by Andy McNab
'I'm still angry about it now, Andy. We missed a major opportunity, and all because he didn't have the full picture, and didn't take the time to find it out. If you ask me, Ken is—'
'Oh, for fuck's sake, Frank.' Paul was back with a mug in his hand. 'Just let it go, will you?'
33
There were no shouts or bells to get up to prayers, everyone just assembled. The ops area was eight Portakabins, four on top, four below. I followed a couple of guys up a metal fire escape.
The briefing room was furnished with standard psychedelic army married-quarters furniture, a mixture of plastic chairs and armchairs that looked as though they'd done time in the Killing House. It was in shit state. On the walls were general maps of the Province, street maps, newspaper cuttings and piss-taking pictures of the guys. A selection of daily newspapers covered an old wooden six-foot folding table. A sign warned everyone not to take them from the room. A big black bin liner hung from a nail for the crap.
The room filled up. Some faces I knew; some were lads from the squadron I hadn't met in Malaysia. There were about fifteen of us altogether – not including the big fat Doberman panting in the corner – in tracksuits or jeans and flip-flops. Everyone had a mug of brew apart from the new boy, who had a paper cup.
Ken stood by a white marker board, a notebook in his hand. He looked around as we settled down. 'Where's Al?'
At that moment, Mr Grumpy came through the door. He looked a little better. Nish threw a crumpled-up sheet of A4. 'There he is. There's the EPC swot.'
The Educational Promotion Certificate was a qualification you needed at different stages of your career. Al must already have done his EPC Standard, or he wouldn't have been a corporal in Para Reg. No matter how good a soldier you were, you wouldn't be promoted to sergeant even if you had a degree unless you'd passed EPC. Once you were aiming for warrant officer you had to pass EPC Advanced. I'd already done my EPC and I was glad it was over with, but EPCA was somewhere out on the horizon. Nish leant forward as Al found a seat. 'I hope you've done my homework for me, or there's no apple.'
Ken had one last look round. 'Right, listen in.' His delivery was short, sharp and aggressive: to the point. He spoke about the job they'd done earlier today. An MI5 operator had met with a PIRA source. Informant, tout, traitor – they had many names. The meet was covered by Ken and the team in case it was a come-on. They happened all the time. PIRA would explode a bomb, the green army would come in and set up their cordons and incident command posts. Once the area was saturated with squaddies, PIRA would detonate another couple of devices.
The prime example had been Warrenpoint.
At least eighteen soldiers were killed in August 1979 in two booby-trap attacks in South Down, close to the border with the Republic. It was the highest death toll suffered by the British Army in a single incident since it had arrived in Northern Ireland in 1969, and only hours after the Duke of Edinburgh's uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten, had been killed by an IRA bomb in Donegal Bay.
The ambush had been carefully planned. The first device, weighing half a ton, was planted under some hay on a flatbed lorry beside a dual carriageway on the border, seventy kilometres from Belfast. It killed six members of 2 Para in a four-ton lorry at the back of a three-vehicle convoy.
The surviving troops in the other two vehicles were immediately deployed to cordon off the area and call for reinforcements. The Queen's Own Highlanders flew to the scene by helicopter twenty minutes after the first explosion; as it cas-evac'd some of the injured, the second device was detonated, killing twelve more soldiers – two Highlanders and ten Paras – who had been taking cover in a nearby gatehouse.
The job today had been to prevent anything similar happening, like the SIS's man getting head-jobbed and the Figure-11s coming to find out what was happening.
Ken ran through all the other admin points that had to be dealt with when troops are living together. Block jobs, like cleaning the cookhouse and communal areas, and the general stuff, like weapons checks. All weapons had to be accounted for every single day.
There was a definite undercurrent to the proceedings. Frank was being über-calm. He just sat and nodded and agreed when necessary, not really joining in. It was like part of him wasn't there. If he hadn't told me about his problem with Ken, I'd have assumed God was running through his own admin points and Frank was listening to Him instead.
'Finally, Andy's here – obviously.'
I got some waves and smiles.
'Any questions?'
There weren't.
'One last thing – the dogs. Stop feeding them. Including my fucker.' He pointed at the Doberman, which, legs flailing, tried to stand to accept the applause.
Tiny, Nish and Saddlebags almost split their sides.
Ken jabbed a finger at Tiny. 'No – more – sausages.'
The laughter died and Chris stood up with his notebook. 'Block jobs, then the bar.'
I stayed in my chair and Nish got stuck into the Daily Telegraph crossword.
34
Once Ken had sorted out his papers, he took me down to the Portakabin under the briefing room and issued me with my weapons – a pistol, an MP5, an M16, a G3, plus all the magazines, ammunition and night sights.
'Frank and Chris are the patrol commanders, but you just go with whoever needs you. Everyone's mixed. When a job comes up, you'll be put on one.'
He moved back towards the metal staircase, heading for the ops room, then turned and fixed me with a stare. 'Look, everything we do here is strategic. That's what we are – strategic troops, sent to task. And that comes from TCG. We work for them.'
TCG (Tasking and Coordinating Group) were Special Branch, MI5, all the spooks and government advisers who got together and planned this dirty war.
'So there are no speculative ops. I don't want you floating. That, mate, will lose us the war, all right? You don't drive around, you don't look for trouble, you go and do the job you're meant to do.'
I thought I'd chance my arm. 'Frank just told me about the South Armagh job.'
Ken took a breath. He clicked his fingers at the world's fattest dog as he struggled to keep up. 'Frank didn't know what we were planting out there, and he still doesn't – no one does, because nobody needs to know. I told him, I've told everyone else, and now I'm telling you – it's intelligence that'll win this war. Intelligence, not body counts. We could have dropped those fuckers but it would have put us back months. Their time will come, don't worry.'
He clicked his fingers again and headed off, with the dog waddling behind him. 'See you at the bar.'
I found Chris in the toilet block and relieved him of his mop. Ken had made sense to me. Why compromise whatever was happening, whatever they were planting – a listening device, a camera? PIRA would have known there were Special Forces on the ground if they were taken on. Instead, by the sound of it, they knew fuck all. The van could have been pig or cigarette smugglers coming up from the south, shitting themselves trying to get away as these cars came up and checked them out. PIRA had to be asking: 'Was that van SF? But they didn't shoot, so it couldn't have been.' If Frank had opened fire, there would have been a body count. But maybe PIRA would have suspended operations in the area or stopped them altogether, and there wouldn't have been any information coming in from whatever devices had been planted. Then we would never get to deal with the rest of them.
It wouldn't be long before I came to find out Ken was right: intelligence did win the war. I was to spend a lot of time over the water getting to grips with active service units (ASUs) – not to kill them, but to get to know them better than they knew themselves.
Frank clearly did think of himself as God's agent, appointed to carry out His punishment on evil-doers, and that the Regiment really did exist to fight evil. But Ken knew the Lord sometimes had to work in mysterious ways.
I threw my paper cup in the bin by the Burco and started mopping.
I had killed one of these so-called evil-doers when I was nineteen, and it
hadn't exactly felt as if I was doing God's work. It had felt like I was just trying to stay alive.
It was on my second tour and during my fourth ever contact. Despite my age, I was 'brick' commander. One Saturday evening, I was out with a multiple, two four-man patrols, in South Armagh. The overall commander was Dave, a corporal.
We came to a housing estate on the edge of town. From there it was cuds (open countryside) all the way down to a place called Castleblaney on the other side of the border, just a few minutes away.
I took my three over a river and up onto a patch of wasteground just short of the estate. Dave took his along the river; we would meet up inside.
At that time on a Saturday night the streets were full of coaches that had arrived to pick up the locals and take them to Castleblaney for the craic. They'd go for a night out, then come rolling back at two o'clock in the morning. And rightly so: if I was stuck in Keady on a Saturday night I'd want to put on a new shirt and go over there on the piss, too.
We were patrolling in dead ground. The locals couldn't see us, and we couldn't see them. I was expecting that to change once we got nearer the estate; in the meantime, we'd leave them alone. It was pointless forcing our way through crowds: it just incited them to throw rocks and bottles and our lives got even more complicated. Our intention was to outflank them and have a quick mooch around the estate to see what was going on.
A stationary patrol picked up more information than it did on the move. It was called 'lurking': we'd get to a position and just stop. It might be in somebody's back yard; we'd move into the shadows, wait and listen. It used to be great entertainment for the squaddies: we'd watch everything from domestic rows in kitchens to young couples groping in Mum's front room.
Dave's patrol was to the right of me, about 150 metres away, in dead ground to us. There was no need to talk on the radio. We'd been out there quite a few months and worked well together.
We were still hidden from the estate by a row of three or four shops. I turned right and went along the back of the buildings until I came to the fence line. By now the wasteground was more like disused farmland; there were old wrecked cars on it, tin cans, bags of garbage. I jumped over the fence and came into view of maybe 120 people on the other side of the street.
I heard hollering and screaming, which was unusual. Normally there would just have been a lot of talk and laughter; lads smelling of Brut and hairspray, and girls in sharply ironed blouses.
As I looked at the crowd I realized they were really frightened, grabbing their kids, pulling them out of the way. Some fell as they tried to run. As I panned left towards the shops and crossed the road, I came across three or four saloon cars and a cattle truck. It wasn't an unusual sight in this neck of the woods. But as I passed them, I spotted a group of men with masks and weapons.
I latched onto a boy with his fist in the air, doing a Che Guevara with his Armalite as he chanted to the crowds across the road.
He couldn't have been more than ten metres away. Close enough for me to see his eyes as wide with shock inside his mask as mine must have been.
Fuck!
He fumbled with his Armalite and shouted. The other masks ran from the cattle truck.
His weapon was already cocked and he started blatting away at me. I fired back at him and the other masks, a blur of movement behind him.
Another mask joined in from behind the wagon and I fired at him as well. They were flapping as much as I was, in a frenzy to get into the truck and away.
One of the boys jumped into the back of the wagon and started firing, covering the others as they clambered over the tailgate.
I hit one of them. I saw the two heavy 7.62mm rounds rip into his chest, and a split second later blood exploded from the exit wounds. He screamed like a pig as he was pulled inside the truck.
More screams came from the cab. They were also taking rounds.
By this time Scouse, the number two in my patrol, was giving them the good news from the far side of the fence. The other two were still in the dead ground, totally confused. It had all happened so quickly.
I knelt, still firing, then got the dead man's click.
The working parts still worked, but there wasn't a round in the chamber.
I was flapping. I knew what to do, but the faster I tried to do it, the faster I was fucking up.
I hit the ground, screaming my head off as bursts came our way from the truck: 'Stoppage! Stoppage!'
As I reached for another magazine everything seemed to go into slow motion. It wasn't, of course: it was fast and fumbled, but it felt like an out-of-body experience, as if I was watching myself going through the drills.
I clipped on the fresh mag and cocked the weapon. I heard more firing, I heard shouting. But the loudest sound of all was the hollering inside my head: 'I don't like this! But I know I've got to do it!'
The vehicle was on the move, and by this time Scouse was firing into the cab. But that cattle truck was sandbagged up at the back, and they'd welded on steel plates to protect the driver.
I was still the only one on my side of the fence. I ran forward, past the shop fronts. I didn't know if anybody was left outside the wagon, maybe lying between the parked cars. Or had they done a runner into the housing estate? Or the shops? Or to the junction only ten metres away and turned left? Or right, up a disused railway line? I had no idea.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw people cowering on the floor of the nearest shop. One of them jumped to his feet. I turned and gave a couple high through the window so he got the message. The glass caved in and the bloke threw himself back to the floor.
'And stay down!'
I didn't know who was more scared, them or me. It was a stupid, bone reaction to shoot through the glass, but I didn't know what else to do. I was so hyped up, anything that moved was a threat.
I legged it to the junction. Time and time again during the build-up training we'd practised two ways of looking around corners. You can get very low and close up or, better, you can move away from the corner and gradually bring yourself round so you present less of a target. It was all very well in training, because I knew there was nobody on the other side with an Armalite. I took a deep breath, got down on my belly with the weapon ready to swing round, and had a quick squint. There was nobody there.
Back at the scene of the contact, one poor guy was crawling towards the housing estate, cursing and shouting, as his wheelchair lay on its side in the road. Locals spilled from their houses to help him.
Mothers shrieked at children. Doors slammed. A woman in the shop screamed, 'There's nobody in here! There's nobody in here!'
Later, a body turned up in the south with a couple of 7.62mm wounds, and a couple of the masks received treatment in hospital for gunshot wounds. Their plan had been to drive past one of our patrols on the other side of town. The masks in the back would brass up the patrol on either side of the street, then keep driving until they'd crossed the border. My patrol had bumped them as they were doing their PR bit outside the shops and climbing into the cattle truck.
At the time, I had mixed feelings about the contact. On the face of it, the whole thing was great. They had taken casualties, and none of us was hurt. I had the credibility of the first kill of the tour and, thanks to an army incentive scheme, I had two weeks' extra leave. But there was another side to it. I hadn't felt like one of God's enforcers, just scared and fucking lucky it wasn't me who'd taken the rounds.
35
After block jobs I went to my room and carried on unpacking my gear. I could hear Nish's very bad version of 'Smoke On The Water' echoing its way down the corridor. To add insult to injury, he had linked it up to an amp and speaker. Music lovers all along the block yelled for him to shut the fuck up.
My Bergen and military kit had come over by helicopter the week before. I gave it a bit of a sort-out until it was time to head for the bar. As anywhere else in the army, the new boy's first job was to buy everyone a drink.
