Soldier Of The Queen (21 page)

Outside the court the officer shook my hand. He said: "Good show, O'Mahoney. You gave those blighters a good hiding."

The local paper, the
Wolverhampton Express and Star,
carried a full report on the court case. It was a page lead with the headline, "Gang fight on car park was open warfare." It read:

Rival gangs armed with knives, iron bars, spanners and bottles fought a pitched battle on a Wolverhampton pub car park, magistrates were told.

Residents feared for their safety while hysterical youths savagely attacked each other outside the Wheel Inn in Wolverhampton Road, Codsall, said Mr Aidan Cotter, prosecuting, yesterday.

Youths broke bottles in the road and chased each other over gardens.

"
What happened was the worst disturbance that has ever been known in Codsall. It amounted to gang warfare," magistrates' chairman, Mr Harold Ambler, told the court yesterday.

I kept my head down for the next few days: I didn't want to push my luck. It was good to see family and friends again, but no-one seemed particularly surprised or even pleased to see me. I suppose I was disappointed by their reaction. I had not expected to be welcomed home as a conquering hero, but at the same time I would have appreciated just a little acknowledgement that I had been risking my life in a dangerous place. Their reactions only confirmed what I knew already: few people in England cared about what went on in Northern Ireland.

I was only on special leave for three days, but something surprising happened in that time - I found I was missing Northern Ireland and looking forward to getting back.

Life in Codsall seemed hugely dull. The place looked much the same. The chat was much the same. My friends were doing much the same as they had always done. I found I couldn't relate to them, or civilian life, in the way I used to. Life in the army in Northern Ireland could be dull too, but not in the same way. The backdrop of conflict and the ever-present threat of violence meant that even when things were apparently dull I lived in a state of alertness. The fear and tension made me

feel I was at least living life wide-awake. In Codsali everyone seemed half asleep, if not comatose.

On the flight back to Belfast I felt happy in a way I hadn't felt for some time. I was actually looking forward to getting back in uniform and out on patrol. The covert car picked me up at the airport and drove me down to St Angelo. I remembered how petrified I'd been the first time I'd travelled this route. Now, only two months later, I felt relaxed. There was danger out there, but I'd proved to myself I could handle it. I had learnt to control my fear. I was still paranoid and watchful, yet I felt my mind could no longer torture me with its imaginings. In some ways I thought I was in more danger from other soldiers than from the IRA. Since the first few weeks no more soldiers had shot themselves or their mates, but I wasn't sure how long the regiment's good fortune would last. As I had grown more confident in my own soldiering abilities I had grown more contemptuous of others' inabilities.

I didn't mind people like Major Disaster - he made no pretence of being a proper soldier - it was more the army-barmies I used to mock, the ones who could probably have identified by silhouette every type of Soviet attack helicopter and scored only bull's-eyes on the firing range, but who on the ground in Northern Ireland dealing with real people in real situations were frequently clueless. On the other hand people like me and Mac, natural born hooligans, barely capable of identifying one end of a rifle from the other, could deal effectively with any trouble that came our way, even if we caused a lot of it ourselves. In my mind hooligans made the best soldiers.

I started drinking a lot more. There was little else to do when you were not working, apart from watching television.

I remember June for the hours spent watching tennis from Wimbledon. Tennis and news bulletins and home-videos sent by soldiers' wives in Germany. There was sometimes a bit of tension caused by the way married soldiers would casually interrupt programmes as they piled in to watch the latest video nasties from their gormless spouses ("Hello, Pete. Dorothy sends her love. Tabby's had some more kittens. Keep your head down."). Sometimes the bar was the only refuge: I could usually rely on Mac as a drinking partner. Others would tut-tut as we got steamed up in the bar. They would tell us we were mad, that we shouldn't, that in the morning we wouldn't be thinking straight. I used to reply that if someone was going to shoot me I didn't want to be thinking straight. Mac and I even started bringing alcohol with us on nighttime checkpoint shifts. The places in our gas-mask holders which by day were filled with sweeties by night were filled with cans of lager. We would also stash cans in our combat jackets. I can't remember us ever being drunk on duty, with our loaded rifles, but four pints of lager mixed with adrenaline probably contributed to our more loutish behaviour at checkpoints. We used to say that at least the booze helped us walk in zig-zags.

I started really enjoying myself on patrol or at checkpoints. I really did get into it. The more confident I got the more enjoyable I found it. There are some people who should never be put in positions of power - and I was certainly one of them. I began to relish the opportunities for confrontation, especially as the people who used to confront us tended to be around my age. I would experience the same buzz I used to get from gang fights and I'd behave in much the same way as I did formerly. The difference was that now I wore a uniform, carried a gun and acted with lawful authority. But, for all that, we very rarely gave anyone a serious beating. If anyone ended up in hospital they would only have arrived there with a wound that could have been patched up quickly in casualty. Most of the time I doubt whether we even inflicted wounds as serious as that. It would just be a punch here, a kick there, the odd headbutt or dig in the ribs with a rifle. And, as far as I was concerned, I never hit anyone who didn't ask for it. If stroppy young men wanted to do their bit for Ireland by testing me I was willing to meet the challenge. So was Mac.

One evening we had been setting up roving checkpoints near the border. We stopped a mini-bus which contained about eight men, aged between 25 to 35, from Monaghan in the Republic, a place we had been led to believe was an IRA stronghold. They were on their way somewhere for a night out and they didn't like us interrupting their drinking time. We ordered them out of the bus and they grudgingly assembled in the road. They complained loudly about the delay as we searched the bus. But then they started swearing, calling us "fucking Brits" and - a favourite local term - "whores". If they had kept their mouths shut we would probably just have searched the bus and sent them on their way. The cheekiest one said: "We won't forget your faces." We started searching them individually. Charisma, the fundamentalist Protestant, was with us. He was about to search the cheekiest who pulled away from him saying, "You're not searching me." He tried to step back onto the bus, but Charisma grabbed him and pulled him back. The young man turned and squared up to him. Charisma stepped back. The man's friends, sensing Charisma's fear, moved forward aggressively. Mac was nearest to the man who had tried to get back on the bus - and smashed the flat of his rifle butt into the side of his head. The victim fell to the floor, temporarily stunned.

In my eyes what Mac did was brutal, but necessary. The situation had been on the verge of getting out of control - and someone could have ended up shot. Instead the men shut their mouths and did as they were told. We finished searching everybody, even the man on the floor who gradually came to, and they all got back on the mini-bus. Of course we knew such incidents bred hatred and helped swell the IRA's ranks, but we didn't care. Our overriding goal was to get back to camp, and ultimately to Germany, alive and intact. The future was someone else's problem.

Friday and Saturday evenings were often the worst for trouble. These were the times when the roads seemed packed with car-loads of young men, often half-drunk, moving back and forth across the border in search of a night out. A favourite destination for people from the north was a so-called country club in the Republic. We had been told it was popular with disco-dancing Provos. We got to know the faces of a lot of the teenagers who would pass through most weekends on their way to the club. Some of them would even try to sell us raffle tickets - with proceeds going to republican prisoners' families.

One Friday night I found myself on a shift at the permanent checkpoint nearest the club. Major Disaster was in charge. Not all of us were on duty: there were four of us grabbing a few hours' sleep. I was snoozing; Mac was snoring. Suddenly another soldier came in and roused us.

He said: "Quick. You're wanted. There's a group of paddies gonna kick off." Apparently one of them had even made to grab Major Disaster's rifle.

I jumped up quite easily, rifle lashed to my arm, but Mac had been sleeping soundly and we had to dig him for a few seconds to bring him to life. He was a huge man, tall and stocky, and he didn't like having his sleep disturbed. It could have been a scene out of a wildlife film where the camera-crew stumbles upon a hungry grizzly bear. He gave a roaring yawn which showed off his missing front teeth. I followed him outside where we could see Major Disaster and a few other soldiers in a stand-off with four over-excited men screaming abuse. Mac didn't say anything: he just walked straight over to the group and punched the first man full in the face. The man fell on the floor and Mac started kicking him viciously. The man's friends were stunned into silence, while he himself squirmed on the ground trying to avoid Mac's boot.

Major Disaster shouted: "Stop it! Stop it! That's enough."

We made them all sit on the ground with their legs crossed. One of them asked if they could smoke. I had an idea. I said they could smoke, but I wanted them to move further down the road to do so. We were surrounded by hills. I made them sit in the road at the darkest and most exposed point in the VCP. They looked a bit nervous. One of them asked why we were making them sit there. I pointed to the hills and said that if there was a sniper up there hoping to shoot a soldier all he would see were the lights of the cigarettes. They jumped to their feet and stamped out their cigarettes, shouting: "You're trying to get us killed!" We let them go eventually. The next time they passed through they were a lot less cocky.

Our favourite game of harassment was also the simplest -delaying people at checkpoints, especially when you knew they were in a hurry. You could do a quick search or a slow search or, for the area's Owen Carrons, a very slow search. And then you could radio ahead to a patrol up the road and they could repeat the procedure. If you were in the patrol up ahead, you wouldn't usually know why you were being asked to stop people for a second time. You didn't need to know. If your mates were telling you to stop them then they had to be bad bastards and that was that. You treated them accordingly, no matter how respectable they looked.

I remember being on a roving patrol when we got a call on the radio telling us to stop a car that was coming our way and which had just been searched. It was a country road and we had been hiding in bushes. The car came towards us and I jumped into the road, put my hand up and shouted: "STOP!" Inside the car were four people, all dressed for ballroom dancing. On the back seat were a middle-aged couple: she was wearing a long, black ballgown, he was in a dinner jacket. In the front passenger seat was an old man, smartly dressed but very frail. He looked like he had a week to live. It was raining heavily and they already looked as if they had been dragged through a hedge by the first patrol. The driver wound down his window. His face, streaked with rain drops, flashed with anger and exasperation.

He said: "I've just been stopped."

I said I didn't give a fuck: I wanted to see his driving licence.

He said again: "But I've just been stopped. Up the road."

I said: "How the fuck do we know that? Out of the car." As they got out of the car the woman remonstrated with me angrily. I said: "Oh fucking shut up."

The old man was still in his seat and showed no signs of moving. I said I wanted granddad out as well. They said he was old and infirm. I said I didn't care. They helped the old man out of his seat. He was so frail he had to lean against the bonnet. The rain continued to fall, soaking everyone even more. We started emptying the car. We took out all the mats and unloaded everything from the boot, including the spare wheel. Then we put everything back again, slowly. All the time the woman would not stop complaining. Finally we let them get back into the car.

Then, just as the driver was about to close his door I said to Mac loudly: "Are you sure you checked under the back seat?"

Mac looked at me and twisted his face into a mask of mockingly exaggerated regret: "I don't think I did."

I said to the driver: "Right. Everyone out of the car." And we repeated the procedure, this time pulling out the back seat. When they finally set off I'm sure they headed for the nearest IRA recruitment officer and offered their services. I cringe now when I think of the way we behaved then, but we were in a war and we left any decency back at camp.

Two more IRA hunger strikers died in July: 30-year-old Joe McDonnell was the fifth, after fasting for 61 days; Martin Hurson, aged 27, went after 46 days. There were jokes back at camp that he had deliberately died a lot earlier than the others just to stop any of us winning the sweepstake with an accurate guess. On the Saturday of the week in which he died we watched news reports of a huge riot in Dublin where republicans had tried to storm the British Embassy. Around 200 people had been injured.