Soldier Of The Queen

by Bernard O'Mahoney

  12

  Contact! Contact! Contact!

  Bobby Sand died on the Tuesday. The Fermanagh Provos took their revenge on the Saturday.

  I was lying on my bed in our sleeping quarters, reading someone else's tabloid newspaper. The other members of that night's Quick Reaction Force were either lying on their beds or sitting in twos and threes around the room, talking quietly and seriously. Bobby Sands's death and our thoughts about its possible consequences had removed all lightness from the atmosphere. Everyone expected something unpleasant just around the corner. Phil Collins, as always, provided the background music: ". . . coming in the air tonight, oh Lord,

  oh Loooorrddd. . It was around 10.30 p.m., too early to bother trying to sleep. I half expected we'd get called out at some point that night. I imagined the local republicans getting tanked up in the pubs to mark the passing of their MP. They would soon be spilling out onto the streets looking for targets they could vent their anger on.

  I threw the newspaper down and sat up just as the door flew open. A soldier shouted: "Heli-pad! Heli-pad! They've attacked Rosslea!" We burst into activity, grabbing our weapons and running out the door into the slumbering camp. A few hundred yards away on the heli-pad I could see the rotors of the Lynx in full frenetic spin. I threw myself into the helicopter and huddled down in the seat behind the pilot. Within seconds everyone was aboard and the Lynx lifted up smoothly. Then, as it passed the roofs of the watchtowers, a powerful thrust from the engine sent the sleek machine zooming off into the darkness.

  "Mortar attack. Rosslea," shouted the brick commander. I felt my stomach slipping an inch - I knew almost all the soldiers at Rosslea, although I had no close friends there. It was one of the smallest and most vulnerable camps, usually described as a joint RUC/Army base. In fact it was little more than an old police station based in what looked like a normal four-bedroom family house with four Portakabins in the garden. A barbed wire fence surrounded the camp, which stood alone, apart from a pig farm next door. I had been there a few times and each time had felt relieved to get back to St Angelo, which by comparison was an impregnable fortress. The person I knew best at Rosslea was Edwards, a Catholic from Liverpool. I had been through basic training with him and liked him. He was quiet, tending to keep himself to

  himself, but he could be a good laugh. I felt anxious for him and hoped he was not now "fertiliser" — our slang for the dead victims of explosions.

  The pilot was in contact with Rosslea and through the information he relayed to our brick commander I could tell the base was in total panic. People were shouting and screaming down the radio. I looked out of the window. At first I could see nothing, only blackness, but within a few minutes an orange glow appeared in the distance. As we got closer the glow got bigger until I could clearly make out flames. The atmosphere in the helicopter was full of fear and tension. In no time at all we were there and, as the helicopter circled, we found ourselves looking down on a scene of devastation. The whole camp seemed alight: orange and yellow flames danced madly around plumes of grey-black smoke. I could make out figures running around the flames. I felt a dryness in my mouth and a sickness in my stomach. The pilot was looking for a safe spot to land: he had to be careful — we had been told there were unexploded mortars on the ground. As the helicopter hovered I watched the scene below with horrified fascination. I knew there had to be casualties. Surely the Provos could not blast the camp apart like that and not hit anyone? I felt almost hypnotised by the mayhem. In that half-trance part of me was expecting the professionals to arrive to sort things out. Then the reality hit me: we were the professionals - we were the ones the people on the ground were waiting for to sort things out.

  The helicopter landed in a field opposite the base. For a second I felt as if I could not move, but as the others started to jump out I forced myself up. The Lynx lifted off as soon as the last person had jumped out. I don't think any of us knew what we were going to do. We all ran towards a hole in the fence, which had bits of Portakabin hanging off it. Groups of soldiers had gathered just inside the perimeter, away from the flames. Everyone looked dazed and shocked. Nearby I saw one group kneeling over a figure stretched out on the ground.

  I said to one: "What the fuck's happening?"

  He said: "Mortars. Some haven't gone off."

  I asked if anyone was hurt.

  He said: "Edwards." He pointed to the figure on the ground.

  I felt sick as I ran to where he was lying. The others beside him seemed to be too shocked to do anything. I knelt down beside them and could hardly recognise the prone figure as Edwards. He was shaking and making gibbering noises, but what struck me most at first glance was how dirty he was: his face and clothes were covered in filth. Then I noticed his wounds. There was a gash on his face, starting on his cheek and stretching down past the jaw, but most sickeningly his right side had been ripped open. Blood was oozing out of the wound, which must have stretched for about 18 inches down his side and into his back.

  I said: "Where's the first aid kit?"

  I was told they could not find it: everything had been blown away. Even the electricity was off: the only light came from the flames. Edwards, barely conscious, was just shaking with shock. I thought: "Fuck. He's going to die." I shouted for them to get some bandages or something - anything - which I could use to press down on the wounds to try to stem the blood flow. Someone ran over to the wreckage and came back with something. He handed me several pairs of clean socks. I started pressing them into the wounds. Soon Edwards was lying there with socks hanging out of his side and face. I asked if they had called the emergency services. They said the fire brigade was on its way, but the ambulance service would not come out this far.

  I said: "We've got to get the helicopter back to get him to hospital."

  The QRF's sergeant, who had initially been speechless with shock, got on the radio. Edwards started gibbering manically.

  "Calm down! Calm down! It's me, Bernie," I said. I was shocked to see my friend in such a state. I kept saying: "Clarkey, Clarkey. You're all right. Stop moaning." Why I called him Clarke - the name of another soldier I'd met at Sutton Coldfield selection centre - I shall never know. I was terrified he was dying in front of me.

  Another sergeant was telling everyone to get out of the camp and to take up firing positions in the field: he was worried about unexploded mortars and the possibility of a follow-up attack. I and a few others insisted on staying with Edwards. The QRF sergeant was having an argument with the helicopter pilot, who was saying it was too dangerous to land. Our sergeant started screaming down the mouthpiece at him until he relented. The pilot said he would not land too near the camp: he suggested a spot in the middle of a nearby field. During this time someone had managed to find a stretcher. We put Edwards on it and wound a ragged blanket around his body to hold in the socks. We picked up the stretcher and ran with it through the hole in the fence. We watched the helicopter circling and heard the reassuring DUB-DUB-DUB-DUB-DUB of its rotors as it dipped down towards us. As we ran we saw the helicopter almost touch the ground a few hundred yards away. It hovered a few feet off the ground, waiting for its cargo. As we ran we could not help bouncing Edwards in the stretcher. He shouted out in pain.

  To our frustration there was a ditch and a hedge between us and the helicopter. I told four of the others to jump over the hedge and be ready to receive the stretcher. They climbed over the hedge and found themselves on raised ground. By this time Edwards was moaning: "Ooooooooohhhhhhh!!" The rest of us stood in the ditch and lifted up the stretcher. Those on the other side grabbed one end of it and pulled. Unfortunately, none of us noticed that the ragged blanket had got caught in the hedge. So when they pulled the stretcher free and started running with it the trapped blanket held on to Edwards - and catapulted him back into the ditch on top of us. Meanwhile the others, perhaps in shock, were still running towards the waiting helicopter with the empty stretcher. As three of us lay in a heap in the ditch with Edwards on top of us
moaning even louder than before I burst out laughing. This farce amid the horror had set me off. The stretcher-bearers soon realised they had lost their patient and came running back. They threw over the stretcher as we disentangled ourselves and stood up. We put Edwards back on the stretcher and passed it over again. This time he stayed with the stretcher.

  I watched as they ran to the helicopter and placed the stretcher inside. The helicopter lifted off and disappeared into the darkness.

  At that moment I felt a powerful hatred for the Provos. Edwards was a good man: he didn't deserve to die. I dearly hoped I'd get a chance to kill one of the bastards who had done that to him. We ran back to the camp. Everyone had taken up firing positions outside the perimeter fence, but well away from some unexploded mortars which lay smouldering in one of the fields. Within ten minutes several fire engines had arrived. They had powerful lights which enabled us to see more clearly as we were now some way from the dying flames. The firemen unreeled their hoses but, as they turned on the water, some ammunition stored in one of the Portakabins started going off. The bullets made a DO-DO-DO-DO-DO sound. The firemen must have assumed that the Provos had launched a follow-up attack, because as soon as they heard the bullets they dropped the hoses, jumped into their fire engines and drove off, hoses trailing behind them, spewing water all over the road.

  Our sergeant screamed: "Get those fuckers back here! Get them back!" But it was too late — they had disappeared into the night.

  Within 20 minutes the fire had almost burnt itself out and we were in pitch darkness. Instead of staying put, the sergeant said we had to clear the area to create a safe cordon all round the camp. We advanced slowly through the field.

  Suddenly I heard a soldier shout: "Halt! Who goes there?"

  There was no reply. We crouched down and pointed our rifles in front of us. I could feel my heart pounding. Was this the Provo who had got Edwards? Was this the bastard? If it was, he was going to die - the crate of beer would be mine. I noticed a movement just ahead of us.

  Someone shouted again: "Who goes there?" Still no reply. After a short pause we got up and began advancing slowly towards the figure, fingers on triggers. We surrounded it - and it suddenly ran at us. I don't know why none of us started shooting; I myself was within a millisecond of pulling the trigger. That sheep would never know how close it had come to losing its life.

  We stayed in the fields until first light. As we waited for the sun to come up I spoke to a soldier who had been in the camp during the attack. He said that by a miraculous fluke almost all the soldiers, except for Edwards, had been in the one Portakabin that had escaped unscathed.

  In the morning the fire brigade returned and hosed down the smouldering Portakabins. Then the bomb-disposal people arrived. A short way from the camp I could see the lorry from which the mortars had been fired: a three-ton Bedford with ten firing tubes on the back. Apparently, only three mortars had hit the base. Those three had been accurate because they had been the first to be fired. However, they had shot off with such force that the pressure had broken the lorry's back suspension. This had altered the trajectory of the other mortars, all of which had missed their target. One had even landed in the pig farm next door.

  Once the area had been declared safe a helicopter landed to bring more troops and to take us back to St Angelo.

  13

  Welcome To Botswana

  It was hard to get any news of Edwards. The army tried to stop us dwelling on the misfortunes of our comrades, presumably to stop morale sinking even lower. "He's all right. Forget about him." was the official attitude, one that I'd come across before in Germany. Naturally, it achieved the opposite of what was intended: we only dwelled more on the fate of our injured friend - and rumours filled the vacuum created by the lack of information. One of the most bizarre things that would happen after such an incident was the stripping of the injured person's bed: they would remove everything — sheets, blankets and even the mattress. Sometimes the first you knew that something had happened was when you returned to the bare bed-springs in the bunk above you. You didn't know what had happened, but you assumed it wasn't good. Within a few days of the mortar attack there was even the rumour that Edwards had died — and been secretly buried to maintain morale. However, by the end of the week, with persistent questioning, we'd managed to establish that Edwards's condition was stable. He was expected to make a full recovery.

  In a strange way the Provos' attack helped settle nerves a little. It provided a weird reassurance: we had been anticipating something awful, so when it happened it confirmed we were right to have expected the worst. Not that any of us thought we had yet experienced the worst. We could see the republican prisoners chugging along the starvation conveyor belt - and we knew their friends on the outside would be looking to avenge each one that came to the end of the line.

  On the surface people tried to treat the Hunger Strike as a joke, usually by making quips about the regimental sweepstake, but among friends huddled in smaller groups most people would be more circumspect. Soldiers rarely admitted openly to being afraid, but fear was all around. We would discuss the news and hope that none of the soon-to-be-deceased would be buried in Fermanagh: Provo funerals could only mean trouble. Outside the company of trusted friends, and especially in the presence of UDR soldiers, many would join in the celebratory sneering at the impending deaths of republican prisoners. Indeed, when the next hunger striker died most people in the canteen started cheering. The 2 5-year-old IRA man Francis Hughes went within a week of Bobby Sands after starving himself for 59 days. Once again sympathisers came onto the streets to bang dustbin lids on the ground. In the canteen I heard one UDR man suggest that the army ought to raid Catholic areas and confiscate all dustbin lids for the duration of the Hunger Strike. I think he was serious.

  We all turned into news junkies, eagerly congregating in the television room to catch the news bulletins. The whole of Northern Ireland seemed to be erupting during this period. In Belfast masked youths stoned and petrol-bombed the security forces, set up roadblocks and set vehicles ablaze. A soldier was shot in the chest when his foot patrol came under fire in West Belfast. We tutted in disgust when the reporter said the rest of the patrol had been unable to return fire because of the civilians milling around. Soldiers shouted at the TV screen: "Shoot them all, the bastards." In Dungannon a police patrol was ambushed with petrol bombs. In Newry a car showroom went up in flames. The camera panned across the smouldering cars. In the TV room a soldier got a laugh by saying: "Shit! I'd put a deposit on that one."

  Out on patrol I remember feeling puzzled by the huge number of small black mourning flags flying from lamp-posts, houses, pubs and other businesses. I thought people were foolish to advertise their loyalty to the IRA in that way. To my criminal mind it seemed as absurd as the idea of my sticking a poster in my front-room window at home saying, "Dear Police. I am a criminal. Please arrest me." Yet at the same time part of me admired what I saw as the flag-wavers' come-and-get-me defiance of the authorities. We took note of who was flying the flag - and we intended coming to get them if we had time to get round to them all. I am sure the RUC, UDR and loyalist paramilitaries thought the same. In briefings we were warned not to try to pull down the flags in case they were booby-trapped. We had to be content with setting fire to a few of them. There was even a report of loyalists firing gunshots at black flags in Maguiresbridge. I thought it was probably some of the UDR men on a works outing.

  I remember another briefing around this time when a sergeant told us that republicans were now throwing acid bombs as well as petrol bombs - milk bottles full of sulphuric acid. The thought of acid eating into my skin horrified me more than the thought of being engulfed in flames. The sergeant said that if anyone was hit with an acid bomb we had to rinse him thoroughly with water as soon as possible. It seemed to me that the acid would have done its corrosive work by the time any rinsing took place. Nevertheless, we started making sure we never left camp without filling our water
bottles to the brim.

  The rioters were devising more and more ingeniously vicious ways of causing us damage. Just as you could trace the Provos' developments in mortar-bomb technology (the Mark One turning into the more sophisticated Mark Two turning into the more sophisticated Mark Three and so on) you could also trace developments in petrol-bomb technology. We were told they had started putting balls of elastic bands into bottles. The burning petrol would cause the elastic to melt into a thick blob of goo. If the rioters scored a direct hit on a soldier or policeman this goo would stick to the victim, impossible to shake off, burning furiously as it melted into flesh or clothing. In the first few weeks of the tour we had been allowed to carry carbon-dioxide fire extinguishers with us for use in petrol-bomb attacks. They worked on the principle of extinguishing a fire by starving the flames of oxygen. However, the instruction came through that we were not to use the extinguishers on burning colleagues. Apparently a soldier in Belfast had almost died when his mates had used one on him when his uniform had caught fire during a riot. The carbon dioxide had starved the soldier, as well as the flames, of oxygen and he had come close to suffocating.

  The canteen was a lively place during the day. The duty cooks would be crashing about, washing the steel trays or moving the steel pots and steel pans from steel surface to steel surface. Soldiers would sit in groups of four or five; events would dictate their mood and conversation. A lot was said among the cannon-fodder which would not have been aired in the company of officers or those we regarded as "real" soldiers.

  A regular topic of conversation was the number of days you had to do before R and R (Rest and Recuperation). The latter was the three days' special leave you were granted for being in Northern Ireland. Only a few soldiers would be on R and R at the same time. Some got theirs after only a week in the country, while others had to wait until the last fortnight of the tour. Many soldiers had "days-to-do" charts pinned beside their beds next to the A3-size Page-Three pin-ups sent by The Sun to "Our Brave Boys". The charts marked the day of arrival to the day of supposed departure: R and R days would be highlighted with shades from fluorescent marker pens. Those who seemed to pine most for the day when they could put a cross through the last date were usually the ones making the jokes about the regimental sweepstake. They made me sick.