A Breed of Heroes

by Alan Judd

  It was Nigel Beale who acted most promptly. He got down on his knees beside the boy and pulled the shell dressing from his belt, tearing it open with both hands. No one from the crowd tried to help. Charles got down beside Nigel and pulled off his own shell dressing. The boy was still breathing but there was a lot of blood on the ground and it was still oozing out of his body from the great wound down one side. Charles pressed his shell dressing on the reddest and most exposed bit he could see and stuck it down. He did not like to press too hard. He felt very calm but noticed with a rather remote curiosity that his hands were bloody and shaking. He heard the CO’s wireless operator calling for Starlight – Henry Sandy – and being told that he was on his way. The crowd had grown considerably and there was now a lot of shouting. A space had been cleared round the boy but not without some scuffling. The CO was calling for his parents and eventually a fat, dark and dirty little man stepped forward. He demanded to know what the CO was doing with the boy.

  ‘We’re taking him to hospital, what do you think?’ snapped the CO.

  ‘You’re not takin’ him nowhere, you’re not takin’ him from me.’ The little man stared in wide-eyed appeal at the crowd. ‘Holy Mother, they’re taking me dying child!’ There was uproar at this and renewed struggling. Henry Sandy and his team arrived in the ambulance Pig and forced their way through the crowd with a stretcher. Henry looked very quickly at the boy, feeling the wound, eyes and heart. It was the first time Charles had seen him without any facetiousness. He spoke and moved simply and directly, treating all alike. ‘Help me get him on the stretcher,’ he said.

  Charles helped with the feet. The boy was very light. Then the stretcher-bearers lifted him and made back towards the Pig. The crowd had gathered round that now and tried to stop the boy being loaded into it. They fought and shouted as though to stop him being dragged off to prison. A couple of them had chalked slogans about the Queen, including the abbreviation ‘FTQ’ – the Republican answer to the Protestant ‘FTP’ – on the side of the Pig. For one moment they succeeded in bringing the stretcher party to a standstill and it looked as though they were going to snatch the boy back. Charles grappled with a yelling woman who had grabbed hold of the stretcher. He pulled her off it but she then turned her attentions to him, pulling his hair and hitting. She fought with a ferocity which for a moment shocked him but even so he could not bring himself to hit her with his fist. He kept trying to catch her arms and, due to some deeply-instilled sense of military propriety, let go of her with one hand in order to catch his beret and prevent it falling to the ground. Then the awareness of lost dignity took over and, still holding and being held by her, he kicked her hard on the shins, twice. She let go with a howling scream and was immediately surrounded by sympathetic companions.

  By this time the Pig was moving off with the boy and his father, whom the CO had allowed on board. Even so, a couple of other men tried to climb on to it before being roughly repelled. Charles saw one of the CO’s bodyguards lay his baton across the front of one man’s face with a calculated precision that a few months, or even weeks, before would have seemed shocking. The man dropped to his knees and bent right over, clutching his face. Van Horne appeared at Charles’s side, unruffled and apparently untouched by the struggle. ‘I can’t help noticing you have a way with women, sir.’

  Once the Pig was gone they pulled out. Charles got back into the CO’s Land-Rover with Nigel Beale, who had a bloody nose. They were still surrounded by clamouring people claiming to represent citizens’ action committees and various residents’ associations. The word ‘kidnap’ was being thrown around a lot. ‘Accelerate forward and don’t stop or swerve for anyone,’ the CO told his driver. ‘If we run over one or two of the bastards so much the better.’ However, the protesters showed a nimble concern for their own safety and the Land-Rovers left the estate without further incident. It was said that the boy had been injured by a pipe bomb; he had been playing with some other boys and had picked up a piece of pipe about a foot long which had exploded as he threw it.

  The CO spoke to no one on the way back except to order the driver to stop off at C company’s headquarters in the Factory. Edward and the others were all there. An unease had developed between Charles and them since he had gone to battalion HQ, almost as though he had changed sides. Their greetings now were rather formal, except for the company sergeant major who was as friendly and jokey as ever. But the CO did not want to listen to anyone else’s words. He wanted to unburden himself. ‘Those bloody people down there are not people,’ he announced to everyone in the ops room. ‘No animal would do what they did. Animals look after their own. These people are not fit to have children. They’re not fit to be people. First of all they make a lethal gelignite bomb, then they leave it lying around where kids can find it. Then when some poor little sod loses his hand and half his arm as well as very nearly his leg they just stand around like a lot of stuffed dummies and stare at him. That’s what they were doing when we arrived, wasn’t it, eh? Just standing and staring watching him bleed to death on the pavement. And not one of them lifted a finger, not one little finger. I didn’t see them do anything. Did you? Eh? Did anyone see them do anything?’ He looked at everyone in turn. People nodded or lowered their eyes as though they themselves were guilty. The CO so often launched into tirades that Charles had not realised at first how moved and upset he was now. His teeth were clenched and his eyes hard. ‘And as though that’s not enough, watching him die, they actually tried to stop us helping, didn’t they? Tried quite hard too. If they’d tried a little harder I’d have happily left one or two more in the gutter for good. What kind of people are they, for God’s sake? Psychopaths? Ghouls? And they won’t thank us, you know. It won’t do us any good. I know we’re not in a place where we can do any good. I know that. But I don’t care what they think of me, or what they think of my men, or what they think about anything. I am going to make them behave like human beings even if they are ghouls. From now on it’s war as far as I’m concerned.’ His cheeks were taut with emotion and he stared at everyone for a few moments as though they were all his enemies. Then he suddenly relaxed and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. ‘All right, let’s be off,’ he said quietly.

  Out in the yard they were getting back into the vehicles when the CO paused with his hand on the iron grille over the windscreen. He turned to Charles and said, ‘You’re leaving us, are you?’

  Caught off guard, it was a moment before Charles could reply. ‘Yes, sir.’

  The CO looked at him and then got into the vehicle without saying anything. Charles climbed in the back, sandwiched between the signals sergeant and Van Horne. He felt as though he had been caught out at something and was angry with himself for feeling like that. After all, he knew he needed no convincing that he would be glad to leave the Army.

  On the way back the CO said to Nigel Beale that if the boy’s father turned out to have a sense of gratitude after all he might be prepared to talk about the local Provisional IRA men. It was a very long shot, but worth trying.

  10

  The deal with Beazely worked well. There were a few teething troubles, due mainly to busy telephones and inflexible deadlines, but after a while a system of information-gathering and transmission was established that worked at least as well as those of the Army and the press. This was a source of pride for Charles and Van Horne, though it should not have been because their system was no more than a combination of the resources of the other two. Beazely was given no more than he could have got for himself, and did not ask for more, while they accepted without question whatever price he paid. The extra five hundred pounds that Charles needed to get himself out of the Army did not include living expenses for any time thereafter. It did not even include his post-resignation train fare from Aldershot to London, though as he was entitled to a number of concessionary leave warrants a year he might not have to pay that anyway. In which case, he reasoned, he might just as well go from Aldershot to Edinburgh, a city he had lon
g wanted to see. He did not think very much about what he might do after leaving the Army, but carefully nursed an inner conviction that he would not know until he had left. This was, perhaps, yet another symptom of his growing tendency not to think about whatever might be problematic or unpleasant.

  Sharing the money with Van Horne was the worst aspect of the deal with Beazely – not the fact of sharing but the physical act of counting and handing over the cash. Handling the money was necessarily conspiratorial and Charles felt shabby and corrupt at such moments. Neither of his associates showed anything but a matter-of-fact, businesslike approach to the transactions, handing over and pocketing the notes as though they had not the slightest interest in them. There was the further problem of what to do with the cash. Charles never went near a bank and he did not care to entrust it to the paymaster, since that would be official. When his wallet would hold no more he took to stuffing it into a sock in the bottom of his kitbag. One night he dreamt of being raided by the Inland Revenue whilst the CO argued passionately on his behalf, believing him to be innocent.

  However, there was no trouble with the arrangement itself. The advantage, so far as Charles was concerned, was that he knew what the Army did and did not want publicised and, through Beazely, what alternatives might appeal to the editorial mind. Events in the battalion area were usually witnessed by either himself and Van Horne or by people they both knew; details of those outside could be got from the PR desk or from other PROs. Van Horne was invaluable. Not only was he sensible and discreet but he had a genius for sniffing out stories around the battalion during inactive periods which resulted in so much favourable publicity – often of the much-desired ‘human interest’ sort – that the battalion came to be used as a show-piece by the PR desk. The CO, despite his aversion for journalism, was delighted.

  ‘A small war is the best recruiting sergeant,’ he said, after reading an article on the rigour of Assault Commando training, ‘but this is the next thing to it. It’s not all accurate, though. It’s up to you to make sure they get that sort of thing right, Charles.’

  During busy periods, when Charles could not get to a phone, Van Horne relayed the information. He also took photographs and was said by Beazely to have an ‘eye’. Charles concentrated on building up a good relationship with the regular journalists, who were on the whole competent and agreeable. Though careful not to poach their stories or angles, he was able to judge from them how to select his own. Their questions displayed the direction of their interests. It was a matter of pride to himself and Van Horne that they fabricated nothing, though it would have been easy to do so. The trouble was, they would both get so involved in their stories that they were hurt and irritated by editorial and Beazely-inspired cuts.

  ‘I keep on telling you,’ Beazely would say, ‘that sub-editors have no souls. They care only for column inches and circulation figures, not for truth, realism, intelligence and virtue, like you and I. You are casting pearls before swine. Take it from one who knows. I’d be a wealthy man if I’d had a penny for each word I’ve had to keep back from these barbarians.’ He was, in fact, a good teacher. He insisted on reports being short and to the point and usually would alter them only if they were not or as a result of fresh information gleaned from other items of furniture at the bar of his hotel. Sometimes, though, he would cut a passage because his sub-editor would recognise it as not his own. Such passages were invariably Charles’s little essays into social comment. One such began, ‘The children of West Belfast are familiar with colour TVs but cannot name the colours.’ A paragraph of political assessment started, ‘It must be clear to any but the most partisan observer of the Northern Ireland scene that the events of last weekend marked a worsening of the perceived situation for all those involved.’ While there was his exposition of military tactics which needed a footnote to the effect that, ‘39 Airportable Brigade differs from most infantry brigades not only in its role and deployment but also in its provision of equipment and its numbers.’

  Beazely would put a line through these forays without removing the cigarette from his mouth, like Wilfrid Owen when writing to the next-of-kin of his dead soldiers. ‘When the Kingdom of the Word takes its rightful place,’ he would say, ‘and the Killers of the Word are burned by flaming adjectives and tied to the stake by unending sentences, then, Charlie, you shall take your rightful place and these fine phrases of yours will be remembered annually. Instead of fighting we’ll all talk, talk, talk. It will be beautiful. But until then keep to the point and save the rest for your prayers.’

  Charles once asked him if he had been to university. ‘Yes,’ Beazely replied, with a confident nod. ‘Very much so. Several times, different places, you know. Nowhere very long. You?’

  ‘Yes. Only one, though.’

  ‘That’s odd. Van Horne said you hadn’t. Said you went straight to Sandhurst from school.’

  ‘He’s wrong. I don’t know why he said that.’ He had never discussed his past with Van Horne.

  ‘Just guessing, I s’pose.’

  It was not easy to get the Army to overcome its deep-seated mistrust of the press, but Charles and Van Horne soon found that an air of reluctance and apology, suggestive of irresistible pressure from authority, was the best way of getting things done – better, certainly, than argument. It was best to preface requests for film-crew visits or yet more local-boy stories with the phrase, ‘The CO was wondering whether . . .’

  Very occasionally the CO did wonder, and then surprisingly. He had grown quieter and more moody and seemed to spend much of his time scheming how to discredit the Provisional IRA. He turned to Charles one day and said, ‘That boy who lost his hand last week, the one whose life we saved. What are you doing about him?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Don’t answer questions with questions. Tell me what you’re doing.’

  ‘Nothing, sir.’

  ‘Well, you should be. It’s your job, not mine, to think of these things. It’s good publicity for us; we saved his life. Bad publicity for them because they left the bomb lying around. What about getting some of your press friends to do a photograph and a story?’

  It was, perhaps, one of Charles’s faults as a PRO that he had still not fully grasped the way that news is made rather than happens. The idea had occurred to him, vaguely, but some shreds of an outmoded notion of fair play still clung to him and it seemed unfair to take advantage of the boy’s condition. Also, he had recently discovered in himself a reluctance to deal with press matters that would not result in profit. He could see no way of working Beazely into this one and his policy in such cases was to keep what the Army loved to call a ‘low profile’. He sought to narrow his life so that all unnecessary initiatives and responses were cut out. ‘Might he not be a bit of a mess, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘The messier the better. They made him like it, not us. Go and fix it. It’s unpleasant, I know, but we’re at war. Or some of us are.’

  The issue presented no problems for Van Horne, who would happily have publicised piles of intestines. They contacted one of the tabloid newspapers which usually had good photographs and which, like the other papers of its kind, excelled in the simple and effective presentation of human interest stories. They arranged to meet a reporter and photographer at the Royal Victoria Hospital.

  ‘You should give the lad a present,’ said the CO. ‘Go and buy something out of the community relations fund. How do we stand with that?’

  ‘It’s unused, sir.’

  ‘Good. Waste of public money otherwise.’

  The expedition to buy a present was a major undertaking. It involved changing into civilian clothes and going into the centre of Belfast where a similarly-dressed soldier had been murdered the week before. Being quite unused to mixing with normal people going about their normal business of shopping, Charles could not rid himself of the notion that he was the centre of attention and that every coat concealed an Armalite. He spent a nervous twenty minutes in a bookshop, imagining bombs as well as bulle
ts and paying more attention to cover positions, escape-routes, probable direction of blast and of flying glass than to what he was supposed to be buying. The fact that the main shopping centre was ringed by barriers through which no cars could pass and at which everyone was supposed to be searched did not reassure him. Two girls in front of him had not had their handbags searched and for his part the bulky shoulder-holster containing his Browning had not been discovered. If it had he would have had to produce his ID card, thereby identifying himself as a soldier to everyone around him. He again wore it at the CO’s insistence and felt lopsided and misshapen rather than deadly and confident. He eventually slunk out of the shop with an illustrated sporting encyclopaedia of a kind he remembered having as a child.

  When he and Van Horne met the reporter and photographer they were questioned about the incident in detail. On hearing that Charles had put a shell dressing on the boy, the reporter said, ‘That’s great. We’ll have one of you sitting next to him on the bed – the soldier who saved his life. What’s your name and rank?’ Charles told him and he then said, ‘Sorry, no good. It’s no good with an officer. Doesn’t work. Not the same impact. What about a soldier?’

  Charles, relieved, did not hesitate to volunteer Van Horne. ‘He’s a lance-corporal.’

  ‘A private would be better.’

  ‘I could take my stripe off,’ said Van Horne.

  There stirred within Charles a faint but developing instinct for where the Army line would lie in such matters. ‘No, he can’t do that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Queen’s Regs. Regulations.’

  ‘All right. Did he put his shell dressing on the boy too?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was he there, in the vicinity?’