Soldier Of The Queen (12 page)

At Hollywood I found myself in a group of about 20 soldiers from different regiments. We sat in a room with a large television at the front.

A major walked in, marched to the front and said: "If you're going to die, we might as well tell you why." He then played a video which condensed Ireland's history into 30 minutes. When the video finished he began talking to us in a matter-of-fact tone, as if he were merely stating the obvious. He opened his talk by saying that the film had probably left us more confused than enlightened, but that this did not really matter. The essential fact, he said, was that as British soldiers we were little more than piggies-in-the-middle in a baffling tribal conflict, the intricacies of which need not concern us too greatly. All we really needed to bear in mind as we went about our duties were the simple equations: Catholic = IRA = Bad and Protestant = British = Good.

He said he did not mean to give offence to any Catholics in the group, if there were any, as British Catholics were obviously different from Irish Catholics. He said he knew also he was being deeply unfair to the many Irish Catholics who did not support the IRA. However, his purpose was merely to identify the tribal grouping from which the threat to our lives was most likely to come. And the simple fact of the matter was that we didn't need to be as wary of Protestants. 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. Everyone was so taken aback by his cynical frankness that after he left no-one really said anything. The only comment was from a Liverpudlian who asked: "Was he taking the piss?"

The major's last observation about the statistical improbability of our coming to any harm had not been absorbed by the course instructors who for the whole of that week told us we were definitely going to die. No doubt about it. Every second sentence that emerged at high pitch from their spit-flecked mouths assured us that our incompetence as soldiers meant the Provos would certainly kill us.

The scene of most of our training was what looked like the set of
Coronation Street
several rows of the exteriors of two-up-two-down terraced houses. Videos filmed us patrolling these streets and captured on tape our pitiful attempts to negotiate the various hazards put in our path. Cardboard cutouts of various "friendly" and "non-friendly" people appeared suddenly at windows - usually to be blasted indiscriminately by me and my fellow "Professionals". I lost count of the number of vicars and women and children we collectively managed to massacre as we wandered the streets hopelessly in our numbered fluorescent jackets. Occasionally a balaclava-clad Provo cut-out would appear: he tended to escape with his cardboard life.

An instructor told us that at some stage in Northern Ireland we would all have a sniper's rifle trained on our heads. Sometimes as we patrolled the streets they would set off an explosive charge in a house. When we ran for cover behind a car they would detonate something in the car. Ranting and raving in the way that only army NCOs know how, they would point out that we were supposed to check everything we used for shelter. They often gave the impression of being in despair.

One of them kept shouting: "You're going to die. Paddy will look for fools like you — off-the-ball, day-dreaming, dead."

After each exercise we would watch our mistakes on video. Once as we carried out a house search I walked into a room to find a package on the floor. Smoke began to billow from it. I picked it up and ran out into the street where I dumped it on the road. I thought I'd done quite well.

The instructor disagreed: "You fucking muppet! You stupid fucking muppet!"

When we gathered in the debriefing room he ordered me to stand on a chair in front of everyone. He said: "I want you to take a long hard look at this man." Everyone stared at me. "Does anyone know why I want you all to look at him?" No-one spoke. "It's because this man is going to get you all killed." The stares became harder. The instructor shouted: "You're a fucking muppet, aren't you O'Mahoney?"

I said I was.

He pointed out that, while I might have saved the lives of the civilians in the house, I had taken a bomb out into a street full of soldiers, whose lives were more valuable.

He said: "What are you?"

I said again: "I'm a muppet."

Then, in case anyone in the room had still not deduced what I was, he screamed in agreement: "Yes, you're a fucking muppet."

We would do our best, but no matter what we did they would make us feel that we'd not just made a mistake, but had committed a truly life-ending error.

"
You're going to die! You're going to die!" was the response to almost everything we did. After a few days we all started to believe them. At night I would lie in bed thinking: "God, what am I doing here? I'm doing everything wrong. I
am
going to die."

I received a few rudimentary lessons in the workings of the Self-Loading Rifle, but they hardly served to bolster my morale. A proper infantryman should have been capable of stripping down an SLR blindfolded. I needed natural light and the help of my colleagues. On the firing range I hardly hit the target.

Once an instructor bent down beside me and screamed: "Don't apply for the marksman's course yet, you useless cunt." I thought the only way I would survive in Ulster was if I could drive an armoured personnel carrier - a "Pig", as it was known - in a built-up area. A few months earlier I'd been sent on a course to Hull to learn how to drive one. At least on that course I had felt competent driving around smashing into barricades and ramming wrecked cars. When the Pigs were battened down the driver only had a six-by-three inch perspex window to see out of. We were taught that rioters tried to disable Pigs by throwing paint on that window, so in the water container for the window-wipers we were told to put paint-stripper. However, I didn't get to act on this wisdom: I didn't even see a Pig during my whole time in Northern Ireland, let alone get to drive one.

Then our anti-terrorist training was all over. After a week in which we had apparently not done anything right we were told we were now trained and ready for action. A soldier from my regiment came to take me back to Fermanagh, again in an unmarked car. He had been out on patrol a few times already and was talking like a veteran. If anything, the week's training had made me feel even more vulnerable and I slightly resented my colleague's apparently relaxed state.

As we passed through a town near to where we were going he said: "Oh, I'll show you around here." He drove to a loyalist housing estate where a pipe band was practising their tunes. We parked a few hundred yards away from them. They started marching up the street towards us, led by a few aggressive-looking men competing with each other to see who could hurl batons highest into the air.

My companion said: "This is Ulster."

The band marched past us. Several of the pipers looked at us suspiciously.

I said: "What a bunch of fucking edibles." They came back down past us: their marching seemed more frenzied. I began to feel unsafe and uncomfortable: perhaps they could smell

my Irish Catholic blood. I said: "Get me out of here, you

_»

cunt.

On the journey back I felt a sort of anger at being surrounded by so much hostility. None of these people knew me, but as far as I could see lots of them already hated me -and wanted to do me harm. "Fuck them," I thought. I wasn't going to let them: it was as simple as that - I wasn't going to let them. There was no way I was going back to Codsall in either a coffin or a wheelchair. 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 would survive by dealing ruthlessly with any potential threats. And, as far as I was concerned, anybody I did not know personally was a threat.

I would crush those threats before they crushed me.

The Sergeant called a troop meeting before I went out on my first patrol.

He was probably the most experienced soldier in our regiment. I was told he had joined us from another regiment and had already done a few tours of duty in Northern Ireland. I hadn't had much contact with him before, but I knew from talking to other soldiers that he was highly regarded. He tended to do things by the book but, unlike a few of the other NCOs and officers, he did at least inspire confidence in his military capability.

There must have been about 20 of us gathered in front of him. We had all been in Ireland for a week. Most had already been out on the streets. Some tried to give off the

nonchalant air of veterans; others still looked as bewildered and fearful as we all had on first stepping off the plane at Aldergrove.

There were no officers present in the meeting room. The sergeant began by saying that now we had acclimatised ourselves to our new environment he wanted to underline a few points which we ought to bear in mind for the rest of the tour. He picked on a few mistakes that people were making while out on patrol and in dealings with the natives. He reminded us that when on patrol or at vehicle checkpoints we were not under any circumstances to do or say anything that would identify our officers as officers. In the Provos' score chart of hits an officer was always worth more points than an ordinary squaddie. He said officers on the street would not wear badges of rank in order to make more difficult the sniper's task of identifying them. So we had to make sure we did not inadvertently help snipers by, for instance, addressing officers as "Sir", especially in front of potential terrorists (that is, all Irish Catholics). Of course, once back in barracks we had to maintain the correct forms of address.

He mentioned a few other minor points before coming to the matter I felt had probably been at the forefront of his mind. 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 that 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".

In case we had not grasped what he was saying he summarised things in words I have never forgotten: "Just shoot the fucker dead and we'll make it up from there." No-one raised any objections, but I could see a few people looking uncomfortable. I wasn't one of them: I thought the sergeant's advice extremely astute and I intended following it in the event of a firefight with suspected terrorists. Perhaps to lighten the atmosphere he finished by saying there would be a crate of beer for the first one of us to kill a paddy.

There are many events during that tour that I can remember with astonishing clarity. Even today I can replay each second in my mind, because I lived so intensely at the time. One of these is my first patrol. We stood at the gates of the Lisnaskea camp in two "bricks" — squads of four - cradling our SLRs in our arms. One of the things that the instructors at Hollywood banged into us was that soldiers on patrol were at their most vulnerable passing through the camp gates. Terrorists do not know which routes you will take when you are on the streets, because you always vary them. All they know for sure is that you must pass through the camp gates at the beginning and end of your patrol. I stood there as alert as I had ever been in my life. I imagined what awaited on the other side. I thought of the gates opening and of us moving out into a hail of bullets. Or perhaps there would be just one sniper who would fire just one bullet which would hit me straight in the head.

Our sergeant gave a signal to the two soldiers at the reinforced gates. They swung them open suddenly at great speed. "OK, go!" shouted our sergeant. We sped out through the gates and into the world of danger — or so it seemed. The instructors at Hollywood had done such a thorough job in alerting us to potential hazards that nothing and no-one seemed innocent. Each brick took a different side of the road.

A car came towards us. Why was it going so fast? I pushed the butt of my SLR more tightly into my shoulder, ready to swing the muzzle round and blast the Provo bastard. The car passed us, a middle-aged woman with glasses in the driver's seat.

We walked on at high speed, moving in zig-zags, looking at everything with intensity. I tried to remember everything I had been taught: "Make yourself a difficult target. Move from side to side. Don't lean against walls." We would stop occasionally and stoop down. Everything looked so normal - and that unnerved me. Further down the street a car pulled away as we approached. He had moved off a bit too fast for my liking. I felt my finger tightening on the trigger, but he too drove past without incident.

The streets seemed quiet, the houses unoccupied. Then suddenly a door opened and a child ran screaming out. My heart seemed to expand with the shock. The child ran past, playing aeroplanes: he didn't seem to register our presence. An old man stood at his fence giving us a look of pure hatred. In another street a young mother picked up her child and moved quickly indoors. I wondered why she had done that: did she know something? We had been told that sometimes the Provos warned people about imminent attacks on army patrols, so if a street seemed unusually quiet we had to be especially alert. The problem was that almost every street seemed unusually quiet. Everything held out the possibility of impending danger, so I couldn't relax for a second. Every step was a step taken in a state of high anxiety. By the time we got back to camp two hours later I felt exhausted, not physically - we had probably only covered a few miles - but mentally. I slumped on my bed, totally shattered. The thought of having more than four months of this still to do filled me with dread.