by Geoff Wolak
Half an hour of earnest searching revealed nothing, and the lads had a peek through the farmhouse windows before moving back the barn, and from there to a clump of bushes.
Movement. I swung my rifle hard left, seeing a grey saloon car approaching - not the farmer, two men inside. ‘Got company, saloon car approaching, two men inside. Get ready.’
‘Eh ... Wilco,’ Swifty called, and from his tone I knew something was up.
‘What?’
‘Eh ... take a look hard right.’
I lowered my rifle and looked, startled by a dozen cows slowly ambling down the hill. ‘Fuck all we can do now,’ I told Swifty, and returned to focus on the saloon car.
The car eased to a halt, a minute taken to decide about switching the engine off, another minute taken to decide about getting out.
‘Rizzo, men in car are suspicious, and now on foot. Standby.’
The two men, their faces indistinct in my sights, had a nose into the farmhouse windows, and then checked out the rear of the farm as if they were potential house burglars.
‘Bob, it’s Wilco. Sitrep: two bad boys sniffing around, definitely suspicious.’
‘Roger that,’ came back.
The men edged closer to the barn, having a good look around, and finally entered the barn. Twenty yards ahead of me, a cow stopped and looked right at me before lowering its head to munch on the grass.
Ten minutes later, and one of the men came out of the barn with something wrapped in plastic, long enough to be a weapon.
‘Wilco for patrol, one of the men just fetched a weapon in plastic from the barn. Do you have a visual?’
‘We see them.’
The man put the plastic item in the boot, took a good look around, and then went back to join his friend. As he did so, he stopped and focused on the bushes where I had last seen the patrol, soon taking out a pistol.
‘Wilco to patrol, man outside the barn has a pistol, standby. Can you withdraw?’
‘Negative on the withdraw,’ said Bob. ‘There’s a gap we’d have to cover.’
‘Wilco, standby to drop that guy,’ came Rizzo.
‘Roger that,’ I responded, and took aim.
‘Wilco,’ Swifty urged, and I could see the problem. Cows were now moving right across the field of fire, and I was aiming through the legs of a bovine munching the succulent morning grass as the gunman was stepping very slowly towards the bushes, no sign of his buddy.
My field of fire was suddenly blocked. ‘Shit,’ I hissed out.
‘Do we change position?’ Swifty asked with some urgency.
‘The cows will scatter, and the gunmen will look up here.’ I clicked on the radio. ‘Wilco for patrol, we have no shot, the fucking cows are in the way, but we could distract the gunmen by scattering the cows.’
We waited.
‘Wilco, it’s Bob. Major said to shoot the fucking cows if you have to.’
‘Rizzo,’ I called. ‘What’s your situation?’
‘We’re pinned down, nothing solid near us. Where’s the second man?’
‘We have no visual on the second man,’ I reported. ‘And he may have a rifle out by now.’
‘Wilco, the first guy is tight up against the barn, we have no shot,’ Bob reported, some urgency in his voice.
‘Fuck it,’ Swifty let out. ‘I could charge the cows and you could take the shot.’
‘Well ... you heard what the Major said.’
‘What? You can’t.’
‘An order is an order.’
‘There’ll be hell to pay!’ he hissed.
I squeezed the trigger and hit a cow behind the ear, a spurt of blood glimpsed before the cow slowly fell onto its side, the cows near it moving off, then stopping and looking back, staring at the first cow, some staring towards us. My second shot was head on, right between the eyes, but the cow dropped its head yet remained standing, its legs locked at an angle.
‘What the fuck..?’ Swifty let out.
I aimed left, and killed another cow, this one again slowly falling onto its side, the herd now running.
Focusing down the hill I could see the two gunmen legging it back to their car, soon inside and revving like mad. Firing, I smashed their rear window deliberately, and hit a tyre as they sped off, finally hitting their rear windscreen and shattering it.
‘What were you aiming at?’ Swifty asked as he lifted his head.
‘I wasn’t trying to kill them, we’d get shit for that because they were fleeing, and no threat.’ I clicked on the radio. ‘Bob, call it in: vehicle with shattered glass, two men inside, weapon in trunk, men armed with pistols.’
‘Eh ... Wilco?’ Swifty called.
I looked to him, and he nodded forwards. There, twenty yards down the slope, stood a dead cow, blood dripping down.
‘Is that normal?’ he asked me.
‘They sleep standing up, but I doubt they’re supposed to die standing up, unless of course they die in their sleep.’
‘Be hell to pay, soldiers shooting cows. Around here that’s worse than shooting gunmen!’
‘Wilco, it’s Smurf, we’re legging it up the stream.’
When they reached the wire fence, myself and Swifty were up and ready, Bergens on, and four smiling faces came into view.
‘What’s so funny?’ I asked.
They stopped and looked at the upright dead cow.
Smurf said, ‘Bob reported what you did, and the CO is fucking mad as hell.’
‘I was following orders, and you all heard that order.’
‘CO says that he was joking,’ Bob told me.
‘Yeah, well ... bollocks,’ I said with a sigh as we studied the dead cow. ‘Bob, call in that barn, there’s a hidden stash.’
‘I did, RUC on their way, got the car details out to them.’
‘Well then, we may as well get a lift from the RUC,’ I suggested.
Rizzo made a face and shrugged, and we all eased through a gap in the fence and wandered down the hill, past the dead cow.
‘Should we tip it over?’ Rizzo asked.
‘No, leave it,’ I said. ‘It looks alive. Maybe they won’t notice.’
Laughing hysterically, we ambled down the wet grass to the farm house.
Fifteen minutes later, and two RUC officers were stood in the field and puzzling the dead upright cow, the barn being searched, the stash found. When the farmer as his wife returned they were questioned, the keen dog whimpering for some attention.
The RUC reported the car found abandoned a mile away, forensics now on it.
‘What did you shoot the cows for?’ an RUC officer asked us.
‘They were in the way,’ I said. ‘Our patrol was in danger, so we had to move the cows to open fire. And by shooting the cows, the gunmen fled.’
‘Bad business,’ he said. ‘Should never shoot cows. And that’s twenty grand a piece coming from the Army back to the farmer.’
‘Twenty grand?’ Rizzo complained. ‘For a fucking cow.’
‘Lot of steak in that cow, a tonne of it,’ the RUC pointed out. ‘Thousands of bottles of milk. It all adds up.’
They gave us a lift back, and we soon checked and handed in the weapons, webbing off, a quick wash before we entered the Major’s office, and I had never seen him look so mad. Captain Tyler sat off to one side with Captain Harris.
The Major stared at me, controlling himself. He finally said, through gritted teeth, ‘You shot three fucking cows!’
‘Two, sir. One is still upright.’
The guys laughed.
‘Shit the fuck up!’ the CO bellowed at them, before focusing again on me. ‘Well!’
‘Just following your order, sir.’
He stood, about to explode.
‘Of course, I’d be happy to alter the official record and state that it was my call,’ I said, a smirk exchanged with Tyler. ‘I’ll sit before the enquiry board.’
The CO considered that, and sat, still red in the face. ‘Those cows are twenty-four grand a piece,
and the Army has to pay, for which I will get a tonne of shit! I’ve already had the General on the line.’
‘They’re just cows -’ Rizzo began before getting cut off by a pointed finger from the Major.
The Major calmed himself, but was still seething. ‘The ... the weapons stash was a good find, but 14 Intel are claiming the credit, and the vehicle tracks back to a known suspect, prints lifted, so maybe a result there as well.’ He faced me. ‘Were you trying to hit them as they fled?’
‘No, sir, I wanted the car damaged so that the RUC would pull them over ... and arrest them. I could hardly justify a threat from three hundred yards when they were driving away.’
‘Yes, well, correct procedure.’ He took a moment. ‘Get a shower, some hot food. Rizzo, write up a report.’
We stood, but filing out one of the lads said ‘Mooo’.
‘Shut the fuck up!’ the CO barked at us, and we hid our smirks.
The next day the CO slapped a newspaper down in front of me, and walked off without saying anything, the front page showing the dead cows, one still upright.
‘Soldiers brutally slay three cows for fun,’ said the headline.
Well, I had to respond to that.
Two days later, sat having breakfast with the lads, the major stepped in with two unknown captains. ‘Wilco!’
I stood. ‘Sir.’
‘Did you, by any chance, happen to write a letter to that farmer, and apologise?’
‘I did, sir, seemed like the right thing to do.’
‘And did you happen to use green crayon when you wrote it?’
Swifty puzzled that.
‘I ... couldn’t find a pen, sir.’
‘You ... couldn’t find a pen?’ The Major lifted a newspaper, displaying my letter on its front page, and taking up the whole of the front page. He turned it over so that he could read it. ‘Dear nice mister farmer man.’ He shot me a look. ‘I is sorry what I shot your nice cows, because they looked like nice cows, and now they is got no friends but is in cow heaven like.’
The lads started snickering.
‘I is very sorry like what I did.’ The Major focused on me for a moment. ‘I hopes what you and your nice lady wife will not be sad, and I liked your dog, what was black and white like.’
The lad’s eyes were now watering.
‘Signed, trooper Wilco, aged twenty-six and a half, SAS.’
The lads burst out laughing.
The Major focused on me. ‘Well!’
‘I didn’t think they’d print the damn thing, sir, and there’s no proof I wrote it anyhow. It’s IRA propaganda, that’s what it is like.’
‘My office!’
‘An enlisted man is allowed to finish his breakfast, so is a condemned man.’
‘Fifteen minutes, or you’ll face a firing squad!’
Copies of the newspaper appeared everywhere, copies sent back to the UK, and every soldier in the province soon had a copy on his wall, along with a picture of the upright dead cow, and the local TV news gave the incident ten minutes of prime time.
I was famous all of a sudden, again, but the IRA were not impressed at all. Bob Staines came in to see the Major, and they called me in, and today they had their concerned faces on.
Bob faced me and said, ‘The stunt with the cow could have been ... best avoided, because now the IRA think that you are anything other than a RAF medic, anything other than a simple victim. We have a man inside, and they’ve got you down for the two men shot in the arse, and definitely blame you – personally – for the farm on the border.
‘And they know that you are here in Bessbrook. They’re also trying hard to bribe people to find out all they can about you, but they needn’t bother, your notoriety reaches everyone ears around here.’
‘Then we should use those facts,’ I told him.
Bob glanced at the Major. ‘How ... exactly?’
‘Do you have a man that would be trusted if he ... leaked my patrol routes?’
‘We do,’ Bob confirmed after a moment’s thought. ‘But such assets are used ... sparingly.’
‘Then I suggest that we devise some patrol routes, carefully, and leak them.’
‘A trap,’ the Major told Bob. ‘If they want to come out to play, fine, let them – but on our terms.’
Bob nodded. ‘What would you do ... exactly?’
I said, ‘Plan a patrol route, then look for the good ambush points along it, but get someone in those ambush points first. Then we play the waiting came, but just one day a week maybe. If they think that say ... next patrol is Wednesday, followed by a Thursday the following week, they’ll think we’re varying times and routes.’
The Major nodded. ‘Two patrols leaked, and we get out lads in 24hrs beforehand, see what we can see.’
‘If it looks like a trap, my man would be in jeopardy,’ Bob pointed out. ‘But ... there are ways.’
‘Dead men don’t talk,’ I said. ‘We can move bodies around, make it look like I shot them.’
‘And would we ... get full credit, a letter to that effect from the Colonel?’ Bob delicately enquired.
‘That’s up to the Major,’ I said. ‘Not my call.’
‘If your man’s efforts result in a timely contact,’ the Major began, ‘then we’d be happy to report ... your kind cooperation.’
Bob faced the Major and nodded his approval.
‘Wilco, plan two routes,’ the Major told me.
‘How about ... routes up in Armagh, near the border, sir.’
‘Bandit country,’ the Major said. ‘The gunmen could shoot at you from their bedroom windows, and not miss an episode of Coronation Street!’
‘Sir, you have ruined my image of IRA tough men forever.’
‘You don’t actually need to do the patrol,’ Bob suggested. ‘You just need the men in place.’
‘There may be someone watching,’ I said. ‘A little old lady. They need to trust the intel.’
Bob exchanged a look with the Major and nodded.
Out of the meeting I lost my bravado, and I considered my parents, and would the IRA go for them, or even Kate? Few knew about Kate, our illicit relationship was not common knowledge, but “Serviceman Wilco” was in QMAR, and she was named, so they could link her. I made a call and warned her, but she was not scared at all. Still, she offered to take extra safety precautions.
I could not ring my parents and warn them without doing more harm than good, so I didn’t, but I quietly worried about their safety.
Sergeant Crab turned up that day, explaining that most everyone from “D” Squadron back at base was either on a course, on holiday, or off sick. He was feeling lonely back at Hereford, and so had nagged to come out, and seeing him it felt like I had been with Regiment for years, not just a few short months.
We spent an hour catching up on all my exploits. And Sergeant Crab had met Captain Bromley several times, they had even gone on a course together. He noted the real absence of newspaper inches regarding Captain Bromley, hardly a mention.
I sat with Captains Tyler and Harris and explained what we were doing, and that they were sworn to secrecy, making Harris laugh. We scoured the maps and looked for a suitable route, followed by a second route, and considered probable ambush points. One route crossed through the middle of a small wood, that was perfect, and one route involved crossing a wide stream via a bridge, another good ambush spot.
After five hours of careful study of the maps – many a coffee downed, we had two routes, and three ambush points along each. I asked Tyler to present them to the lads at a briefing, surprising him.
The next day, Tyler stood beside a whiteboard, a map diagram annotated, insert and extraction points, call in times, the works, the ambush points detailed, and he followed my suggestion of two-man teams at each point, a single four man team waiting here with a Lynx on standby. First dummy patrol would be this coming Wednesday, second on the following Thursday, and the patrols would be 24hrs.
Opinions were taken, Rizzo ask
ing questions, and Tyler again followed my suggestions by making Rizzo team leader for the ambush points, and that he should choose the final positions. The lads were impressed by Tyler’s detail. The Major asked a few questions, and we had a ‘go’, a call made to Bob Staines.
Later that day, the Major called me in. ‘Captain Tyler’s plan.’ He waited, interlacing his fingers.
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Did you ... assist? I gave the project to you.’
‘He’s good with such things, good with small detail, and his handwriting is much better than mine. And ... it should have been his project, given that he is paid to be here.’
The Major considered that. ‘How do you rate him?’
‘He’s keen, he’s willing, he’s ... a blank sheet of paper, and he can be taught the way you do things. Those are the important qualities, in my humble opinion, and a captain should not be a tough guy in a fire-fight, he should be an expert in logistics and planning. I trust Captain Tyler to ask a question, not try and reach beyond his abilities and cover things up – as Captain Marks did.’
The Major nodded. ‘Blank sheet of paper, eh.’
Bob Staines came in and took the detail of the route, but just place names, insert time and extraction time, and the days. The rest would be down to his man on the inside.
We broke out a pack of cards, and waited, Bob back on to us a day later and suggesting that – as far as he could ascertain – the information had been sold on.
For the Wednesday inset we roped in the Borderers, and they would send out a ten jeep patrol, troopers being dropped off at various points before dawn on the Wednesday, to be lying-up all day and night, extracted at dawn the next day at the drop-off points.
I would be inserted alone at the start of the route, but an hour later than expected – and an hour later than detailed to Bob Staines, a few of the lads concerned at the danger posed to me. Since Bob said that his people could often detect when something was up, just not knowing what, he might be able to tip us off.
The lads got to bed early on the Tuesday night, most everyone involved in this stunt, and they were up at 4am, breakfast downed, kit checked and then re-checked, radios checked, call signs checked, bowels emptied.
