His frame of mind was not helped by continuing friction with the Springburn Mob, in particular the McIntyres, Duncan and his brother Joe, commonly referred to as ‘Fat Boy’. Alex had cemented his peace with the McGoverns, but they could not be expected to begin an all-out war with the McIntyres, a fight that would effectively be on behalf of a rival family.
Elsewhere, Alex hoped the jailing in the summer for 14 years of his co-accused, Eddie Kennedy, for a series of bank and building society raids was not an omen for his own forthcoming ordeal over the Cumbernauld fighting. There was nothing he could do except work hard and wait.
Alex was due to go to Northern Ireland in November, but in October the Procurator Fiscal refused him permission to leave the mainland until after the attempted murders trial, which had been set for January 1993. All sorts of assurances were given by the army that Alex would be back in Scotland well before the court hearing, but it made no difference. To Alex, it seemed that as far as everyone was concerned, his lawyer included, he was going down. It certainly wasn’t looking too good for him.
Angie did her best to reassure her husband. She had never doubted his innocence, knowing that when he was drunk he just fell asleep. She had asked him to tell her the truth and when he did she had believed him.
On the day of the trial, the Procurator Fiscal seemed to have had a change of heart where Alex was concerned. A deal was made with Eddie under which he pleaded guilty to a lesser offence and was given five years to run concurrently with the fourteen he was already serving, which resulted in the charges against Alex being dropped. After much more bargaining, Tam’s charges were dropped as well. Why the change of heart by the Fiscal? Well, none of the 30-plus witnesses turned up for the court hearing, so he didn’t have many options left open to him.
And why hadn’t they shown up? Perhaps because it turned out that George Redmond knew most of the guys who had been at the party that night. Alex could never be completely sure whether this had anything to do with it, but by two o’clock the following afternoon he was patrolling through Crossmaglen. Only twenty-six hours earlier he had been looking at eight years in prison. It was just the IRA he had to worry about now.
* * *
Crossmaglen had earned notoriety 200 years earlier as the site of a thriving but illegal shebeen whose owner gave his name to the village. Now, it had a reputation as a real hotbed of Republicanism. During the troubles, nearly 60 police officers and 124 soldiers were murdered in and around Crossmaglen. This horrific toll included at least a dozen troops killed by a squad known as the South Armagh Sniper Team of whom Alex would come to have first-hand knowledge. To suggest the area was highly dangerous came nowhere near the reality of the situation. Indeed, nobody or nowhere was safe. Booby trap bombs were a frequent cause of slaughter, one of their victims being Edmund Woolsey, an IRA sympathiser who, after being told that the car he had reported stolen was abandoned near Crossmaglen, went to retrieve it and was blown up. This was the setting into which Alex and his colleagues were introduced. Because of the Official Secrets Act Alex cannot talk in detail about specific operations or individuals on whom he was tasked to gather information.
* * *
Days into the tour, I knew things were not going well, as the guys in Borucki Sangar were constantly being shot at. A sangar is a small, temporary fortified post and this one was named after Private James Borucki, from the 3rd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, who was killed by a bomb hidden in the basket of a bicycle at Crossmaglen. He was just 19. The sangar was constructed on the spot where he died. The commander of the sangar team was an old friend of mine from Posso. I’ll call him ‘Mac’. I knew him and his family very well. He was older and had that particular job because of an old injury that prevented him from patrolling. Now, his job was to sit in the sangar, monitor movements and report everything that went into and out of Crossmaglen. To us soldiers, the sangar was just a big target used for shooting practice by the terrorists, especially snipers wanting to test out their weapons or bombers testing different types of explosives.
Some guys spent their entire six-month tour on sangar duty and sometimes found the length of this duty difficult. Mac was among them.
Our attitude at that time was the quicker you went back into the place where you had just been blown up, the sharper your mind was in being able to deal with any resulting issues. Easier said than done, of course.
I remember one of the young soldiers refusing to go back in after the South Armagh Sniper Team took out the supposedly bulletproof windows with 7.62 mm and .50 calibre ammunition. His face looked like the top of a pepper pot, pitted with cuts from flying glass fragments. However, after the company sergeant major had had a chat with him, the young soldier was back in, cracking on with the job and awaiting the next attack. That took considerable bottle.
South Armagh was known as Bandit Country and we were having a particularly bad time. All the other companies were being hit in one way or another, but we in Crossmaglen were under constant threat. It had a reputation as the worst place in the province to serve as a soldier and multiple commander, and I soon learned why. I was responsible for the main radio communications back to base and would receive daily threat updates. These would generally be intelligence linked. When a message came over warning, ‘High threat, sniper shoot in the Crossmaglen area,’ we all knew it had to be taken seriously, but most of the time I would not tell the rest of the guys about the level of these threats. To pass on information of this nature to soldiers is to risk changing the way they work, which might result in them making mistakes or putting their lives or those of others in danger.
Don’t get me wrong, I would change my patrol techniques, move in and out of cover quickly and always be very vigilant, but it is impossible to cater for every eventuality. One important factor to remember is no matter what happens, you must, in these circumstances, keep moving. I’ve seen the biggest men crumble under the pressure of working in this environment. Once, we were about four miles outside Crossmaglen when one of my team commanders broke down and refused to go any further. This was a guy around six foot five and weighing 17 stone. Yet there he sat, in a ditch crying, with a tiny graze on his hand. I have to admit that in the weeks leading up to that incident I’d noticed something was going wrong with him. On occasions, I would sit down with him, talk to him, encourage him to lead by example and not to show his soldiers signs of weakness. If he showed he was cracking up, I would tell him that letting others see this would destroy his name and career. But the day he sat in the ditch I realised talking had not worked. There was only one thing to do. I grabbed him by the throat, gave his weapon to another soldier and dragged him, despite his crying and apologising for his breakdown, all the way back to base. It was a worrying situation. The guy was a mate. If I called in a helicopter to evacuate him, gossip would soon have spread all over. He wouldn’t have been able to continue in those dangerous surroundings any longer. His career would have been as good as over. Cruel though what I did might sound, I was more or less carrying out a damage limitation exercise, and it worked. He recovered his composure and his dignity, though he was replaced in the multiple team and was not allowed out of base until we returned to Inverness at the end of the tour.
The strategy in South Armagh was to always patrol with two multiples on the ground mutually supporting each other. My supporting multiple commander was an old friend. We were good pals and related well to one another, and professionally were very alike. One day as we were on Quick Reaction Force duty, specially trained to deal with situations requiring rapid response, an RUC officer told us that a group of IRA Volunteers suspected of blowing up one of our guys a couple of weeks earlier was in a bar in Crossmaglen Square. His information revealed that when they had finished their drinking session, they would head by car down Culloville Road, which ran past our base. ‘If you’re quick, when they leave you can head onto the road further down and set up a vehicle checkpoint,’ he suggested. We were up for this. Stopping them would give us an
excuse to search their motor and question the group. It all sounded great in theory, but things did not quite go according to the textbook.
Things started off well. When word came over the intercom that the party was leaving the bar, we made our way to the predetermined spot and set up the checkpoint. As their car approached, it was signalled to stop. We went through the usual routine, asking for names and addresses and searching the vehicle, but things very quickly got out of hand. There were four in the car and two of them got out and started fighting with the team commander and me. The other two Volunteers remained in the car, watching as we grappled and punched. I was wearing full kit, so I was having difficulty moving freely and my opponent was getting the upper hand. So I broke all the rules. I took off my kit, gave it to one of my colleagues and went at it again. This time it was a different story.
The RUC had been informed we were setting up a roadblock and came along to see how it was going. By now, all four of us were cut and bruised, and it took the police several minutes to pull us apart. Eventually, everything settled down and the Volunteers climbed back into their car and began driving off. However, after only travelling a few metres, they stopped; one of the rear windows was wound down and my opponent stuck his head out and shouted to me to come over.
‘What the fuck do you want?’ I spat at him.
‘The next time I’ll see you is when I have the crosshairs of a weapon sight bang on your fucking face,’ he told me, ever so calmly. ‘One in the head, ya Brit scum.’
‘Fuck off, ya wee prick. You want another fight?’
He looked back up and said, ‘Arsehole! Don’t you realise for the last 30 minutes I’ve been studying your face. You forgot to smear your camouflage cream on when you left the base.’
They drove away and I could almost hear them laughing in the car. The exchange left me chalk white and feeling sick, not because of the threat about the weapon sight but because camouflage cream gives soldiers a false face to hide behind, so they cannot be recognised. When I discovered who my fight had been with, my worry increased. I realised I should have been really worried over his weapon sight remark.
‘That’s “Patrick Pitt”. He’s a member of the South Armagh Sniper Team,’ I was told. On hearing that, I knew, for the rest of this tour and any other I did in Northern Ireland, I would never go on patrol without first coating myself with cam cream.
The South Armagh Sniper Team was the name given to members of the Provos South Armagh Brigade. Terrorist snipers, dedicated to the expression ‘one shot, one kill’, murdered around 180 soldiers, police and prison officers during the troubles. A senior police officer said they were ‘undoubtedly one of the most vicious, callous teams to be run by the IRA’. Pitt was one of their number.
Shortly afterwards my team commander friend and I were briefed on a patrol we had been ordered to carry out. We were kitted and ready, but with about ten minutes to go the officer commanding announced there had been a change to the plan. Instead of two, just one multiple would go on the patrol. It was an easy enough patrol. The unit would be carried by helicopter from Crossmaglen and then work back to base, carrying out checks at the homes of suspected troublemakers along the return route. It was a total distance of about five miles and would take around two hours. I thought about this and asked if it was safe, not having a supporting multiple, but was assured I would be fine. The officer commanding assured me all the observation towers were watching me and had been issued with my route plans and timings. So, I thought, ‘OK, let’s get on with it.’ And off we set. I completed the patrol and returned, wondering if it had all been a complete waste of time.
I was due to head out on a double multiple patrol with my friend’s outfit the following day, 25 February 1993, when it was cancelled with a couple of hours to go and this time we stayed behind. He took his guys out, but as they were around 500 metres from base, heading back towards Crossmaglen, a loud bang rang out. I was in the cookhouse having lunch with another mate, who was wearing all his gear and had his radio switched on. Within seconds, the radio blasted out, ‘Contact shooting, one casualty.’ I recognised the voice of the other multiple commander and was sure someone had been killed.
Sadly, I was correct. Constable Jonathan Reid, aged 30, of the RUC, had been shot in the chest by the South Armagh Sniper Team as he patrolled Castleblaney Road, Crossmaglen. The killer had fired a single bullet and fled before soldiers with the police officer could return fire. Constable Reid was flown to hospital in Newry but died despite efforts to save him. The patrol took the customary follow-up steps, searching, asking questions and so on, but the killer had gone. As soldiers, you just move on and accept it, as though it is just another blip in the day. That may sound callous and lacking in remorse, but it’s part of the strategy soldiers use for coping. We just carry on. To be brutally honest, we tend to deal with death by using black humour. To someone outside the military community, this may sound disrespectful, but it is our way of getting by.
I was later sent to take charge of another multiple whose commander, a young lieutenant, had lost the ability to lead. I was welcomed by a legendary character known as ‘Big John’. The name was appropriate. He was a giant of a man, about seven feet square, and despite being only a corporal took no nonsense from anyone regardless of rank or size.
My first encounter with my new team was to be a move by helicopter to patrol a sector close to the border. They had been gradually congregating by a shed next to the helicopter landing pad and I was the last to arrive. As I walked in, they all burst out laughing. One of the soldiers asked why I was wearing cam cream. ‘We leave here in two minutes,’ I said. ‘Those who don’t have cam cream on are staying behind.’ I had remembered my earlier encounter with Pitt and his promise to recognise me.
There was silence, and everybody looked towards Big John.
‘Sorry, Del,’ he said, then asked, ‘Does anyone have a cam stick?’
In a matter of seconds, they had coated their faces with cream and were ready to go. In the weeks that followed, I had a few other exchanges with Big John, but the unit knew I was in charge for a reason. I refused to cut corners or take risks. It was my job to be 100 per cent professional and I knew that if they followed my work ethic and ethos they might just make it through the tour alive. I was determined to see them all safely back home.
As we neared the end of the tour, my multiple had been dispersed as soldiers started heading back to Scotland. I was sent to one especially troublesome sector as stand-in commander while we prepared for the handover to the regiment that was to take over from us. It was 17 March, St Patrick’s Day, and I was alone in an observation tower around midday when I noticed the volume of radio traffic was increasing. Suddenly, my radios went silent. I tried the usual trusted method of punching and kicking them to see if they would come back to life. At first, there was nothing. Then, out of the blue, the telephone rang. I recognised the voice of the families officer back in Inverness. He was looking for me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Armed and masked raiders had pounced on the post office at Kirkintilloch to the north of Glasgow, not far from Pawny’s home, and had made off with a sizeable cash haul, as much as £110,000, some said. As soon as the police arrived to begin investigating, Pawny was placed near the top of the list of those whose movements at the time of the robbery would be checked. When the knock on his door came, however, it remained unanswered.
Alex spoke to Tam on the night of 16 March and was told he was heading to Spain with Pawny and the family for a two-week holiday, as they had recently made some money. He told Alex they would catch up when he returned from South Armagh.
As St Patrick’s Day dawned, Alex thought about his brothers and guessed they would be lying in the sun, drinking beers and enjoying themselves. In South Armagh, the coming hours would bring little cheer. Lance Corporal Lawrence Dickson, aged 26, from Inverness, was married with an 18-month-old daughter. His career had closely mirrored Alex’s, signing up as a boy soldier
in 1983, training at the Bridge of Don and then joining the ranks of the 1st Battalion the Royal Scots. He had seen service in Northern Ireland and Iraq. That day, as he routinely patrolled near the Irish border at Forkhill, a single fatal shot from a high-powered rifle held by a member of the South Armagh Sniper Team struck him in the chest.
* * *
As messages about Lance Corporal Dickson’s murder were passing through the army communications network, I was taking the call from the families officer in Inverness. I asked how I could help, and he said, ‘I have some bad news for you. Your brother is in a coma in Spain. He fell from a motorcycle and it’s likely he won’t live for more than 48 hours. We can get you back to Inverness as soon as possible, but will you organise your flight to Spain?’ All I could think of to say was ‘I’ll phone you back.’
I knew something was wrong at my location and, as soon as I replaced the receiver, the three main radios all switched back on at the same time. I knew straight away there had been a killing and within minutes a clear picture had emerged. Lawrence Dickson was the brother of one of the men in my company and a team commander. Dickie was a really well-liked guy and his death had a huge impact on our morale, as, until then, while some of our men had suffered serious injuries, nobody had died. He was the first Royal Scot to be killed and what was even more tragic was that his death came so close to the end of our tour.
The Underworld Captain: From Gangland Goodfella To Army Officer Page 22