Hateland

by Bernard O'Mahoney

  He rounded off his talk by saying that of course Britain should give Northern Ireland back to the Irish, but the Province was such a good training ground that the army didn't want to let it go. He said that in most years more soldiers were killed on exercises in Germany than died at the hands of terrorists in Northern Ireland.

  After he'd left the room, a Liverpudlian recruit turned to me and said, 'Was he taking the piss?'

  Before I went out on my first street patrol, the troop sergeant had a chat with us. He said that if, for whatever reason, we had to open fire on anyone, and we wounded him, we had to ensure he didn't live. We had to kill him outright. He said surviving victims might be able to dispute the army's version of events - and the last thing any of us needed was a prolonged investigation and a messy court case in which we had to go back and forward to Ireland to be examined by 'cunts in wigs'.

  He said, 'Just shoot the fucker dead and we'll make it up from there.' I saw a few people looking uncomfortable. I wasn't one of them. I thought the sergeant's advice extremely astute. Perhaps to lighten the atmosphere, he finished by saying there'd be a crate of beer for the first one of us to kill a paddy. A real paddy, that is, not a plastic paddy.

  You had to remember that everyone you met might be out to kill you. This awareness put a great strain on all our minds. Some soldiers cracked up completely and had to be returned to Germany. Others would cry themselves to sleep at night. More than once, I had to shout out, 'Shut up, you wimp!'

  Most of us were in our late teens or early 20s and we all lived in the anticipation of being shot or blown up. I didn't give a toss about the politics of the situation. I just wanted to survive - and was determined to do so in the best way I knew how. I'd survive by dealing ruthlessly with any potential threats. And, as far as I was concerned, anyone I didn't know personally, Catholic or Protestant, was a threat.

  Motorists who were nice to me at checkpoints tended to be treated the worst. I had the theory that if someone was being nice then they probably had something to hide. Vehicles would be turned upside down, regardless of who was inside - granddad on crutches, granny in a sling, pregnant wife with birth pangs, husband in a wheelchair. And that was my behaviour with ordinary, innocent civilians. People we identified as republicans could expect a lot worse.

  One job I hated was raiding houses. I remember once going into the home of an IRA man on the run. His wife stood in the front room. Her two sons, aged about eight and ten, stood next to her with their arms around her. I could tell they were protecting her, rather than seeking protection. I'd clung to my own mother in the same way in the face of my father's brutality. I recognised the look on their faces, that expressionless gaze of silent hatred. At such times, I felt like a Judas betraying my own kind. I wanted to reach out to them and explain myself: 'Look, I'm not here to oppress you. I just didn't want to go to prison, OK'

  At other times, when Catholic youths would spit or throw stones, I could happily have smashed their heads open with the butt of my British oppressor's rifle.

  On republican housing estates, we'd hand out sweets to small children knowing that as they eagerly swarmed around us they'd effectively be shielding us. No IRA sniper would dare fire at a soldier surrounded by children, especially Catholic children.

  The regiment soon had its first casualty. While cleaning his General Purpose Machine Gun at a permanent checkpoint, a soldier accidentally shot and wounded another soldier. We'd been taught various code words to use on the radio to cover incidents for which we needed assistance. However, there was no code for shooting a comrade. I could hear the soldiers on the radio asking for help, but not being quite sure what to say. To me, this incident merely underlined that we were the wrong soldiers in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  For most of the tour, I stayed at Fermanagh's main military base, St Angelo Barracks, sited on a disused airfield outside Enniskillen. I found myself sharing living space with a few staunch Ulster Loyalists whose hatred of Catholics made them regard me as suspect. The more I got to know them, the more I thought that sending them home to police their own community was not one of the British Empire's most inspired deeds. One of them, I nicknamed Nasty. He was a loudmouth drunk and bully who claimed to relish the idea of going home to persecute 'Fenians'.

  Only years later did I discover that 'Fenian' - the favourite Loyalist nickname for Catholics - came from the activities of one of my nineteenth-century near-namesakes. John O'Mahony co-founded and named the IRA's historical forerunner, the Fenian Brotherhood (later notorious for the so-called 'Fenian Rising' of 1867).

  Nasty would often say to me, 'Hiya, Fenian!' I'd tell him to fuck off, which would make him laugh. 'Ha! Ha! Ha!' he'd cackle, as if we were best friends joshing. I hated the bastard.

  Another Loyalist bigot was nicknamed Charisma (because he didn't have any). He was about 23 but, with his moustache and boring manner, could have passed for 50. He was the non-smoking, non-drinking 'saved' type. His 'da', a locally recruited

  Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) man, was a disciple of the Reverend Ian Paisley - the fanatical Orangeman, Defender of Ulster and hater of popery. Charisma was full of himself and slagged off anyone who didn't share his fundamentalist Protestant beliefs. There were the doomed and the saved, the righteous and the unrighteous, and I knew which category he put me in.

  Once, I was lying on my bed trying to sleep while listening to him droning on about God and republicans and loyalty to the Queen. Finally, I snapped and shouted, 'Shut the fuck up, you lemon.' In our regiment, 'lemon' was slang for a yellow (that is, gutless) Orangeman. He was holding his rifle, which he'd been cleaning. He leant over my bed, pointed it at me and said, 'Bang! Bang! You fucking Fenian.' I jumped out of bed and he ran off.

  I made the mistake a few times of trying to have an argument with the Orangemen about Northern Ireland. I had no real interest in the politics of the situation - quite frankly, it bored me - but I had the gut feeling, shared by most English, Welsh and even Scottish squaddies, that the six counties belonged to Ireland. When the Loyalists said Northern Ireland was (and always would be) British, my argument was (and still is), 'It's like saying London doesn't belong to the English.' But you couldn't debate things with them, because they wouldn't put forward any reasoned arguments. They'd just bluster and shout and tell you that even to question the link with Great Britain was tantamount to treachery.

  One time, when Charisma told me his ancestors, with God's help, had settled the land, I drove him to fury by saying that when I was a thief, I at least had the decency not to walk round saying that God had given me permission to do it and was happy for me to keep the spoils. When Bobby Sands died after 66 days on hunger strike, every nationalist area in Fermanagh seemed covered with black flags and memorial posters. This widespread sympathy for the dead Provo confirmed the prejudices of people like Nasty and Charisma that all Catholics were closet republicans.

  The UDR soldiers with whom we shared the camp felt the same. In the canteen and bar, they'd talk as if an uprising were imminent. I often heard UDR people say, 'Kill all Catholics. Let God sort them out.' However, despite their loudmouth displays among their mates, I felt I could see the brown-trousered signs of people shitting themselves in fear that the day of reckoning might finally have arrived for a society built on injustice. As republicans died on hunger strike, a Provo mortar attack tore apart a small outlying base that our regiment shared with the Royal Ulster Constabulary, injuring one of my friends.

  One person we harassed into the ground was Owen Carron, the republicans' candidate in the parliamentary by-election following Sands's death. Carron could rarely get a few miles in his car without being stopped. Then we'd turn his car inside out and threaten to shoot him. Half a mile down the road, another patrol would stop him - and repeat the procedure. Some years later, I read that Carron had gone on the run after being found carrying a rifle in the back of his car. He'd probably been looking for me.

  On 13 May 1981, a Turkish man shot the Pope in Rome
, seriously wounding him. The attempted assassination became the talk of the camp, especially among the fundamentalist Protestants, who were hugely disappointed by the gunman's failure to kill the Antichrist. I heard them debating the attack as they would a vital goal that had been disallowed at a cup final: if only the stupid bastard had shot him in the head or if only he'd used a different weapon. I didn't like the way their hatred seemed to cover every member of the Catholic Church, regardless of nationality. My friend who'd just been wounded in a mortar attack was an English Catholic. And, although religion was an irrelevance to me, I still regarded myself as a Catholic, if only in name.

  It was one of those moments when I felt distanced from these people. Although I wore the same uniform, I felt no sense of loyalty to them and certainly didn't see myself as fighting for them. I'd say most English and Welsh soldiers felt the same: they didn't give a toss about the Ulster Protestants - and certainly didn't fancy dying for them.

  Hunger strikers died at regular intervals throughout our tour. Two died on the same day. This provoked a whirlwind of violence across Northern Ireland. Around 10,000 petrol bombs were thrown at the Crown forces in the week that followed. None was aimed at me.

  In the week of the two hunger strikers' funerals, the Reverend

  Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party and scourge of Fenians everywhere, boosted morale. He suggested during a television interview that shotguns ought to be issued to soldiers for use against street rioters. After the terrible onslaught of 10,000 petrol bombs, he thought that shotguns would be able to clear streets of rioters without risking life in the way a bullet from a rifle might. The packed TV room burst into laughter and cheers. Some people stood on chairs and made Nazi salutes, chanting, 'Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! ' Outside the television room, there was less bravado. At night at remote permanent checkpoints, animals would often get shot if they triggered tripwires. It was in such an incident around this time that I shot my first sheep. Rabbits, foxes and even, occasionally, cows also fell victim.

  One night, I was on a mobile patrol roving through the countryside around Belcoo. It had been raining in that special Irish way since we'd first jumped from the helicopter. Everyone was soaked. We decided to have a false 'contact'. If you encountered terrorists while on patrol and opened fire you were supposed to get on the radio immediately and shout 'Contact! Contact! Contact!' That night's Quick Reaction Force would then be despatched to you swiftly by helicopter as back-up. But, most importantly, as your position had been compromised, you'd be taken back to your nice warm bed and a cup of tea.

  We all agreed on our story in case of investigation. Apparently, we'd spotted a figure carrying a rifle near a tree several hundred yards away. I laughed as two flares exploded in the evening sky and we opened fire on the tree and bushes. Meanwhile, the corporal screamed into the radio handset, 'Contact! Contact! Contact!'

  Back at base, they must have thought we'd encountered an IRA Flying Column. Within seven minutes, we heard the whirr of the helicopter. Soldiers jumped from it before it had even touched the ground. They ran towards us, hyped up and ready for action. Our corporal pointed in the direction of the tree and the QRF soldiers moved off in defensive zigzags to hunt down the enemy, helped by the helicopter's powerful search beam.

  Our regiment soon had its second casualty. A soldier was shot in the foot. Thankfully, he hadn't been shot by other soldiers.

  He'd shot himself. He claimed it was an accident, but no one believed him. During our tour of duty, the IRA only caused one casualty among our regiment's soldiers: the friend of mine injured in a mortar attack.

  That summer of 1981 saw rioting throughout the United Kingdom. The season kicked off in July with four days of riots in the Toxteth area of Liverpool. At least 70 buildings were burned down and 468 police officers were injured. Smaller riots then took place in Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Leicester and just about everywhere else with a significant ethnic minority population.

  I started going out with a 'Greenfinch' - a female UDR soldier. She was called Elizabeth. Through her, I got to meet a lot of UDR soldiers. Several of them seemed all right, though none of them left me feeling overwhelmed by the desire to form a lifelong friendship. There were, however, several out-and-out sectarian bigots who made no attempt to hide their hatred of Catholics.

  One of the worst bigots was someone I nicknamed Billy Bunter. He was overweight, with a red face, and had the unpleasant habit of sniffing when he finished a sentence. His favourite saying was, 'What would really make me happy is if you gave me a pope on a rope.' He continually made a point of telling me not to be anywhere near him if a gun battle broke out. 'Yer man,' he'd say, 'watch your Fenian back if the bullets start flying.'

  I'd reply, 'Why wait till my back's turned, fat boy?'

  He'd pretend to laugh.

  I wish I could say his views were unusual, but they weren't. That sort of demented anti-Catholicism was widespread among the UDR soldiers. Even Elizabeth told me not to broadcast my Catholic background. She said it didn't bother her, but she thought other UDR people might not be so 'forgiving'. It wouldn't have been hard for any of the UDR people to justify their hatred of republicans, but I didn't like the way they seemed to hate all Catholics.

  Most UDR soldiers had lost friends or relatives at the hands of the IRA. And all of them, especially the part-timers, lived with a constant sense of personal threat. Out of uniform, at home and at work, they must have felt vulnerable all the time. Behind their backs, we used to call their unit 'the Utterly Defenceless Regiment'.

  Our officers never wore badges of rank on patrol and we were constantly told never to address them as 'Sir' in front of civilians. These precautions were designed to prevent terrorists identifying them as officers. The thinking was that an officer would present a more tempting target than a mere squaddie. I understood the logic of this, but I still resented it, especially when the officers who in camp would put you on a charge for not calling them 'Sir' were the ones who outside camp would be most upset if you called them 'Sir'. At checkpoints, I made a point of calling officers 'Sir' whenever I could, especially in front of Catholics. Some officers would get really freaked, 'O'Mahoney! Don't call me "Sir". How many times do you have to be told?'

  It's difficult to describe how I felt about 'the Troubles'. It wasn't exactly a case of being torn between two sides - I knew which side I was on. I was a British soldier, and I had no time for the IRA. Yet I agreed with the republican goal of a united Ireland and I secretly admired the hunger strikers, even though sometimes I could feel elated at their deaths.

  The strange thing was that while I could allow myself to feel satisfied that a hunger striker had died, I didn't like to see English soldiers, especially middle-class officers, sneering at hunger strikers' deaths. Contradiction was the dominant force in my mind.

  Life was full of injustice: everyone behaving unjustly to everyone else. That was the way of the world, it seemed to me. I'd felt this from an early age and, in some ways, I suppose this feeling helped me resolve the contradictions in my mind. I stopped getting bothered about who was right and who was wrong. Everyone was right and everyone was wrong. My only goal was survival.

  I was sitting in the canteen one day with a group of soldiers from my regiment. Someone was reading an Irish newspaper containing reports about the Pope's convalescence after his shooting in Rome. A double-page pull-out poster showed him in better days celebrating mass in front of a huge crowd. In the picture, he held his shepherd's crook in one hand. His other hand was raised to give a blessing. Underneath the photo stood the words, 'Pray for His Holiness'. I stuck the poster above the hotplate and sat back down with my mates. We all started giggling.

  Around five minutes later, a group of about twelve UDR and police walked in, among them Billy Bunter. Suddenly I heard him shout, 'You Fenian bastard!' I looked up and he was pointing at the poster. What happened next was extraordinary. At least six UDR men ran to the poster and tore it violently from its place.
Then, in a group frenzy, they ripped it to pieces, spat on it and finally stamped on it, all the time shouting madly.

  My mates and I were laughing. Billy saw us and ran over, his face afire with anger. He looked at me and shouted, 'Who put that up there? Who fucking put that up there?'

  I said, 'What are you talking about, you idiot?'

  We denied having anything to do with it - and no one outside my group had seen me put it up.

  Billy said, 'You saw it up there and you did nothing about it.'

  They were all deadly serious. I'm sure they'd have been less offended by a bomb. Elizabeth told me later that two of the UDR people had gone to the ops room to demand an officer launch an inquiry to find the culprit.

  The incident created a lot of bad feeling between our regiment and the UDR. It overshadowed the rest of the tour. It seemed to confirm the suspicions of some UDR soldiers that our regiment was a haven for IRA sympathisers. I wasn't aware of many sympathisers, but there were plenty of hooligans. In my mind, hooligans made the best soldiers. On the ground, dealing with real people in real situations, the army barmies were often clueless, whereas natural-born hooligans like me and a few others could deal effectively with whatever trouble came our way.

  To escape the tensions of active service - at least that was my excuse - I started drinking a lot more. There was little else to do when you weren't working. A few of us even started bringing alcohol with us on night-time checkpoint shifts. I can't remember us ever being drunk on duty, with our loaded rifles, but four or more pints of lager mixed with adrenalin probably contributed to some of our more loutish behaviour. We used to joke that at least the booze helped us walk in zigzags, thus making us hard targets for snipers.