’s area of responsibility. Every troop took its turn to complete a twenty-four-hour period, which mainly consisted of watching videos and sleeping until there was a call from the operation room to go out to an incident or to carry out a patrol in a particular area. The QRF on duty that day was short of a bloke for a routine helicopter patrol around the Carrickmore area, and the operations room had demanded a presence in the air over what used to be the old rectory, now a burnt-out shell of a building. This type of operation was usually referred to as a ‘top cover’, and was meant to act as deterrent to any possible terrorist attack being considered by active-service unit volunteers. In hot pursuit a helicopter is an extremely useful vehicle for tracking and following suspects, by both day and night.

It was my Friday off, the first one for ages, and I politely told him to fuck off. After a bit of bartering he told me that if I did him this favour I could pick any extra day off I wished the following week. It seemed like a pretty good idea to agree at the time, as the helicopter patrol was only likely to last a few hours and they were good fun anyway. I could still be back in camp before the pubs shut. I agreed. I made my way to the armoury and picked up my SLR, then I walked back across the helicopter landing pad to the troop’s accommodation and got my webbing and combat uniform sorted out, gave my rifle a quick clean and oiled the working parts, then it was down to the loading bay where a twenty-round magazine was fitted ready for the patrol. There were to be four of us in the chopper, a Scout, with two men sitting each side, facing out, with our legs dangling over the skids. We knelt down in pairs facing the cockpit of the Scout as the pilot finished his pre-flight checks, and after he had checked that everything was ready he gave us the thumbs-up. We dashed over to the helicopter, ducking as we approached the blades circling above our heads. The Scout lifted off, banking over towards the north, and then headed east towards Carrickmore. There was always a buzz to be had from this type of patrolling – the adrenalin rush as the helicopter banks over is a great experience. If it could be bottled and sold you could make a small fortune.

As we flew out of the Lisanelly Barracks area and headed away from camp I noticed a great number of RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) Land-Rover patrols moving along the road. In addition it struck me that they appeared to be escorting a large number of transporter-sized container trucks, all heading along the Drumnakilly Road away from the town. As well as the ground vehicles and foot patrols we were joined in the air by a number of other helicopters, a mixture of Wessex, Lynx and other Scouts, all generally moving towards the east. I had wondered what the hell was going on. I had the feeling I had been mugged into something that was going to last more than a few hours. It was a bit like a scene from the film Apocalypse Now; if some loudspeakers had burst into life with Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ the scene would have been set to perfection.

The convoy turned out to be the construction teams and their escorts moving into Carrickmore to set up the new police station, which was to be located where the remains of the old rectory were. We were part of the operation to give top cover to the whole show, or at least that’s how it appeared to me. I was sadly mistaken. On the way there we were told over the radio to deploy on the ground at the old rectory and meet up with other call signs from our regiment who were already in position. As we jumped off the Scout skids, members of our regiment’s close-observation troop took our places. They had been lying out at the rectory for a number of weeks, watching and securing the area, and were being relieved by us. As we changed over there was an exchange of the usual abusive banter, with them having the upper hand. As we covered their departure from the area their grins were certainly wider than ours.

We moved into the stables at the old rectory and set up our mini-cookers for a brew. We had no formal instructions for our deployment. Obviously the operations room back in Omagh had cuffed it a little by telling us to land, and I did not think they really knew what to do with us now we were there. There were enough police and troops around the place to start a mini-war, and so we thought if we kept out of sight and pretended to know what we were doing no one would bother us, and then we could catch the next helicopter back to camp. Unfortunately this was not to be the case. All we had with us were belt kits consisting of the bare essentials for either a short, or at the most an overnight patrol; no sleeping bags, no rations, just ammunition and brew kits with a snack-pack of biscuits and a few chocolate bars.

Billy, my troop sergeant, came back from the swiftly set up operations room and with rather a red face asked if we were all fine and enjoying ourselves; had we had a brew? The stables were quite good, weren’t they? His questions showed concern for our welfare previously unseen. I looked at him with a sly grin and ask the question on behalf of the other blokes in the troop. ‘Bill, get to the point. What the fuck is going on here?’ He replied that the operations room had informed him that we were to perform the task of base security for the new complex. We would carry out the anti-mortar baseplate patrols, man the operations room, carry out liaison with military and police search teams and general patrolling in the immediate area – all this on a packet of biscuits and a bar of chocolate! Six weeks later we headed back to camp. Six fucking weeks of Carrickmore! Believe you me; I was more than ready to go back to Omagh.

The weeks spent at Carrickmore on our prolonged visit actually turned out to be quite a good laugh on one or two occasions. One of these highlights was one evening when 2nd Troop from my squadron was tasked with the security of a grand house at Termon, on the outskirts of the village, belonging to a retired British Army officer. The owner was out of the country at the time. The retired colonel and his family had been there for years and had surprisingly remained untouched by the Troubles. However, because of the overnight arrival of a police station in the area, and the possibility of various backlashes by the local community, it was decided to provide cover and protection to this location, among a number of others. To this end, 2nd Troop were hiding up in the house during the day and then putting lads out in observation positions with night viewing aids during the hours of dark to defend the house against any attacks.

We decided to pay them a courtesy visit one evening while we were on a routine patrol, and informed them of our imminent arrival on the radio just as we were about a hundred metres away. As I spoke to the radio operator I could hear shrieks of laughter in the background. Billy and I looked at each other with some confusion as their radio operator, who was laughing hysterically as he spoke to me, told us to approach from the south as they had laid out trip flares on all routes into the house except from that direction. On entering the house it became apparent what they were all laughing about. One of the lads in the troop had been into the cellar of the house and had located a few bottles of the retired colonel’s vintage port and claret; other members had found a wardrobe upstairs containing a stack of old colonial-style uniforms, ball gowns, wigs and hats. The scene that lay before us was hilarious, the complete troop in fancy dress drinking port and toasting the regiment. Captain Chaos would surely have burst a blood vessel.

Overall, our tour in Omagh had been relatively quiet. We had been involved in a few minor scraps in Strabane and Carrickmore during the hunger strike period, but nothing compared to what various infantry battalions had been putting up with in Londonderry and Belfast over the same period. Those lads really had been earning their extra pay.

We were patrolling through Strabane one afternoon when two ‘Molotov cocktails’ came flying out of us from behind a six-foot wall on the ‘Head of Town’ estate. As the milk bottles smashed the inflammable contents immediately spread, and with a loud whooshing noise nearly caught two of our lads who were at the rear of the patrol. As myself and a colleague legged it up the alleyway in pursuit of the missile throwers we were met by a hail of bricks and bottles. We had not had time to put our riot helmets on and Steve, my mate in the chase, took a half house-brick straight in the face. Blood started to gush from his eyelid, and we halted on the corner in a doorway that faced the playground where a gang of about fifty or so teenagers and kids had gathered, ready for us to come into sight. They hurled abuse at us, baiting us to come out in the open. They suddenly bomb-burst in all directions. It was sometimes a ploy among terrorists in the Province to use kids as shields for a shooting. The kids would be given a signal and spread, the terrorists would take a few shots at the army patrol, and then the kids would converge again, blocking any return fire. This time, however, the bomb-burst was due to the rest of our patrol. They had radioed to our two Land-Rovers, which had been carrying out a satellite patrol around the area where we were on foot. The two Land-Rovers sped across the playground, chasing the teenagers – it was quite exciting to watch. As the vehicles pursued the kids they shot off in all directions. One made the mistake of running straight into the alleyway where Steve and I were waiting, and when he was about ten feet away Steve launched a half-brick at him. It caught him in the forehead and he yelled, ‘You fucking bastards,’ and legged it off in the opposite direction. Steve turned to me and laughed out loud, and with obvious satisfaction said, ‘That’ll teach the little bastard.’

The blood on Steve’s face was now looking quite dramatic, and as the Land-Rovers had completed their chase we were picked up and taken back to our base. Steve was taken in to see the duty medic who, after cleaning up the mess on his forehead, told him that a few clips were all that were needed. It looked a lot worse than it actually was because of the great amount of blood that had spread all over the place. The medic told Steve that he would get no compensation for it, though; that was for stitches only. Steve proceeded to tell the medic that if he did not put stitches in he would be needing some himself, so two stitches and a claim for a few hundred pounds later and Steve was a happy bunny. News of the compensation spread like wildfire, and from then on everyone tried to catch a brick. Billy drew the line and demanded that in future everyone would wear helmets at all times; he was not going to have our troop claiming for injuries left, right and centre.

Our troop had a number of minor successes, one of which consisted of an arms find in the area of Haddan’s Quarry, just on the outskirts of Carrickmore. We had split into two sections and our section had decided to take a break in the cover of some shrub only a few yards away from the Quarry but about a hundred yards away from the main road.

As we gathered around to have our tea break, Billy told one of the lads to move about fifty yards further up the hill and keep watch. The bloke concerned took the general-purpose machine gun with him and sauntered off. A few minutes later he returned, and Billy asked him what the fuck he thought he was playing at, to which the guy sarcastically responded that he had found a bag of weapons. Billy told him that he should stop playing the prat and fuck off back up the hill. The bloke turned, shrugged his shoulders, huffed a bit, and walked off. Within a few minutes he was back again with a big grin on his face. He looked at Billy and smugly stated that there were five of them. Billy looked at me and told me to go and have a look to see what was there, and if the lad concerned was waffling I had his full permission to give him a dig. We slowly moved up the hill, and the lad pointed out an area of thicker bushes where I should look. Sure enough there was a large plastic bag about four feet in length with a carry strap tied at both ends leaving a sling in the middle. The contents could easily be carried over the shoulder with the sling. As I was just about to tell Billy to come and have a look, the lad who had found the package cut through the plastic with his machete. I could see what was obviously the barrel of some sort of rifle. I looked at him straight in the eye and told him that he was a complete tosser and not to touch the package again. I would rather go home that evening with a full set of arms and legs.

The troop leader was called on the radio and told to join us at the quarry; his half of the patrol were about half a mile away. When he arrived he was fully briefed on the situation and told about the arms find that had been uncovered. Like most young troop leaders he was highly excitable, and came out with a number of options on how the find should be dealt with. He was a cracking bloke but sometimes needed Billy’s experience to guide him in the right direction. There was only one course of action and that was to bring out the experts to have a look at the contents and leave every decision to them. Within an hour or so the Ordnance Corps bomb disposal officer and his team that dealt with these situations had arrived. The search adviser from the Royal Engineers had been the first bloke to walk up to the find and do his particular business. He came back to us after about half an hour and reported that he had dealt with the possibility of the package being booby-trapped.

The bloke who had slit the pack open looked at me and Billy and made a loud swallowing noise in his throat. His actions earlier could have cost us dearly if the package had been connected to an explosive device. This had been drummed into us time and time again at Sennelager during training before deployment. There was no point in dwelling on the subject – he knew what he had done, and that was enough.

The contents of the bag were made safe and put on display. They consisted of a 7mm SAFN, a .303 Springfield, a .303 SMLE, a Lee-Enfield and a Thompson sub-machine gun. In addition to the weapons there were several magazines appropriate to the find and a mixture of ammunition. The weapons were well greased and wrapped in newspaper within the plastic covering. We headed back to our troop store in camp and the troop leader appeared later with case of beer. There were five weapons not available to the Provisionals any more.

As our party progressed into the small hours we encouraged the troop leader to kick the arse right out of his mess bill and lay on some champagne for the boys. Being the good lad that he was, he agreed that he should as well. He was the typical short-term commissioned officer, probably in for three years as part of the deal with his family, like so many other young officers in the regiment whose careers had been moulded for them from the time they were toddlers. Boarding school, the army, the family business. This particular troop leader and I were quite friendly. He had a really good sense of humour, and was always ready with a fast, witty reply to most situations, which, considering the company he kept, he needed. We were having a chat one afternoon during a patrol and he said that I should instruct the lads to move off the road and into cover for a lunch break. As we both searched around in the kidney pouches of our webbing to see what delights the Army Catering Corps had put together for us, he suddenly turned and asked me if I would like a glass of wine. This was Carrickmore, we were conducting a patrol in a dangerous area of Northern Ireland, and so while the rest of the Province carried out its patrols rigidly and by the book, we had a glass or two of Cabernet Sauvignon with our packed lunch, as only the cavalry would. He asked me if I had any plans for my future in the army, and quite honestly I told him that I figured if I was quick enough in getting my lance-corporal ranking back again I would probably like to make a full-time career of it, and possibly end up becoming a warrant officer and ultimately be commissioned from the ranks. I asked him the same question. He sipped his wine, rubbed his chin and very seriously said that he would be quite happy if he could make lieutenant. He then grinned and said that he doubted he would get that far! He actually left as a captain, and so surpassed his own expectations.

The hunger strikes were in full swing, and over this period ten republican prisoners were to starve themselves to death, becoming martyrs for their cause. Bobby Sands, because of his political position, as MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, was probably the most celebrated of the hunger strikers, and it was expected that the shit would hit the fan when he died. By the end of April 1981 he had been on strike for close to sixty days; he was not expected to last much longer. We had been deployed to Clogher in support of another squadron from our regiment; the general idea was that we would mount observation posts along the border areas as attacks on military installations were expected at the moment that news of Sand’s demise was released. The plan was that we could intercept any terrorists making their way back across the border after any such attacks taking place, or possibly pre-empt them and stop any crossing into the North by the illegal crossing points. We settled into our positions for some long cold nights. The rain soaked us and it was a pretty dismal time. During the late evening on 5 May the operations officer at Clogher came on the radio. ‘All call signs be aware that Bravo Sierra [Sands] has left this location for higher echelons. Over.’ All the observation post radio operators acknowledged the transmission; it was now time to watch our fronts.

The rain had subsided and there was a definite chill in the air. The clouds had parted and I could make out the stars beginning to peek through. It was extremely quiet and cold. Bang! There was a huge explosion somewhere to our south, possibly about ten kilometres away; it was definitely in the Republic. One of the call signs at the most southern part of the physical feature we were covering sent a ‘contact’ report. This consisted of an appraisal of where they thought the explosion was, and after the operator had finished speaking the operations room asked all the various posts for their estimations on the same explosion. In turn each call sign came up on the radio and gave its appraisal. One call sign had not answered, and for a full ten minutes the operations officer was calling them for a reply. Eventually a sleepy, muffled, murmuring Liverpudlian accent answered one of the checks. The operations officer asked for a contact report on the explosion. After about two minutes’ deathly silence the same Scouse accent came back with the response, ‘Er, wor explosion’s that, like? Over.’ From that day forward the person concerned was known as ‘Tommy’, as in the deaf, dumb and blind kid.

Carrickmore always appeared to be quiet. Only once in a while would we come under pressure on patrol, usually from kids leaving school in the afternoon. They would hurl abuse at us as we walked down the road, and if we were feeling in the mood we would bait them – it was always good fun. After the various insults had been exchanged and maybe the odd brick thrown, everybody would lose interest and stroll away, the kids to their homes and us back to the police station. For a notorious village like this, with its alleged support for the republican cause, it was almost subdued most of the time. That was until Easter arrived, when the republican emotions of the local population took priority over normal life. Carrickmore came into its own at Easter, as I was to see for myself. I was part of a patrol tasked to stay a few hundred yards away from the martyrs’ remembrance garden just on the outskirts of the village. I honestly expected to see a few hundred people attend the rally at the most. At about half past three that afternoon we heard the sound of drums coming from the centre of the village as a procession made its way towards the site. At the head of the parade were fourteen men dressed in camouflage jackets, green trousers, black berets and masks. The front few marchers carried a selection of flags, including the starry plough, the Fianna flag and the inevitable Tricolour. The procession gathered at the remembrance garden. By now the crowd had swelled to about three thousand, quite a sight for this place. A speech was given by James Gibney, a high-ranking Sinn Féin official who was instrumental in making Bobby Sands the parliamentary candidate and eventual member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone. Then, towards the end of the rally, a masked person from the colour party moved forward to the rostrum and made a statement on behalf of the Provisional Army Council. He was flanked on either side by other masked men; they both held handguns but fired no shots. The information from our observation point was transmitted to our operations room, and they confirmed that we were to stand off and observe only; there was to be no attempt to recover the weapons. No fun and games that afternoon.

The parade dispersed, and after helping the RUC to get the traffic moving away from the area as quickly as possible we returned to the police station, which had by now become our second home. As we made our way to the canteen we were informed of another task we were to carry out later that afternoon. Two members of our close-observation troop (COT) had been in cover extremely close to the procession and would need to tag on to the end of one of our patrols to return to the police station undetected. They had been in a few feet away from the edge of the crowd and had taken some photographs of the gun-bearers, which were required for scrutiny by Special Branch on their return. Later that week two men from the local area were arrested and two handguns were recovered. A good result from our regiment’s covert activities. What I did discover during this period was the presence of a few specialised covert units operating in the Province. I had obviously heard of the Special Air Service (SAS) – their historic embassy siege at Princes Gate had taken place in May 1980 and had blown the anonymity they had managed to retain for many years. I had just walked back to my room in Hohne at about 7:30 p.m. from a late tea after rugby training to see the now famous balcony scenes transmitted live from Kensington. These men became the instant heroes of virtually every soldier in the British Army, myself included.

I knew the SAS was in the Province, but what they did and where they were located was only to become fully apparent some years later. My first and only contact with them during my two years in Omagh came about one evening while my troop was on QRF in camp. Billy, our troop sergeant, had been called over to the operations room for a briefing, and as he left we all kitted up ready for a potential crash-out. There was a call on the tannoy in the QRF room for us all to go across to the regimental intelligence cell. As our section entered the room I noticed a guy in lightweight combats, wearing an open baggy combat smock. At his side lay a rucksack with a large ‘Westminster’ radio inside. He had an earpiece running to the Bergen and he was speaking in whispered tones into the small microphone unit. His hair was slightly longer than a normal soldier’s, and leaning against his Bergen (backpack) was a foreign rifle, a Heckler & Koch HK53. As he leant forward to stand up I also noticed a holster containing what appeared to be a Browning pistol inside his smock. Fucking hell, he was one of them, and we were actually going to chat to him!

The briefing he gave was very short and basically consisted of him telling us that if an operation taking place in our immediate area was in need of a cordon, we were it. The cordon supplied by our men would give the required protection for his team to be extracted from the area code covertly, and would stop any civilians going into the incident area before the police were called in. We would get any further instructions should we be deployed. We were not informed of what kind of operation they were carrying out, or where it was being instigated. About twenty minutes later he whispered something into the small microphone, then stood up and said, ‘Thanks very much, gents, that’s it. Sorry to have interrupted your evening,’ and then left the room. Those twenty minutes had intrigued me. I had just turned twenty-one and had not even considered my future outside the turret of an armoured vehicle. That evening planted the seed for the future. Although I had no plans to join the SAS, it did occur to me that there might be close alternatives whose roles I was not fully aware of.

Many of my own regiment’s COT were always making noises about the unit that they referred to as ‘Fourteen’, and had been involved in carrying out tasks for the Tasking Co-ordination Group (TCG). I knew this particular set-up controlled the various covert operations within the Province, and also deployed the COTs for long-term surveillance tasks. Our COT lads had made various drawn-out references to how they had done this job for ‘Fourteen’ and that job for ‘Fourteen’. Once again, as with the SAS, this mystical bunch of people intrigued me, and I had the vague notion that it might be something I would like to find out more about.

I had walked into the ‘choggie’ shop in the camp one evening to grab a burger. This shop was like a greasy-spoon café run by Asian people whose families had served in the British Army for years. In the old days they did it as servants; these days they did it for vast profits and most drove around in top-of-the-range Mercedes and BMWs. In front of me was a familiar face. I knew he was another soldier, only he had long hair and was wearing scruffy civilian clothes. I recalled that he was a lad who had been a few years senior to me at the Apprentice College at Chepstow. We had played rugby together. He recognised me straight away, and we shook hands and sat down for a brew and a chat. I asked him what he was up to and what he was doing here dressed like that. He evaded the questions with a hint of embarrassment, but the more he evaded the more I persisted. I ask him directly whether he was involved with this ‘Fourteen’ bunch, and at this he appeared to get a little shirty and asked me what I knew about them. I innocently replied that I did not really know that much, but I was all ears if he had anything to tell me. He made a pretty feeble excuse for leaving after about ten minutes, but he told me that if I was really interested to keep an eye on normal regimental routine orders for a reference to ‘Special Duties’.

After two years our tour in Omagh eventually came to an end and we prepared to move to England after handing over to the incoming regiment. We were lucky enough to leave the Province without any loss of life; others had not been so fortunate. During our two-year tour there had been over 2,000 shooting incidents within the Province, just over one 1,000 explosions, and over 270 deaths, of which 39 had been regular soldiers.

We were to be posted to Carver Barracks, just outside the town of Saffron Walden in Essex. We were to be redeployed as a light armoured reconnaissance unit equipped once again with Scimitars. Home at last.

The two-year tour in Omagh had instilled in me more than a passing interest in these ‘covert’ units I had heard about, and the sense of intrigue was still there a few years later. A number of the lads who were in our COT had tried selection for these duties. One or two had been successful, but the majority had been refused and had returned to regimental life. The failure rate was high and some very competent guys I knew had been returned for one reason or another. I had completed an exchange visit to an Italian armoured unit, which was probably the worst jaunt I had ever been on, and I had attended and passed my Royal Armoured Corps crew commander’s course, which in sharp contrast to the ‘Italian Job’ was probably the best course I had been involved in since I joined the army. A six-month tour of Cyprus as part of the United Nations scout car squadron was under my belt, and life seem to be heading in one direction – towards regimental duty. The way things were going it was likely that at best I would end up as a warrant officer within my own regiment. Nothing wrong with that other than I was not totally convinced it was what I wanted. I was twenty-six years old, a corporal, and looking for something other than normal soldiering.

I had read regimental orders one evening and, lo and behold, a section contained within the orders asked for volunteers to attend selection for arduous training with a view to being considered for Special Duties. Candidates were to contact the adjutant or chief clerk for more details. I decided that I would pay the chief clerk’s office a visit the next day.