A Breed of Heroes

by Alan Judd

  In the event he was able to make the necessary two journeys with his kit, and they boarded the lorries after a surprisingly short period of the usual hanging around. They set off with an impressive revving of engines, with the escorting vehicles from the Wessex Scouts and the military police interspersed between them. The soldiers stood in the backs of their Land-Rovers, one facing forward and the other backwards, their rifles at the ready. The Pigs rumbled along with their rear doors open and the Ferrets followed up behind. Protruding from the turret of one was the pink face of a young cavalry officer. He wore his beret and, round his neck, a dashing red and white spotted cravat that added a touch of quite startling colour to the scene. He had, though, taken the precaution of fastening the see-through and sometimes bullet-proof macralon screen around the top of his turret. Charles had heard of a corporal who had been looking out of the top of a Ferret in a similar fashion, though without the screen, and had lost an eye to an arrow fired from a crossbow.

  The first streets they passed through were narrow and quiet, ordinary enough, but after a short while they became dirtier, and the walls, roads and pavements sported slogans, in some parts anti-British and in others anti-Catholic. Painted on the side of one house was a larger-than-life-size picture of King William on a white horse. Burnt-out wrecks of cars and other bits of twisted metal littered the gutters; many of the houses were empty and boarded up, many others had their windows broken; some walls were blackened by fire, and here and there a house was missing, leaving a gap as in a row of teeth. The convoy moved fast and the few people they saw did not bother to turn their heads. Soon they were in a more prosperous shopping area that looked normal except for one stretch of about a hundred yards in which not one shop window remained. Everything was boarded up, and one soldier, a native of Belfast, pointed to a mound of rubble, glass and metal girders that he said had been a car showroom.

  Soon they were on the motorway, past the Milltown cemetery and out into the open country. This was rolling and lushly green but not very wooded. The farms were stone-built and looked bleak. Killagh before the bombings was a pleasant and not particularly interesting town, a mixture of eighteenth-century grey stone, nineteenth-century red brick and twentieth-century prefabricated blocks. There was a park and a rugby pitch. The barracks were on a hill, just beneath a new housing estate which sprawled almost to the summit. Built in the eighteenth century, they were enclosed by a high stone wall and had housed at various times redcoats, rebels and policemen. They now housed the Wessex Scouts. The entrance was through huge old wooden doors. It would have been homely and rather quaint as in any small English garrison town but for the coiled barbed wire along the top of the wall, a sandbagged position just inside the gates and an ominous-looking watch-tower in the centre.

  Ever since leaving the ship the soldiers had been waiting for something to happen. Despite the uneventful journey and their arrival in an apparently peaceful country town, their hopeful aggression was still aroused and it needed a focus. The Wessex Scouts provided it. As Charles’s lorry rumbled through the cobbled entrance a sentry let go of one of the doors and it swung against the side of the lorry with a crash. There was no damage but the incident was sufficient.

  ‘Wessex are shit,’ someone shouted. This set the tone for the next twenty-four hours and became a catch-phrase for the next few weeks. The Ackies not unnaturally regarded themselves as an élite, and so were in constant need of an enemy. Anything wrong with the barracks, anything wrong with the town and any conceivable misfortune during the remaining twenty-four hours of the luckless Wessex’s tenure was laid at their door. Fortunately, there were only two platoons of Wessex left – too few to be regarded as a challenge, and so there were no NAAFI punch-ups. Disdain was not confined to the soldiers. At his first O Group the CO referred to ‘the appalling state in which these barracks have been left by the last unit, which I shall not name’. Only Anthony Hamilton-Smith had a good word for them. A fine old county regiment, he said, ruined by amalgamations forced upon them by grey civil servants and thoughtless governments. It was mixing good wine with bad, and the whole thing was very sad.

  The barracks were very cramped. The quartermaster and his Q staff had arrived some days before in order to take over and allocate accommodation, and to cream off the best for themselves. Charles, after the usual confusion of wrong directions and missing kit, found himself sharing an underground cell with four others – Henry Sandy, Philip Lamb, the education officer, Tim Bryant and a newly-arrived subaltern from Sandhurst called Nicholas Chatsworth, known to everyone by his surname only. There was no furniture and no door, but eventually camp-beds appeared. The tunnel on which the cell opened led from the guardroom to A company’s accommodation, and so it was never quiet. It was the oldest part of the barracks, a warren of tunnels, passages, cells and dead-ends. Everywhere was damp, cold and crowded. Charles would have found it more interesting if he had not had to live in it. As it was, potential architectural and historical curiosities were mere inconveniences, things to be cursed and moaned about.

  The Officers’ Mess was an incongruous 1930s-style house on a slight rise just inside the gates. The dining and living rooms formed the public rooms, while the bedrooms housed the CO, Anthony Hamilton-Smith and, in one, five company commanders. The quartermaster was rumoured to have another bungalow entirely to himself in another part of the barracks. He was a large, gruff, bristling man with a handlebar moustache and a sour dislike for mankind in general, subalterns in particular. No one had the temerity to tax him with the rumour, while the CO never heard rumours from below. No one aired them in his presence because if he did not like them he was inclined to treat the speaker as personally responsible for fabricating stories, while if he did like them he took them up as established fact and was all the more annoyed with the speaker if they proved to be untrue.

  Charles went to the Mess for coffee. It was very crowded and he was about to go away when a platoon commander from the Wessex Scouts introduced himself. ‘I’m supposed to show you people round,’ he explained, ‘but no one seems to want to know. You wouldn’t fancy a trip round the battlements, I suppose?’

  Charles did fancy it. His guide was in civilian clothes and looked happy. They made their way back to the old part of the barracks. ‘I’m glad to be getting out,’ the man said. ‘Four months is a long time to spend kicking your heels in a backwater like this. Pleasant enough place, though. You’re off to Belfast in three weeks, aren’t you? Don’t envy you that. Bound to be bloody. Mucker of mine from Sandhurst was killed there, less than twenty-four hours after arriving. But this place is all right. Not a bad social life. Plenty of birds to keep the soldiers happy. One or two for the officers too, if you’ve got a car.’

  ‘Car?’

  ‘Yes. Didn’t you bring one?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘None of you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh dear. You can’t have much fun without one, I’m afraid. We all brought ours. Still, it is only four months.’ They climbed a winding stone staircase that led to the battlements, from where they had a good view of the town and the surrounding countryside. ‘Not bad, is it? In fact, it’s a damn fine view on a clear day. We used to come up here sunbathing when the weather was warm. Don’t imagine you’ll do much of that, though. That estate up the hill is where all the girls come from. They hang around the gates day and night, just asking for it. The lads see they get it too. That rugby pitch is the local club. We played them a couple of times. Good crowd. Fantastic drinkers. Some of our lads played for them too.’

  They walked along the battlements and up into the watch-tower. It contained one bored soldier who was fiddling aimlessly with the rear sight on his rifle when they arrived. ‘Nothing doing?’ the Wessex officer asked the soldier.

  ‘Sweet Fanny Adams, sir,’ the soldier said.

  The Wessex officer turned to Charles. ‘There never is, you see. We have to man this day and night which is a bloody nuisance because there’s no point. Unless
you’re expecting an airborne landing or something.’

  ‘Have you had much trouble?’

  ‘None at all.’

  There was some shouting below them which sounded refreshingly distant. It seemed that a morning walk along the battlements might be no bad thing during the coming weeks.

  ‘Even if there were any trouble,’ continued the Wessex officer, ‘you wouldn’t see much from up here. You’d need to be on the ground.’

  The shouting became louder. A small group of figures, which included the CO and the RSM, was looking up at them. The CO was shouting something with his hands cupped round his mouth and several people started running towards the entrance to the battlements. Charles looked up to see if there was imminent disaster overhead but the sky was clear.

  ‘What do they want?’ asked the Wessex officer.

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘It is something to do with us, I suppose?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  The RSM was bawling as well. Charles distinguished a familiar phrase. ‘They’re shouting “hard targets”,’ he said.

  ‘What do they mean?’

  ‘They mean we should either get under cover or somehow make it difficult for the person who’s about to shoot at us to do so without being shot.’

  ‘No one’s about to shoot at us, are they?’

  ‘The CO might if we don’t go down.’

  They headed for the winding stairs. The Wessex officer looked concerned. ‘Your CO’s a bit intense, isn’t he?’

  ‘He is a little.’

  ‘Frankly, I don’t like him very much.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  They met a sweating regimental policeman on the stairs, who told them breathlessly that the CO wanted to see them both immediately. They thanked him. The CO looked furious when they reached him. The RSM at his side was full of pomp and portent. The CO glared at Charles. ‘Do you want to die?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  The CO glared at the Wessex officer. ‘Do you want to die?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then what the hell were you both doing standing up there like that?’

  The veins in the CO’s temple were swollen. Charles was aware that they were being discreetly watched and gloated over by half the battalion from behind doors, windows and corners. He had long since learned the lesson of discretion. ‘We were inspecting the defences, sir.’

  ‘Who the hell told you to do that?’

  ‘My CO asked me to show your officers round, sir,’ said the Wessex officer.

  The CO obviously suppressed the urge to regimental insult.

  ‘Do you realise, both of you, that you were risking your lives up there? And not only your lives but the lives of those who would have had to go up and get your bodies? You’re professional soldiers, or supposed to be, and you bloody well should have realised. Especially you, Thoroughgood. It would take only a very mediocre sniper indeed to pick you off from that housing estate over there. Did you think of that?’

  Charles said nothing, but the Wessex officer came from another regiment. ‘With respect, sir, there have never been any snipers here. We used to go up there all the time –’

  ‘That does not matter.’

  ‘– and the people in the estate have been very friendly –’

  ‘Thoroughgood,’ said the CO very slowly, ‘take him away before I screw him into the ground.’

  Charles led the now speechless Wessex officer away, watched enviously by the RSM. He heard later that it was the RSM who had drawn the CO’s attention to what had, until that morning, been a normal practice. This did not alter his feelings towards Mr Bone. It was exactly what he would have expected of him. Mr Bone loved his job and worshipped the CO like a dog, adopting even his mannerisms. He was feared by the soldiers but did not have their respect.

  Not surprisingly, the ‘hard targets’ episode was only a taste of what was to come. Security was tightened up all round. Edward Lumley felt that the watchtower incident had brought further disgrace upon C company. He shouted at Charles, calling him a reckless young fool. During the next two days the CO’s frenzied approach to security was carried several stages further than even the CO had intended. The sandbagged position by the gate was reinforced and another added on the roof opposite. The barbed wire was reinforced, the armoury strengthened and the guard doubled. The bored soldier in the watchtower was sent a companion and a general purpose machine-gun. There were practice alarms at all hours. However, what caused greatest consternation throughout the battalion was the order forbidding walking-out. This coincided with instructions that sentries who allowed themselves to be talked to by girls should be charged. Three days later the walking-out order was relaxed to allow officers and soldiers to walk out in groups of four for not more than two hours, in daylight, wearing civilian clothes and signing in and out at the guardroom. The CO saw girls as the greatest threat. ‘The last thing I want is to have one of my soldiers shot in the back by some bloody gunman while he’s walking his girl home. Assassination, they call it. I call it murder and I won’t have it.’

  On the second day the secretary of the local rugby club tried to arrange a fixture but was turned away at the gate. Amongst those who had arrived with the QM’s advance party and had experienced the more benign regime of the Wessex there was noticeable nostalgia.

  Edward called a company O Group during the evening of the first day. Company HQ was somewhere in the warren of tunnels and passages. When Charles got there Edward was again red-faced and panic-stricken. The other platoon commanders and the company sergeant major were expressionless. The company was to carry out an operation, Edward said. That night. He thought it was partly as punishment for the incredible risks taken by Charles that day on the battlements. He wanted no more such heroics. The CO was still furious. It was also, of course, a compliment to the company to be given the first operation to be carried out by the battalion since embarking upon active service in Northern Ireland. It was all highly secret. One platoon was to do a number of Vehicle Check Points (VCPs) before last light. It was not yet known where. It would be Charles’s job and he would be told later. They would then lay an ambush near one of the customs posts on the border, moving into position under cover of darkness and withdrawing before dawn. There were to be absolutely no cock-ups. Even though the battalion was in the area for only three weeks it was vital to get a grip and show the local villains that they weren’t dealing with a lot of idle bloody Wessex Scouts any more.

  Everyone knew that Edward’s briefings were almost word for word what the CO had said in his briefing. Details trickled through during the next two hours. They were to do six VCPs before last light. A VCP consisted of five or six men with portable barriers and road-blocking equipment, sometimes including a tyre-puncturing chain. They were to search cars and their occupants and to change location frequently. Helicopters would carry them from one site to another. Charles’s job was to be ferried from site to site, checking. The drill had been rehearsed many times and the need for politeness had been impressed upon everyone. The helicopters would pick them up from the hill above the barracks. The only difference between this and training was that their magazines would be filled with live ammunition this time. They would then have their evening meal in the field, do an approach march to the ambush position, lie there until 0430 hours and then withdraw. There was already a cold wind.

  Charles went back to the cell to collect his kit. Philip Lamb, the education officer, was lying on his bed reading and started guiltily when Charles entered. He was a small neat man with a trim moustache. Though conscientious, he had nothing to do and felt unwanted, as indeed he was on the whole. He spent most of the next three weeks hiding in the cell and playing with his pistol, a thing that intrigued and baffled him.

  ‘Have you got to go out on this operation?’ he asked.

  Charles nodded.

  ‘All night?’

  ‘All night.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now.’
r />   ‘With tents and sleeping-bags?’

  ‘No. With nothing.’

  ‘You’ll freeze to death. Customs post, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes. It’s supposed to be very secret. How did you know?’

  ‘Apparently every new unit that comes here does it. It’s well known for miles around. People even turn up to watch, I’m told.’

  However, everything went well in that nothing went wrong. The series of VCPs was executed without trouble or result. The evening meal in the field, near a river, would actually have been pleasant but for the fresh wind and the prospect of the night ahead. They made the approach march to the customs post across several miles of fields and through two streams. Not trusting Sergeant Wheeler, Charles navigated them and to his relief got it right. It was quite dark and already cold. It was obvious to everyone that the post, a small and practically featureless modern building, did not need a platoon of thirty men to ambush it. A section of eight or nine under the command of a corporal would have been sufficient. They spent the night on their bellies in the grass and withdrew through the wet fields at four-thirty in the morning. Their transport – lorries this time – had got lost and did not arrive for another three-quarters of an hour.

  Afterwards, Edward congratulated Charles. The CO was delighted with the way things were going. ‘He’s thinking of letting us do all the night ambushes while the other companies do all the boring daytime stuff. You’ve done us proud, Charles. Thanks a lot, old son.’

  That day there were various barrack duties, briefings and working parties. Charles slept for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Dinner in the Mess that night was more boisterous than usual. The CO was in a good mood, but in this as much as in a bad his presence unconsciously intimidated and directed the conversation. Edward was a little drunk and, riding on the crest of the CO’s good opinion, recounted anecdotes about various regimental characters.

  ‘What about Chunky Jones with that fan in Aden? Sir, d’you remember Chunky Jones in Aden? Built like a gorilla with a solid bone head and no neck. Great man. Anyway, not a word of a lie – I’m not kidding, it’s all gospel – in the middle of dinner one night he stood up on the table and – you know those fans we had out there, those big ones hanging from the ceiling – well, he stood on the table and he stopped it with his head. Clunk, just like that. With his head!’ Several roared with laughter and Edward became even more excited. ‘And then, sir, and then about five minutes later someone bet him he wouldn’t do it again. Well, you know Chunky, he’ll do anything twice. Anyway, he gets up on the table to do it again’ – Edward climbed halfway up on to the table – ‘like this, see, only this time you know what those bastards had done? They’d increased the speed of the fan. You know, they’d switched it on to fast. The bastards! So when Chunky stood up and put his head in the way of it there was this sort of dull clunk, really wooden sound it was, and he keeled off the table on to his back on the floor with this red line right across his forehead and his face covered in blood!’ The small dining room shook with the guffaws and the CO thumped his fist on the table. Edward was ecstatic. ‘There was blood everywhere, I’ve never seen so much! And d’you know what they did then? – whisky – they poured a whole bottle of whisky over him. Can you imagine? A whole bottle!’