Soldier Of The Queen (20 page)

1. 
Give your name, address, where you are coming from and going to.

2. 
Do not answer any other questions about age, occupation or religion.

3. 
Do not answer questions about other people, your family, relatives or neighbours.

4. 
The security forces cannot photograph you against your will.

5. 
When your car is being searched lock it and say "Which part do you wish to search first?" Accompany the uniformed man and unlock the

boot, then lock it, unlock the car and bonnet in turn, locking each section in turn.

6. 
If you dislike the way you are being treated (and especially any attempt by men to search women) you have the right to be searched in the nearest RUC station.

7. 
They are not allowed to take any person away from the well-lit area of the public road — to take persons up side-roads or into fields or up the road on their own is a crime, as it is threatening behaviour.

8. 
Any undue delay is illegal.

9. 
Report to me or to your solicitor any grievance you have about fear being inflicted on you or your family on the public road by abuses of Emergency powers.

There was only one thing on that list that I hadn't done to civilians at checkpoints - take photographs. For a while the injunction "suffer patiently" became a sort of comedian's catchphrase around the camp. If anything went wrong for you someone was bound to tell you to "suffer patiently". And when we swapped stories in the canteen about hostile encounters with the locals we would use the term as a euphemism for violence: "Did you make him suffer patiently?" "Yes, he suffered very patiently."

There were always opportunities for violence, but the presence of officers or older and wiser NCOs meant that, a lot of the time, I behaved better than I might otherwise have done. Hunger strikers dwindling slowly towards their end made sure there was always tension in the air. Everything seemed to be going the Provos' way: in the Irish Republic two hunger strikers got elected to parliament in the June general election — and on the same day eight IRA men awaiting sentence for the murder of an SAS soldier escaped from custody in Belfast.

I had only ever known Northern Ireland during the Hunger Strike, so I knew no different. But soldiers who had been born in the area, and UDR and RUC people, all said that things had got much worse. There was a lot more defiance and aggression from Catholics, especially young Catholic men, who tended to be the sort of people we got into scrapes with at checkpoints. It seemed at times that every young nationalist wanted to do his bit for the hunger strikers by getting stroppy with soldiers. Perhaps they saw getting a beating from us as a rite of passage. I could understand them. I knew I would have been the same. It is difficult to describe how I felt. It was not exactly a case of being torn between two sides -1 knew which side I was on. I was a British soldier and I had no time for the IRA, and yet I secretly admired the hunger strikers, even though sometimes I could feel elated at their deaths. The strange thing was that while I could allow myself to feel satisfied that a hunger striker had died, I didn't like to see English soldiers, especially middle-class officers, sneering at hunger strikers' deaths. Contradiction was the dominant force within my mind.

I admired the way that even before a hunger striker was buried his successor had been named. Anyone could see they were not isolated fanatics: there were people queueing up to give their lives for the cause. Their resolve impressed me and underlined the fact that we were in a war we could not win, at least not at a price anyone was willing to pay. Some days I would feel a traitor to my uniform for thinking like this, especially when I'd read of the latest IRA atrocity and the pompous statement of justification that usually went with it.

Everyone was so self-righteous; no-one was wrong. We all made our own excuses for our own acts of brutality. Life was full of injustice: everyone behaving unjustly to everyone else. That was the way of the world, it seemed to me. I had felt this from an early age and, in some ways, I suppose this feeling helped me resolve the contradictions I experienced in my mind. I stopped getting bothered about who was right and who was wrong. Everyone was right and everyone was wrong. My only goal was survival.

I was manning a permanent VCP near the border one evening. I was in the central part, checking driving licences. A man in his early forties drove towards me. Word came through on my radio that the driver was a "blue devil" - an IRA sympathiser and low-level helper, the sort of person who would pass on information rather than pull a trigger or plant a bomb himself. I thought: "You sneaky fucker." He stopped and wound down his window. I told him I wanted to search his car.

He said: "I'm only after being searched."

I said I didn't care: I wanted to search him again. I could tell he was in a hurry, which pleased me. With the help of another soldier I started taking everything out of his car, slowly, and checking everything and everywhere, slowly. I let my colleague continue while I started asking questions of the blue devil.

"
Name?"

"
What's it got to do with you?"

"
Address?"

"
What's it got to do with you?"

"
Age?"

"
What's it got to do with you?"

"
Religion?" But before he could answer I said: "Catholic."

At this point my colleague stuck his head out of the disordered car and asked the man to come over.

My colleague pointed at a piece of dirt on the carpet and said: "What's that?"

The man said it looked like dirt. My colleague said: "Dirt? It looks like explosives to me. Get the sample bag, Bernie."

If you came across suspicious substances that you thought needed analysis you were supposed to pick them up with a pair of surgical pliers and place them in a special sample bag. Then you had to get the motorist to sign for the bag.

I asked the blue devil to sign, but he refused: "I'm not signing nothing."

I said: "Fucking sign it." He still refused and started shouting at me. I grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket. Instinctively, he grabbed me back. That was enough: that was assault and I was entitled to defend myself. I headbutted him full in the face. The impact sent him instantly to the floor. He lay there dazed, not unconscious, just not saying anything. I was going to give him a kicking on the floor, but Major Disaster came running over and intervened. He told me to deal with another motorist who had just driven in. I walked away.

Back at St Angelo my relationship with Elizabeth was progressing, just as my relationship with the other UDR soldiers was about to decline to a very low point. I was sitting in the canteen one day with a group of soldiers from my regiment. Someone was reading an Irish newspaper. There were reports about the Pope's convalescence after his shooting in Rome. There was also a double-page pull-out poster showing him in better days celebrating mass in front of a huge crowd. In one hand he held his shepherd's crook; his other hand was raised to give a blessing to the people. Underneath the photo were the words: "Pray for His Holiness".

I had an idea for a wind-up. I knew a joint RUC/UDR patrol was about to come in to the canteen. I got some sticky tape from somewhere and stuck the poster above the hot-plate. I sat back down with my mates and we all started giggling. Around five minutes later a group of about twelve UDR and RUC men walked in as expected. Among them was Billy Bunter, the one who kept calling me a Fenian and telling me to keep my head down in a gun-fight. They made their way towards the hot-plate, talking and laughing. We pretended to eat our food.

Suddenly I heard Billy Bunter shout: "You Fenian bastard!" I looked up and he was pointing at the poster. What happened next was extraordinary: at least six UDR men ran to the poster and tore it violently from its place. Then in a group frenzy they ripped it to pieces, spat on it and finally stamped on it, all the time shouting madly. My mates and I were laughing at their antics. Billy saw us and ran over, his face afire with anger. He looked at me and shouted: "Who put that up there? Who fucking put that up there?"

I said: "What are you talking about, you idiot?" We denied having anything to do with it - and no-one outside my group had seen me put it up.

Billy said: "You saw it up there and you did nothing about it." They were all deadly serious; I'm sure they would have been less offended by a bomb. Elizabeth told me later that two of the UDR people had gone to the ops room to see if anyone knew who had put it up: they actually asked an officer if he would launch an enquiry to find the culprit. Fortunately, he decided there were other more urgent priorities. I told

Elizabeth I'd done it purely as a joke. Even she was a bit po-faced about it, telling me I shouldn't have done it, although she accepted that Billy and his boys had over-reacted a little. The incident created a lot of bad feeling between our regiment and the UDR. It overshadowed the rest of the tour. It seemed to confirm the suspicions of some UDR soldiers that our regiment was a haven for IRA sympathisers.

I couldn't understand the mentality of people like Billy Bunter. I wish I could say he was unusual, but he wasn't. That sort of demented anti-Catholicism was widespread. If I had not been going out with Elizabeth I think I would just have dismissed the UDR soldiers as sectarian bigots, but she made me see more clearly how the activities of republicans helped to form people like Billy. Shortly after that incident in the canteen a part-time UDR man from St Angelo was shot dead by the IRA. His name was Tommy Graham. He had been delivering groceries to a cottage near Lisnaskea. The Provos had taken over the house and held its occupant hostage before Tommy had arrived on his regular run. I'd never met him, but I'd seen him around. Elizabeth knew him well. When she talked about him I realised I had met his wife only a few weeks earlier. We had been on patrol and she had invited us in for a cup of tea. I remembered her telling us she had a husband in the UDR. She had mentioned his brother, another UDR man, who had survived an assassination attempt the previous year when he had been ambushed a few hundred yards from his home. He had been shot in the neck and shoulder, but had survived. On the evening news I recognised soldiers from our regiment standing guard by the house where Tommy had been shot. Elizabeth was very upset. She went to the funeral. He was buried with full military honours near Brookeborough. He was 38 and left behind two children aged 12 and 14.

Not long after his funeral my three days' "Rest and Recuperation" finally came up. It was the middle of June, about midway through our tour. It coincided with the court case that had been hanging over me at home for the riot I had started outside the nightclub on my last leave. I had been charged under the Public Order Act with threatening behaviour. I had informed the army of the court case and they had arranged for an officer to attend to speak on my behalf. I had long stopped worrying about my criminal past catching up on me. As far as I was concerned the army knew about my record - and didn't care. My main fear was that the magistrates would be less forgiving. I knew that with my list of previous convictions I would almost certainly get a custodial sentence if I were a civilian. But I was confident my army service and the fact I was risking my life in Northern Ireland would count in my favour.

I got a lift in the covert car to Aldergrove Airport. I wanted to fly to Birmingham, but I could only get a flight to Heathrow. Once there I got the underground into the heart of London. I remember getting off at Piccadilly and wandering around, almost dazed by the lights and the noise of the traffic. I felt strange and uneasy. Mentally I was still in Northern Ireland and I remember wishing I had my rifle with me. I felt naked and vulnerable without it. I went for a drink in a tourist pub and stayed till closing time. I tried chatting up some tourists, but the conversation didn't flow. I must have appeared a bit odd and edgy. As the alcohol settled into my stomach I began to feel more relaxed. By the end of the evening I just felt huge relief to be away from it all. Only a few hours earlier I had been in the middle of Fermanagh and now I was in

London's West End. I ended up missing my train back to Wolverhampton and had to spend the night in Euston Station.

I got an early train back home. I went straight to the magistrates' court. In the foyer I saw the officer who was going to represent me, I could hardly have missed him - he was dressed in full cavalry regalia. I introduced myself to him. He was tall and distinguished-looking and spoke with a pukka accent. I knew he'd go down well with the magistrates. I had never met him before and didn't recognise him from Northern Ireland. In court the prosecution gave a vivid description of the riot: bricks, bottles, spanners, knives, iron bars, wooden stakes, smashed windows, terrified neighbours, fighting in gardens, shredded rose-bushes. It was not the sort of event that usually happened in Codsall - and the magistrates looked less than happy.

My officer stood up to give me a character reference. He said I was a fine soldier, a vital part of the unit, and I was doing a sterling job in Ulster at a very difficult and dangerous time. He said if I received a custodial sentence I would be expelled from the army, which would be a tragedy as I had a wonderful military career ahead of me. He was very impressive, although I thought he was talking about someone else. I had pleaded guilty, so the magistrates only had to decide my sentence. My previous convictions were read out in the hearing of the officer and then the magistrates left the court to make their decision. I wasn't worried. I thought my officer had probably swung it for me, and I was right. I was given an £80 fine with £20 costs.