‘I want to start a squad in this area. I need good men. I have moved here from South Belfast to protect my family. I am looking for a couple of good guys. I think you will fit the bill. Do you have any mates that you trust?’
I told him I had several and he asked me another question.
‘Can you use a gun?’
‘Yes, I used to play at soldiers when I was an Army Cadet.’
‘What about this?’
He handed me, butt first, a 9mm Star pistol. It was his own weapon. Before he handed it over he cocked it and flicked on the safety catch. I took the pistol, released the magazine, cocked it, cleared it, leaving the working parts open, reloaded and put the safety catch on. He said he was impressed.
‘Will you meet me next week?’ he asked.
I said I would, and he gave me a day and a time. It was to be at Davison’s Quarry in the Castlereagh Hills. He told me to bring four friends but only guys I trusted. He also told me not to be late because he hated bad timekeepers. A week later I stood in Davison’s Quarry with four friends, waiting for Herron to turn up. It was full of rusty car bodies and oil drums. The ground was overgrown and uneven, causing little pools of muddy water to form. My four mates and I skimmed stones as we waited. A blue van pulled up and one of Herron’s gorillas got out first, followed by the UDA leader. Herron nodded at me and walked to the back of the van. He opened the door and out jumped a mongrel dog. It was an Alsatian cross and had a rope around its neck, which Herron used as a makeshift lead.
The rope took me by surprise. Knowing Herron loved dogs, I thought it was a strange way to restrain one of his prized pets. I squatted and rubbed the dog behind its ears and asked Herron what its name was. I was told that it didn’t have a name and the dog didn’t need one. It was a male dog and wanted to play. Herron let it off the lead and it made a dash for a stick thrown by one of the mates I brought with me. For thirty minutes Herron watched us play with the dog, then he called a halt to the play and ordered each of us to line up.
I was fourth in line.
He handed the first boy a .22-calibre pistol, a low-velocity weapon that makes very little noise but is deadly on impact. ‘Do you want to be a member of the UDA?’ he said.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Shoot the dog.’
The boy’s chin dropped. Herron never spoke.
‘I can’t do it, sir,’ the lad said, and handed the gun back.
Herron moved to the second boy, then the third, but neither touched the weapon.
He handed it to me and repeated the order. I looked him straight in the eye, fully expecting him to say he was teasing and that he was just having a bit of fun, but I knew by his expression that he was serious and he wanted the animal shot on the spot. The gun still lay in the flat of his palm, barrel pointing away from me. I took it and released the safety catch.
My mates were looking at me, then at Herron and back to me again. The dog was in front of me. It was panting, its tongue hanging out. Its tail wagged back and forth. It took me just seconds to lift that gun and aim it at the dog’s head. To my left I could hear one mate shouting, ‘No, Flint, don’t kill it, don’t do that’, but I blanked out his words. I distracted the dog by shouting, ‘What’s that?’ and as it looked away I pulled the trigger, putting a bullet into its head. The dog dropped, spun around on the ground, shuddered for a few seconds and then lay still. I could see a trickle of blood seeping from under its crumpled body. Just a few minutes ago it was playing with me. It believed I was a friend. I heard a scream, which pulled me back from my thoughts, and I looked behind me. My mates had bolted in horror. The gun was still in my hand. I handed it back to Herron. He said nothing. His face was expressionless. I spoke first.
‘I love dogs. I didn’t want to kill it.’
‘Why did you raise your hand and cover your face, Flint?’
I had used my hand as a visor to protect my face, eyes and mouth from the blood and tissue that would shoot out when the bullet entered the dog’s head. The animal was at point-blank range.
‘I didn’t want bits of brain and skull spraying my face.’
‘The dog was a test. You did well.’
I didn’t feel that I did well. I felt terrible. I’d killed a living thing. I’d killed an animal that had a face and eyes and thought I was its friend. Herron got back into his van and rolled down the window. He said to me, ‘If you couldn’t kill the dog, then you’re not capable of killing a human being.’ And with that he was gone.
The following week I was sworn into the UDA. The ceremony took place in Braniel community centre. The only people present were Herron and myself and two guards of honour who wore the obligatory black leather jacket and sunglasses. They stood either side of a small table draped with the Union Jack. On top were a Bible and a Webley pistol. None of the four mates I’d brought to the quarry that day had impressed Herron, so I was on my own. We weren’t disturbed. Tommy had fixed it with the guy who ran the community hall that we would have our privacy for the fifteen minutes it took to swear me in. Herron spoke to me for an hour beforehand. He ordered me to march in and stand to attention in front of him. He told me exactly what to say during the ceremony.
‘You understand what you are committing to.’
‘Yes, I want to defend my community, my family and my country.’
‘Do you know what that means? It doesn’t make you a hero. When you make this commitment, there are only two outcomes: death or prison. Do you understand that you could end up being killed or spending the rest of your life behind bars? Do you understand that there are no medals, no victory salutes and no pats on the back?’
Herron handed me the Webley and the Bible. I swore on the open Bible to be a faithful and honourable member of the Ulster Defence Association. I swore to defend my community. I promised to be a guardian of my people and to fight to protect them with every drop of my Loyalist blood. The service was over in minutes. I felt good. I was on a high. I was swept away by the romanticism of it all. It didn’t enter my head that I had just committed myself to a life of violence. I was in love with the idea of being the great defender, the knight in shining armour looking after my people.
My training began the following week in Davison’s Quarry, initially with Herron’s two weapons, the Star and a shotgun. Tommy Herron was a colourful and enigmatic character and I enjoyed his company. He also loved dogs and had a massive pure black Alsatian called Satan. He was my mentor and taught me everything I know about being a paramilitary. He schooled me in firearms, explosives and forensics. He taught me the special skills that I have used all my active-service life. He trained me in interrogation and how to survive it.
From the day I was sworn in, it was Herron who trained me. He taught me how to shoot but admitted I had little to learn. He honed my pistol, revolver, rifle and shotgun skills. He showed me how to open and split a shotgun cartridge and smear it with axle grease so that it would effortlessly punch through reinforced doors and metal. He showed me how to doctor cartridges and make them more deadly by opening the top and dripping candle wax into it, then closing the cartridge again. The bullet would remain intact on impact and cause horrific wounds to human flesh. Undoctored cartridges spread on impact, which makes them less deadly. They injure but don’t always kill. Herron was shown how to make other deadly cartridges by using mercury from a thermometer or garlic purée in the tip of the cartridge. On entering the flesh the garlic or mercury gets into the bloodstream and causes blood poisoning within seconds.
Just weeks after being sworn into the UDA, I learned what Tommy Herron was capable of. It was one of my many and regular training days and, as usual, it was just the two of us in the derelict quarry. I got to work setting up the oil drums to practise my shooting skills and, as I worked, Herron went to the boot of his Zodiac and took out his shotgun. I had my back to him and glanced round when I heard him shout at me, ‘You know kid, you should never trust anyone in this game.’
His words stopped me in my tracks but h
is actions – raising the shotgun to his shoulder and levelling the gun at me – almost stopped my heart. I heard the crack as the gun went off, then the wall of pain as it hit me in the chest. Tommy Herron, my mentor and my friend, had shot me. I saw it coming. I knew he was going to use the gun on me but I was powerless to do anything. It happened in a split second. I didn’t even have time to duck or drop to the ground. The force of the impact threw me backwards and I landed on my back with a rough thud. I lay on the ground, immobilised by pain, thinking I was seriously injured and about to die. My body felt like it had been hit with a sledgehammer. I forced my arm to move, putting my hand on the wound to stop the flow of blood, but there was none. There wasn’t even a tear or rip in the denim jacket I was wearing. I sat up, my body still throbbing, and looked at the ground. There was a pool of dry rice mixed in with the dirt and the sand. I had no idea how the white rice came to be scattered around my body. Meanwhile, Tommy Herron never took his eyes off me. I stood up, awkwardly and with a lot of difficulty, and began a slow hobble towards Herron and the quarry entrance. As I passed him I said, ‘Fuck you and fuck this.’
Herron started to laugh. It echoed around the quarry face and he shouted after me, ‘Come back, kid, it’s all part of your training.’ When I looked back to where he was standing, Herron was doubled over with laughter.
Later he told me he had doctored the shotgun cartridge to teach me a lesson – a lesson that could mean the difference between being done for robbery and being done for murder. One of my duties as a UDA volunteer was the procurement of funds and that meant robbing banks and post offices. With robberies come have-a-go heroes, and Herron warned me that doctoring a shotgun cartridge and filling it with grains of rice would be the difference between stunning and immobilising a wannabe hero and killing them.
Herron introduced me to a secret gun club in North Down. I was just seventeen years old. Judges, barristers and policemen were among the members of this state-of-the-art shooting gallery. The G-Club was underground, hidden beneath a well-known local landmark. Membership was closed: you couldn’t walk in off the street and join. It didn’t advertise: you had to be invited. The club had a rifle range, moving targets and pop-up targets and was equipped with .303 rifles and .22 target pistols.
Through Herron I learnt to be an assassin. I learnt to be an independent soldier. He taught me how to kill without a gun. He showed me how to garrotte a person with the brake cable of a pushbike by looping it in a specific way. It was foolproof and guaranteed to cause instant death. I learnt about anatomy and how to use knives. He showed me how to stab by inserting the knife and twisting up and in. Just sticking a blade into flesh would not cause death, he told me. You have to know where the vital organs are and puncture them in order to precipitate death. I was shown that any instrument and any implement could be turned into a deadly weapon. Perspex can be fashioned into a blade and a piece of plastic or wood such as a knitting needle or even a pencil can be used to kill. He showed me the exact spot on the neck to kill someone by what he called ‘scrambling their brains’. The procedure didn’t cause a massive blood loss, just a tiny surface puncture mark.
Herron taught me to be self-sufficient when I was on the road. Even when staying in trusted safe houses there were golden rules: carry your own bed linen and your own towels, wear Vaseline on eyebrows and eyelashes, coat the hair in gel or wax, wear tight-fitting kitchen gloves at all times, eat Mars bar sandwiches and only drink water. He told me to carry plastic bags and take my solid waste home and burn all clothes after an operation including footwear. Once back from active service, burn everything.
He pioneered interrogation schools by bringing hand-picked men from other areas to train me in surviving long, tough sessions at the hands of the RUC. His technique was simple. He ordered two volunteers to be the security forces, who would try to get a confession from me, the pretend suspect. He would stand in a corner of the room and watch, but he never spoke. The ‘cops’ would beat, kick and threaten me. They split my lip, my internal organs were kicked and my neck was almost broken with the weight of heavy, wet towels lashed across it. Sometimes someone’s nose would get broken in these exercises. Herron had recreated what happened in holding centres like Castlereagh. The volunteers worked in pairs: good cop and bad cop. One would shout abuse and scream threats to get a result. The other would calmly try to reason and appeal to my vulnerable side. The sole object of the exercise was to not reveal the phrase given by Herron at the start of the session. Grown men broke down. I broke down.
It was elite services training, I know that now. Herron had turned me into an assassin primed for every eventuality and every situation. He taught me skills for protecting myself but he was also thinking of his own safety. He had me earmarked for my first job in the UDA – as his bodyguard.
I asked him from whom or what he needed protection.
He answered, ‘Everybody, kid, especially our own.’
5
TOMMY HERRON
WHEN I WASN’T IN THE QUARRY BEING TRAINED I SPENT MOST OF MY TIME AT TOMMY HERRON’S HOME, SITTING ON THE STAIRS LISTENING, LEARNING AND TALKING TO HIM. He liked the stairs. He called them his neutral space and he always kept his legally held weapon within reach. Herron confessed that he was on constant alert for a gunman who might break in his front door and open fire. He would laugh and say he would do his best to blow their brains out first. Many of my new associates thought he was bad-tempered, stern, unapproachable and unpredictable. To me he was a father figure. He took a personal interest in my fledgling UDA career and I wanted to impress him. He singled me out for special attention and I wanted to repay the compliment. Under his guardianship, I thrived.
With Herron’s guidance my training became more intense and more specialised. He taught me martial arts and unarmed combat. He taught me how to punch someone in the heart to stop it beating and cause rapid death. In his mind the business of killing had to be swift and it had to be clean. I asked Herron where he learnt his skills and he just laughed in my face and told me to mind my own fucking business. To this day I believe he was a trained assassin and can only speculate as to where he learnt the skills he handed down to me.
It may seem unbelievable to some but Herron had a soft side and he liked to look after those he cared about and who were close to him. One day, as we practised shooting in the quarry, he said to me, ‘If you are ever in trouble and you need to leave Northern Ireland, call this number.’ On the paper was a name and a London telephone number. When I rang it a female voice answered. I asked for the person and was told he wasn’t available but to ring back on a certain day and at a certain time. When I finally spoke to the man, I told him I was a friend of Tommy Herron’s and that he’d given me the name and number plus a guarantee of help if ever it was needed. The voice on the other end of the phone said he could find me work anywhere in the world. He said he supplied top-grade ‘security’ for select clients all over the world. He asked whether I wanted to be on his books and I said yes. The man was hiring mercenaries.
I was enjoying my new life in the ranks of the UDA. I felt I had found what was missing in my life. In the first weeks after joining very little was asked of me by my superiors. I knew that time would change that. I knew it was inevitable that I would soon be on the road on active service. In the meantime I shadowed Tommy Herron. While I acted as his bodyguard, I was also learning. He had four men acting as his personal security, including me, and he rotated us at random.
I chanced upon a photograph of Herron recently and it awakened old memories. He’s been dead almost thirty years now but I can still hear his gruff voice. It was an old newspaper cutting illustrated by a very bad picture. In it he is frowning and looks like he is ready to blow someone’s head off. The photo revealed nothing about his personality and character. Herron was a hothead. He was rash and quick-tempered and probably would have blown someone’s head off, but he was also an intelligent and astute soldier. Neither the article nor the photograph showed anything of t
he Herron I knew and portrayed nothing of the man I remember, a man with a sharp brain, impressive intellect and remarkable powers of persuasion. Listening to Tommy speak, I really believed anything and everything was possible. Even the media were seduced by his charisma. Journalists flocked to his press briefings. He knew how to handle them and when he held court, anything was possible. Once he produced rubber bullets that he said had been doctored by the British Army. There had been rioting in East Belfast and four bullets were found with razor blades, four-inch nails and batteries attached to them. One was even split and rebuilt using fine wire. On impact it would have turned into a deadly bolas.
We spent a lot of time together in Davison’s Quarry and he liked to show off his shooting skills. He loved emptying magazine after magazine into oil drums and the bodies of scrapped cars. He had a good eye and could even shoot in circles or in rows. He would roll up his sleeves, coolly take aim and say to me, ‘Watch this.’ He was a first-class shot.
The Ulster Defence Association remains one of Ulster’s biggest paramilitary organisations and was legal until 1992, when the then Secretary of State, Sir Patrick Mayhew, proscribed it. It was formed in 1971, when Ulster was on the brink of all-out civil war, as an umbrella body for Loyalist ‘defence associations’ springing up in Protestant areas of Belfast, Lisburn, Newtownabbey and Dundonald. It adopted a motto, Quis Separabit, roughly translated as ‘None Shall Divide Us’, and the UDA quickly became a formidable force in Loyalist districts. Many young Loyalists saw the UDA as a replacement for the B Specials, a part-time paramilitary force that was abolished in 1969, and offered their support by the truckload. The UDA was distinctly working class and organised along military lines. When I joined, in 1972, it had a membership of forty thousand.
The UDA has had a varied history and its thirty-year existence is littered with violence, strong-arm tactics in support of Loyalist protests and journeys into political thinking. Tommy Herron was an architect of all of these things, especially the Loyalist street protests. He told me he got a kick out of watching thousands of men assembling in combat gear and making themselves ready for action. In 1972 thousands of UDA men, many wearing masks, marched through Belfast city centre. I was one of them. Herron was one of the chief organisers. As I walked with my fellow Loyalists I felt I was living up to the solemn promise I’d recently made. I was making a difference. I was making a contribution. I was a defender of my community and here was the proof: my combat uniform and mask and a triumphant march through the streets of my city.
None Shall Divide Us Page 4
