by Paul Bruce
I went over to the holdall and searched through it trying to find a weapon but there was none. I was being stupid, I told myself. I had panicked for no reason. And yet there was a reason, a good reason. I asked myself whether I was risking my life, and the lives of others, in letting her walk out of the flat alive.
I thought of all the poor bastards I had executed and suddenly realised that it wasn’t only because Yvonne was a woman that I was acting like this but because I was fed up, ashamed, disgusted at what I had done during the past year. I knew I couldn’t kill her. I no longer had the stomach for it.
I watched her stuff a few things in the holdall, her back to me as she leaned over the bed. My pistol was still in my hand. It would be so easy; just aim and fire. It would be over in a split second. I knew that’s what I should do.
But I couldn’t. I began to shake and I thought of the very first time outside the shop when I had stood shaking, not knowing if I had the guts or the confidence to pull the trigger on the two men who I could remember at that moment as if it had been yesterday. ‘You can’t take anything,’ I said to her calmly. ‘Just go, fuck off now, before I change my mind.’
She looked at me, wondering whether I meant what I was telling her. I looked into her tear-soaked, red, puffy eyes. As she looked at me, I knew I could not kill her, although my head told me that I should.
‘I’m going,’ she said, ‘Thank God for you, thank God.’
She walked down the stairs wiping her eyes and I walked behind her and watched her disappear through the door, turn left and walk off down the street, turning twice to check whether I had followed her.
After she had left, I closed the door and walked back upstairs to her flat to await the others. I wondered if I had done the right thing or whether I had been stupid and sentimental just because she had been a woman. I knew that, if it had been a man, I would have killed him.
In the hour I waited, I knew my army career was over. I had taken more than I could cope with; I was at the end of my tether and I didn’t know what to do. I looked at my hands and they were shaking; the more I tried to hold them steady, the more they shook.
About an hour later, I saw the lights of a car and heaved a sigh of relief when it stopped outside and I recognised Don sitting in the front passenger seat, his face illuminated by the street light.
I ran down the stairs two at a time, wanting to get away from the stench of death that seemed to have infiltrated that flat, the feeling that my life in Belfast had revolved around nothing but death and killing, executing people who had no means to fight back. As I slammed the car door and we took off, I said simply, ‘She’s gone. We’ll hear nothing of her again.’
I was pleased no one asked me what had happened.
‘Did you find them?’ I asked later.
‘Yep,’ said Don. ‘We took them for a ride to the forest. They won’t be any more trouble either.’
When we returned to our Long Kesh Portakabin, we made a cup of coffee and sat and talked. We all knew we had been bloody lucky to escape with our lives. I looked at the faces of my mates and they seemed drained of any feeling or emotion. Like me, they too had had enough of killing. I could see that in their eyes.
I broke the silence. ‘That’s it for me,’ I said. ‘I’m not doing any more. I couldn’t care a fuck what Lisburn orders. I’m finished.’
Benny looked down at the ground and nodded agreement. JR looked at Don and me and said not a word. Don took a deep breath and spoke quietly, ‘I never thought I would ever say this. But I don’t care now. Whatever Lisburn says I’ll just say “yes”, but it’s over for me too. I never thought I would ever say something like that.’
I lay awake throughout that night, not trying to sleep but staring at the darkness and thinking of the awful things I had had to do. I tried to rationalise everything; tried to tell myself that I had been saving the lives of innocent people by doing away with the gunmen. Then my mind would come back to the young men we had shot on the streets of Belfast. We hadn’t known whether they were innocent victims or as guilty as hell.
That idea made me think even more. Perhaps the army intelligence brass had fucked it all up. Perhaps the young men turned over to us on the border were innocent. I had just taken the word of the brass and carried out orders.
That night, I asked myself a hundred times why I had obeyed those orders instead of standing up to the bastards and asking in whose name these executions were ordered; asking by what right these men could simply be gunned down and thrown into a trench; asking why professionals of the SAS had been used to do such dirty work.
I knew that we were engaged in a war with the IRA; I knew the stupid saying ‘all’s fair in love and war’, but fighting the IRA like this – picking up people and secretly executing them – was stooping to the lowest level.
Three times I drifted off to sleep and three times I awoke, sweating and shaking, unable to evade my awful dreams. As dawn broke, all I wanted to do was to get the hell out of Belfast, quit the army and go back to a life of some sanity. I wondered if Maria would still be there or whether I had changed so much that I would be unable to cope with a relationship.
The following morning, no one wanted to get out of bed. I didn’t know what sort of night my mates had experienced but we all looked deathly as we struggled to shave and wash, like automatons, going about our daily business not caring a damn for anything.
After trying to eat some breakfast and having drunk a few cups of tea, I announced, about 11am, ‘I’m going to get fucking, roaring drunk. Anyone coming?’
‘Too fucking right,’ said Benny.
JR got up from his bed and Don said, ‘Come on, let’s go. Let’s get out of this poxy place.’
The following three weeks were nothing but a round of drinking, pub crawls and more drinking. The more I drank, however, the more I had to drink because I would become morose, my head full of the gruesome sights I had been part of for nearly a year.
I had phoned the REME major in charge of the workshop at Sydenham Docks, asking for an interview. When I went to see him, I told him my name, rank and number and said that I was taking up my six-year option to quit the army in October.
He tried to persuade me to stay on, to do another three years. He talked for half an hour, telling me what a wonderful life was available for someone like me, a member of the élite SAS. He told me of the places I would probably be sent after Ireland, places in the sun.
I listened to all he said and just looked at him because the poor man had not the slightest idea about the operations I had been carrying out. Pleased with his sales pitch, the major asked, ‘Well, what do you think?’ There was satisfaction in his voice. ‘Have I been able to persuade you to change your mind?’
‘I don’t think so, sir,’ I said quietly. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Ah, well,’ he continued. ‘I think you are making a grave mistake. It seems such a pity for the army to lose such a valued soldier who has proved himself so capable. And you have such a good record.’ He paused, then went on, ‘There is one other option. If you leave now and decide to rejoin in six months, you know, don’t you, that you won’t have to do basic training again. Think on it. Don’t be too hasty.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ I said.
‘Well, good luck then, Bruce.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ I repeated.
‘You’ll be hearing from REME records,’ he said.
I signed the piece of paper showing that I was taking up the option to quit and walked out of the office. As I walked down the steps, a feeling of elation, of freedom, swept over me. I took huge gulps of air. I felt as if I was walking out of jail, a free man.
During those last two weeks, when we weren’t drinking to forget, I would go off alone, birdwatching. The coast of Northern Ireland was alive with different species, birds that I would never see in a lifetime of living in London. I would spend perhaps six hours a day with my binoculars, perched on some rock watching them, thinking of what had hap
pened and what would happen now that I was leaving the army.
One afternoon, the weather turned, within an hour, from a beautiful, sunny day to rolling clouds and dramatic, lashing rain that struck my face like needles. I put my head down and began walking fast along the coast road, seeking some shelter.
Suddenly, I heard a scream and looked over the wall. The waves from the Irish Sea were rolling in, crashing against the groynes, the jetties built out from the shore to control erosion and break up the waves.
Standing on one of the groynes, about 25 yards from the sea wall, were three young girls, screaming and petrified, the waves crashing around their legs. They were too afraid to move because the top of the groyne was covered in green algae and very, very slippery.
They saw me looking at them. ‘Help, help!’ I could hear as the wind and crashing waves all but swept away their cries.
I leaped over the wall and landed on the concrete shelf leading to the sea. Something inside me told me that I just had to save them. I clambered on to the groyne and edged myself slowly along the slippery concrete, at the same time yelling to the girls to stand still and not move. The rain lashed my face and the waves rolled in, covering my knees.
When I reached the girls, they were soaked to the skin from the rain, the sea spray and the waves. I realised that the only way to save them would be to take them all at one go. I knew that leaving one or two behind would risk them being swept off the groyne.
I told the eldest one, who seemed about twelve years old, to put her arms around my neck and hold on. Then I picked up the other two, putting one under each arm. They were about eight and nine years old.
I looked up to see if there was anyone else around who could help, as I feared that if I lost my footing we would all fall into the waves and God knows what would have happened then. I saw a couple walking along the footpath on the other side of the sea wall but they merely looked at us and walked on, oblivious to our plight.
‘Hold on, hold on,’ I kept telling the girls as I shuffled sideways along the eighteen-inch-wide groyne, fearful of slipping. I just knew that I had to succeed; that I had to make it back. I felt that I would be unable to save all three girls if we were swept into the sea.
I don’t know how long it took, perhaps only a few minutes, but it seemed like an age. I could feel the girls desperately holding on, the one round my neck all but strangling me, the others crying and screaming with fright as each wave crashed around our legs.
With every foot we edged towards safety, the two girls under my arms began to weigh heavily and at one stage I wondered if I would have to put them down to rest for a second or so. But I couldn’t risk it. I would never forgive myself if I let them go.
We reached the concrete and I put the girls down, urging them to scramble on all fours to the safety of the sea wall. Then I picked them up, one by one, and put them over the wall.
‘Thanks, mister,’ said the oldest girl. The others seemed too petrified to say anything.
‘Now get home quick,’ I said and they ran off.
Dripping wet, I arrived back at the camp an hour or so later. ‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Don said. ‘Been for a swim?’
‘Sort of,’ I replied but I told them nothing more.
While I was out, the lads had been told that their tour of duty in Northern Ireland was over and they would be reporting back to Hereford after two weeks’ leave.
The day we left Ireland, Saturday, 7 October, the Irish Times reported a speech made the previous evening by Ivan Cooper, the Member of Parliament for Mid-Londonderry, in which he maintained that William Whitelaw, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, had a duty to explain ‘the extent and nature of the British Army plain-clothes activity in Northern Ireland, in particular that of the SAS’.
Cooper said, ‘A large number of people in the north are now connecting many of the assassinations which have occurred in Belfast with the plain-clothes section of the British Army, in other words the SAS.
‘It is surely hypocritical of the British Government to appeal for public co-operation in trying to discover those responsible for sectarian assassinations while its own troops are involved in these cloak and dagger activities.’
There was no response from the British Government or from the Secretary of State’s office in Northern Ireland.
We passed the newspaper around, each reading it slowly, no one saying anything about the report. There was nothing to say. We, more than anyone, knew the truth.
I read those words and realised how much I had come to loathe the work I had been involved in for almost twelve months. The anger I felt for those who had devised the policy, given the authorisation, planned the abductions and ordered the executions, would come later.
At that moment, I hated myself for having gone through with it for so long; hated myself for not having had the guts to refuse to carry out the executions. We had all been keen, loyal, professional soldiers who had reached the peak of our ambition by passing the tough SAS training programme and had felt nothing but pride on receiving our SAS badges and berets. In twelve months, we had been reduced to hating the work, the army and those bastards in Lisburn who had remained aloof in their headquarters while ordering us to carry out despicable, cowardly acts, killing perhaps forty people, more than twenty of them with a single bullet in the back of the head.
I felt demoralised, defeated and sick. Now all I wanted was to get the hell out of fucking Belfast. Nothing had been said about handing in my kit and I had no intention of asking anyone. That could wait for later, forever, as far as I was concerned. All I wanted to do was escape from Northern Ireland and leave behind the shit I had been through.
I phoned Maria and told her my plans.
‘Phone me when you know what time you will be arriving in London,’ she said, ‘and I’ll come and meet you at the station.’
‘Fantastic,’ I said, hoping that she would be able to save me from the trauma I was beginning to feel. ‘That would be great.’
Before she put down the phone, Maria said, ‘I love you.’
At Liverpool Dock, the four of us said our farewells. As I shook their hands, I hoped that I would never see any of them again, as that would bring back the memories I now had to work to forget. We were still suffering hangovers from the piss-up the night before when we had become drunk and maudlin, sad and angry, and very close to tears of desperation. We never did meet again.
On the journey to London, I sat and drank coffee and looked out of the window. I thought of a future which I hoped would be with Maria. I had no idea what I would do. I had some money saved and knew I could get a job somewhere, sometime. The career to which I thought I had dedicated my life was over for good. I was 24.
As soon as I stepped off the train with my kitbag and holdall, I saw Maria standing alone at the end of the platform, waiting for me. She seemed so happy, with a broad smile on her face, her eyes dark and searching. I dropped my bags and put my arms around her, holding her, not wanting to kiss her but just to hold her.
EPILOGUE
I married Maria and we had two wonderful children but I was unable to cope with my memories of Northern Ireland.
All I kept from my SAS career were the badges and the General Service Medal which every other squaddie, NCO and officer receive for serving in the Province.
I tried, and failed, to hold down various jobs as my life, my every waking thought, became dominated by memories of my gruesome career with the SAS.
Alcohol took over my life. Only when I would drink myself stupid could I forget the scenes that never seemed to leave my mind – visions of executions and the killing of innocent people.
For twelve years, Maria managed to put up with my heavy drinking. She knew why I drank, although I never told her what I had actually done in Northern Ireland. I didn’t think it fair to ask her to share my shame and guilt.
However, I was getting worse and I knew I was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. I feared I might start hitting her o
r, worse still, the kids.
It was at that point that she left me and I was happy that she did. I never wanted to lose her, but for her safety, and that of the children, it was better that we split. Divorce followed.
Somehow, years later, I stopped drinking but I could not control the memories and the nightmares which seemed to be getting worse, not better. I told my doctor that if he didn’t help me I was fearful of killing someone.
On his advice, I entered a rehabilitation and treatment centre for alcoholics and drug addicts and spent eighteen months as a resident, undergoing constant therapy. For the first time, I became able to talk about my experiences in Northern Ireland; for the first time I became capable of facing the truth.
It had taken twenty years.
When this book was first published in hardback in November 1995, I expected the British Government to take one of two courses of action. Either they would excavate the graves and charge me with murder, claiming that I was part of a renegade squad of soldiers who had killed IRA suspects without official authorisation, or they would try to dismiss my confession.
I was not surprised when a Ministry of Defence spokesman commented, ‘If the claims made in this book are true, it is astonishing that these facts have not come to light before.
‘British forces operate within the law and can be held legally accountable for the behaviour of each member.’
Members of Parliament representing both the Conservative and Labour Parties tabled questions in the House of Commons. Labour MP Ken Livingstone wrote to the Prime Minister, John Major, demanding that the matter be treated with urgency. Later Mr Livingstone wrote to him again:
The author of The Nemesis File has written to the head of the RUC offering to show them where the bodies are buried, provided proper protection is given to him during the visit. If his claims are true it offers relatives the chance to bury their loved ones and the RUC the opportunity to catch those behind the killings. I hope you can ensure the RUC co-operate.
