by Rusty Firmin
They always say at the end of selection that it’s harder to keep your beret than to earn it. Well I was damned sure I was going to hang on to mine and that was all going to start on Monday morning.
CHAPTER SEVEN
NEW KID ON THE BLOCK
The weekend after the end of selection passed in a bit of a blur, though the beer drinking and high spirits were interspersed with moving my kit out of the Training Wing accommodation and into B Squadron’s basha. Back at that time it was still composed of World War II-era ‘spiders’ – wooden barrack blocks built around a central brick wash, shower and lavatory block.
But first thing on Monday morning, it was time to get started. The group of us from selection who were posted in to B Squadron reported to the squadron office to be put in the picture by the boss.
The Officer Commanding B Squadron was Major T and he greeted us along with the squadron sergeant major.
‘Gentlemen, well done for passing selection and welcome to B Squadron,’ he told us in a friendly enough way. ‘As you’ll soon find out, this is the best squadron in the Regiment and we have a great set of guys here.’
I was wearing my sandy SAS beret for the first time and feeling pretty pleased with myself and I guess the others were too.
‘But be warned,’ he went on, ‘just because you’ve passed selection and joined B Squadron, you aren’t SAS soldiers yet.’
I was thinking to myself: Fuck that! After everything we’ve been through for the past six months?
‘You are on probation until we’re sure that you’ve got what it takes and there will be a lot of senior, experienced people keeping their eyes on you. If you can’t convince them that you can do the job, you’ll be on your way. The SAS beret is easier to get than to keep. Don’t say you haven’t been warned: that’s the way it is for newcomers in the Regiment ... and especially in B Squadron. So if you want to stay, it’s up to you to perform.’
With that slightly-double edged welcome done, he told us which troops we were to be joining. To my great delight, I got 8 Troop – the B Squadron mobility troop – and I was even more pleased to find that both Gerry and the Mink would be coming with me. I’d asked for 8 Troop because that was DJ’s troop but there’s never any guarantee in the army that you’ll get sent where you want to go so I was chuffed to bits.
We headed over to 8 Troop to begin the process of meeting everyone, settling in and getting ourselves sorted out. The troop boss was a New Zealander, Captain Alastair McKenzie, who unusually had served with the New Zealand Infantry in South Vietnam before joining the British Army and as a result had a fair bit more credibility than some of the other ‘Ruperts’ in the Regiment. The SAS is different to the rest of the army because officers only get posted in for two to three years at a stretch whereas the NCOs are there permanently, provided they maintain their standards, which means that the NCOs are usually much more switched on to the system than the officers ever get. The result of this is that, to a large extent, troop commanders, and sometimes squadron commanders too, are often only figureheads whilst all the day to day routine is organised by the NCOs. It’s different when you have a strong character like Boss McKenzie but basically the Regiment is run by its NCOs to a far greater extent than most of the rest of the army.
The troop staff sergeant, Steve, was a good bloke but beginning to fall by the wayside a bit, according to DJ who was introducing me to the rest of the guys.
These turned out to be a fearsome bunch. Apart from DJ I already knew ‘Brad’, ‘Gonzo’, George S and Mick R, but I also now met ‘Valdez’ and ‘Tak’, two of the great Fijian warriors who had joined the Regiment back in the 1960s, as well as the rest of the guys, both in the troop and the rest of the squadron. They made us welcome and, with the formalities completed, we were taken to the squadron quartermaster’s store to draw the various bits of extra clothing and equipment we would need for operations and training.
Christmas leave was fast approaching but we were told that as soon as the holidays were over we would begin training for a squadron deployment to Northern Ireland. This was just what I wanted to hear. Having got through the slog of selection, I was keen to get a real operational tour under my belt as soon as possible.
When leave started, I decided that I would head up to Carlisle for a few days to look up my family. I’d basically been out of touch with them for the past couple of years and Dad had no idea what I’d been doing. He was amazed to discover that I’d already been in the Commandos and was now serving in the SAS, and as an old soldier he was pleased as punch. It was good for me to see him too, as well as Dorothy, his wife, and her son Joey, who I liked.
It was also a chance for me to look up old mates. After passing selection I’d part-exchanged my old blue MGB Roadster for a bright yellow Triumph TR6, which was the perfect car for me at that time in my life, and it was during this leave that I managed to acquire my first speeding ticket, up on the A66, heading for a piss-up in Durham.
After a few days in Carlisle I headed back to Hereford for Christmas itself. Quite a lot of the lads were single and lived in, and the plan was for an extended party, taking in Christmas and New Year, before we got down to the hard work of preparing to deploy.
New Year passed in a haze of booze and girls but then it was back to work. The plan was to have a month of build-up training and then deploy to Limavady Barracks near Ballykelly in County Londonderry. The task there was to act as a kind of strategic ‘fire brigade’ for the Province, ready to be deployed as the security situation dictated in any environment.
This would be completely different to anything I had ever done before and was really why I’d joined the SAS. Training was tough and relentless. In the month before we deployed I must have fired literally thousands of rounds on the ranges with my 9mm Browning Hi Power pistol and nearly as many with my Armalite and the other weapons we would have available out there. It wasn’t just shooting at static targets either: much of it was realistic CQB and house-clearing drills, but whereas back in the Gunners when we did anything like this it had been with blank ammunition, now everything was live.
We also needed to learn advanced driving skills. We would be using civilian cars and we needed to know how to drive defensively as well as how to evade surveillance and ambushes. On top of that we needed to be able to navigate at high speed on the move using map books marked with ‘spot codes’: it’s much easier if you’re moving at speed to get on the net and say that you’re heading for, say ‘green four-seven’ rather than ‘the road junction two miles west of Enniskillen’ for example. When we got on the ground in the Province, we would be expected to know all the spot codes in our area of operations.
As the month passed the training became harder and more complex but even though I was often tired out by the end of the day, it was so interesting and – to be honest – exciting that I sometimes wished we could work through the night and I could just get out of bed and learn something new.
As part of the training process Gerry, Minky and I would often find ourselves being put in charge of patrols by Alastair McKenzie. Obviously there was already a hierarchy in place in the troop but they wanted to see how we would react under pressure: whether we could make sensible decisions. Usually there would be lance corporals, corporals and sergeants acting as normal patrol members under our command but they would be reporting back to the troop commander and staff sergeant, telling them how we’d done. This wasn’t to stitch us up but to get us to understand the squadron’s operational procedures and to offer us help and advice as required.
If we did fuck up, the squadron had a long established system of fines, paid in to the squadron fund. So if, for example, you turned up to training late, or brought the wrong kit or whatever, you’d be fined a fiver or a tenner – and sometimes more – to reflect the severity of your misdemeanour. At some point during the tour, this fund would be used to buy beer for a squadron bash so at least we all got the chance to drink it back, so to speak.
The backdro
p to all of our training was that once we were operating in the Province, all of our actions would be accountable in law. The rules of engagement for all British Forces operating in Northern Ireland, including the Regiment, were written down on an aide memoire known as the ‘yellow card’. Basically this stipulated that before you could open fire against an enemy target, you had to be convinced that he or she was presenting an imminent threat to your life or that of somebody else and that there was no other way of stopping it, and you had to give a warning if it was practical to do so. I seem to remember that you were supposed to shout ‘Army! Stop or I fire!’ or something very similar. I gave this a bit of thought. I couldn’t see myself having time to check the yellow card or recite the proper warning in the chaos of a house assault or an ambush and I made a conscious decision that common sense, judgement, knowledge and training would be my yellow card. As long as I was still alive and kicking at the end of the firefight, I was happy to put my hand up and take responsibility for anything I’d done, and face the consequences. This was a real issue: later the same year two SAS soldiers from a different squadron were charged and tried after a farmer’s son was shot and killed when he took a weapon out of an arms cache in a graveyard that was under surveillance. They were eventually acquitted but it showed, if nothing else, that the SAS is not above the law. Of course, the IRA* had no yellow card. They could and would open fire when they wanted to, regardless of the consequences, and then run away like the cowardly bastards they are.
*IRA = Irish Republican Army
With the training done we had the inevitable squadron party, then got ourselves squared away for deployment. I drove my TR6 down to the barracks and parked it up, as did most of the other single guys, so our personal vehicles would be safe while we were away. I wasn’t married then and had no family to worry about and I was just anxious to get on with it.
We flew out to Aldergrove the next day where we were met by guys from the squadron we were taking over from and driven to our new home at Limavady. The barracks was a mile or so south of Lough Foyle on the A2 Ballykelly Road and it was ideal for our needs. We had our own compound inside the barracks and it was secure and large enough for us to be self-contained for the duration of our stay. We had a large airfield to run around to keep fit; we had our own gym where we could work out; a bar which would be our social focal point; and a ‘pipe range’ – a 75-foot concrete pipe with a sandbagged wall at one end – which we could use for checking the zero on our weapons when necessary. It also had a resident Labrador, known as the ‘Shit Machine’, which would eat anything it could get its paws on, and then live up to its name by crapping anywhere and everywhere. My accommodation was a grubby old caravan.
The area I would be working in comprised Antrim, Maghera, Londonderry, Magherafelt, Cookstown, Armagh and anywhere to the north and our first task was to start to get to know it. Some of the places we worked in were pretty friendly to the security forces, others were the complete opposite. I decided early on that I would maintain vigilance and treat everybody exactly the same, and that’s exactly what I did. Most of the operational work I got involved in would take place south of where we were based and there were a couple of towns to the north, Portstewart and Portrush, which were deemed safe enough to go out and socialise in, but we were always carrying* and you could not afford to let your guard down too far. Any serious drinking would take place in our own secure bar in our compound.
*Carrying = armed
So having reached a peak of readiness over a month of pre-deployment training and keyed myself up for serious counter-terrorist operations it was mildly disappointing when my first operation turned out to be mounting an observation post (OP) on a set of public toilets in a car park. The information we were given was that this was a terrorist meeting point. Teams from the Det** would tail the cars of a couple of known players until they reached the car park and then break off, leaving us to observe what happened next. What we established over the next few weeks was that, although two known players were using the car park, it wasn’t an arms dump or an RV but a place they were using to meet up with their girlfriends. This usually ended up with them shagging the girls behind the toilets, not realising that I was there, together with the rest of the patrol as back-up, recording and photographing everything they did. The only weapons that were ever produced during these ‘meetings’ were the terrorists’ cocks and, after a couple of weeks, the OP was binned.
**Derived from its division into detachments.
The difficulty we had in all of our operations was that we were only as effective as the intelligence we were given to work on. This came from various different sources: surveillance; informers; and so on, but we rarely got to see the raw material, only what was fed through to us by the Special Branch through what was called the ‘TCG’, the Tasking and Co-ordination Group. We were supposed to be a high-value asset hitting high-value targets, but some of the intelligence coming through to us was crap and it showed in the quality of operations we were mounting.
A good example was an op we did where the information we were given – at very short notice – was that a meeting was about to take place in a flat near a local cemetery. The meeting was to involve three terrorists who might be armed. A plan was quickly put together for the squadron to covertly surround the building and the flat itself, and then for a team, including yours truly, to assault the flat, make arrests and hand them over to a police team waiting round the corner. We were pretty keyed up as the cordon went in and we prepared to hit the flat and I, for one, was thinking that if the occupants resisted I wasn’t going to fuck around trying to arrest them. We got the signal to go and hit the door hard and fast. The clearance went fine but the only problem was that there was nobody there at all.
By now, the neighbours had heard the commotion and come out of their homes to find a bunch of armed men in civilian clothes carrying weapons and it all began to turn ugly. Oddly enough the women were the worst, shouting, swearing, spitting and throwing stuff at us. We buggered out back to the cars and drove back to Limavady to reassess. The big question was had we fucked up and hit the wrong address? When we got back we went to the operations room to check: no, we’d been at the right place but, once again, the intelligence was crap.
The result was a growing sense of frustration. If we weren’t on operations or standby, the squadron bar was the focal point where we could vent and moan. Normally that was the limit of it but sometimes it all went a bit too far. On one occasion we were expecting a visit from one of the top brass in the Province, coming to check that we were all fettled and happy. The night before, after we’d given the whole compound a bit of a clean-up, we had a party in the bar for one of the officers, Mike, from the Parachute Regiment, who was celebrating getting engaged. Some food was sorted out: pie and chips, that kind of thing; and a considerable amount of beer was brought in.
As the night wore on, Mike got increasingly pissed and started acting up enough to get on everyone’s tits. Eventually one of the guys, Pat Mac – who was Mike’s troop staff sergeant – got so pissed off with him that he twatted him over the head with the big metal container the chips had come in. Mike was put to bed and the rest of us followed suit soon after but the next morning, when the general arrived, he was still pissed and completely out of it. In the end, Pat stood in for him while we kept Mike hidden away. Ultimately there was no real harm done and it didn’t go any further, but it does give a sense of the frustration we all felt.
This was compounded by being unable to get to grips with the enemy. I was once in an OP with Pete Morrison, scoping an operation, when we heard an exchange of gunfire from reasonably nearby – certainly within a mile or so. We reported what we had heard over the radio but it wasn’t one of our callsigns involved so we sat tight. As far as we knew there shouldn’t have been any British troops in the area, which had been put out of bounds because of our operation, so we couldn’t imagine what had happened.
It turned out to be a tragic cock-up: a chance
contact between a two-man Parachute Regiment close observation platoon OP, which was in the wrong place, and a well-known terrorist called Francis Hughes. The Paras were confused because Hughes was wearing a camouflaged combat uniform and they let him get too close, so that when he opened fire he managed to kill one of the British soldiers and seriously wound the other. Fortunately they did manage to hit him too and he was found the next day hiding in a ditch. I took that really hard. If I’d known that it was British troops being hit, I’d have done everything possible to help them but I didn’t, so I couldn’t. Hughes died during the Maze Hunger Strike in 1981. Good riddance.
Towards the end of the tour, 8 Troop were invited to go for a tour round the Bushmills distillery and I remember heading up there with the Mink, Gerry and John McAleese who had now finished selection and come out to join us. After the guided tour, we were taken to a room for a ‘tasting session’ which was basically just free whiskey. Fortunately I was used to drinking it and wasn’t too badly affected but by the time we got to the car park, where our transport and drivers were waiting, the Mink was spewing everywhere and Johnny Mac was virtually unconscious.
On another occasion a few of us went up to Portstewart for a beer one evening. The normal form was to take it steady when we went out because we were armed and didn’t want to attract attention. We arranged to be dropped off and picked up by some of the guys on standby and had a pleasant enough evening, but when Mick R turned up in one of our ops vehicles to collect me, he had an Irish girl sitting in the front with him. I knew this was a big no-no but I was a new boy in the troop, so what was I going to say? We headed back towards Limavady with Mick and the girl joking and chatting away but Mick made the mistake of transmitting his location back to the operations room while the girl was laughing at some gag he’d made, and everyone there heard her voice. When we got back and parked up, with the girl safely dropped off, we were both summoned to the operations room to explain what was happening. Mick went first and, I imagine, threw himself on that particular disciplinary grenade. He got a ferocious bollocking and was promptly RTU’d back to his old unit for good. I was shitting myself that I would be RTU’d too but the squadron command group (known as the ‘head shed’) took the view that as I was new to the squadron, I’d been led astray by older and supposedly wiser heads, and I was let off with a warning; they didn’t even fine me. That was enough for me, though. I loved this life so much that I didn’t want to jeopardise it and I stopped going out on the beer for the rest of the tour, confining myself to a couple of shopping trips to Belfast.