Fifty Dead Men Walking

by McGartland, Martin

  But that didn’t mean I never broke the law – far from it.

  During the summer holidays of 1984, a school pal, Pat, and I were idly walking near our former school, the Vere Foster Primary School, when we found two recorders lying on the ground. I had learned the recorder at school but I never took much interest in music. That day we walked along playing the only tune I had learned well, Three Blind Mice, when two RUC officers, who were patrolling in our estate with half a dozen soldiers, walked up to us.

  ‘Where did you get those?’ one asked, pointing at the recorders.

  ‘We found them,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean, you found them?’ he said, as if not believing a word we had said.

  ‘We found them near the school fence just a few minutes ago,’ I said.

  ‘You two had better come to the station with us,’ he said, and we were bundled into an RUC Land Rover and driven off.

  We were taken to the RUC station and made to wait in a room before being asked the same questions by another officer. We told him the same story and after a matter of minutes we were taken back home. But they kept the recorders.

  Only later would we hear that the previous night the school had been broken into and along with the recorders, thousands of pounds worth of equipment including TVs, videos, film projectors and musical instruments had been stolen. The recorders had apparently been dropped as the thieves made their escape.

  Back home, however, the interrogation from my mother was much tougher as she insisted on hearing every tiny piece of information about the recorders, exactly where we had found them and why we had kept them. She wanted to know why we hadn’t taken them immediately to the police rather than kept them for ourselves. On that occasion I escaped without a good hiding, but it had been close. My first serious brush with the IRA occurred about this time and I had never felt more scared in my young life.

  Johnny McGinty was a strong, well-built, stocky man in his early 30s, a stalwart Republican with a friendly, fun-loving nature, who hated both the RUC and the British Army with a passion. He would openly flout their orders and, if stopped and questioned at a road block, would leap from his car, fists flying as he waded into the nearest RUC officer or soldier without a care for himself.

  He soon earned a reputation as a wild man, whom both the RUC and the Army realised needled to be handled with kid gloves. On some occasion, however, they would set out to provoke him deliberately so that he would throw punches and they would then arrest him and throw him in jail to cool off.

  In the mid 1980s, the IRA decided to get tough with the joy-riders who would steal cars from the centre of Belfast and often leave them on the Ballymurphy estate. The IRA did not want to draw the attention of the authorities to the estate, which had become one of the organisation’s best recruiting areas in Belfast. So they decided to issue warnings to joy-riders to stop their activities or face the consequences.

  Two Republicans ordered to police the estate and crack down on the joy-riders were Johnny McGinty and an IRA sympathiser, Marty Morris. They would walk around the estate at night watching for the young teenagers who loved to steal cars, rip out the radios and then show off, performing hand-brake turns to the cheers of the other youths. The daring teenagers would also deliberately set out to provoke the RUC in their slow, lumbering Land Rovers, which the young drivers could easily out-perform. When warned by the IRA enforcers, most youths would stop for a while and then continue at a later date.

  Paul McFadden, a slim, innocent-looking young teenager with a pale, angelic face under a black thatch of hair, became one of my best mates. Sometimes he would find himself picked on unfairly. One hot summer’s evening, along with other teenage boys from the estate, we ran out to watch the joy-riders after hearing the accelerating cars and screeching tyres.

  As the old Ford Cortina was being thrown around by the two teenage occupants, half a dozen hard-looking men came out of the nearby licensed club and walked over to the makeshift race track.

  ‘You little hoods,’ one yelled to a couple of my mates, ‘you little bastards have been told to stop this.’ He grabbed hold of a kid and hit him repeatedly on the head with a snooker cue, while a tough-looking man with a beer belly grabbed hold of another young kid and began kicking him.

  Realising what was happening, the boys in the car braked hard, stopped and ran for safety, abandoning the vehicle. Then one of the men, whom I recognised as Johnny McGinty, and another well-built man with a shaven head, grabbed my friend Paul, one taking his arms, the other his legs. Before he realised what was happening, they picked him up and hurled him bodily through the windscreen of the car. Every kid scattered but the men managed to grab one or two more, thumping and kicking them, telling them to ‘get off home’.

  On that occasion I managed to escape without a beating, but the next time I met Johnny McGinty I thought he was about to kill me.

  Occasionally, a friend of the family would ask me to babysit and I would happily agree, even though I knew nothing whatsoever about caring for babies. This particular night, when I was perhaps 14, I was hurrying along in drenching rain to the woman’s house when I met a friend of mine, a boy everyone nicknamed ‘Mackers’. He was standing under cover, drinking a bottle of strong cider.

  ‘What you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing; drinking,’ he replied.

  ‘Aren’t you cold?’ I asked him.

  ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I’m freezing my bollocks off standing here.’

  I told him where I was going and invited him along. In our innocence, what neither Mackers nor myself understood at that time was that Johnny McGinty was having an affair with the woman I had been asked to babysit for. Shortly after midnight there was a tapping at the window and we looked out to see a man with a balaclava rolled up on top of his head and wearing a long, black military-style overcoat. At first we ignored the tapping, but it continued and we realised we would have to answer it.

  I gingerly opened the door.

  ‘Is Maria in?’ he asked.

  ‘No, she’s out,’ I replied. ‘We’re babysitting.’

  The man pushed the door open and walked in, uninvited, removing the balaclava and shaking off the rain. My mouth went dry as I recognised Johnny McGinty. As I followed him into the room I saw Macker’s face as he also registered McGinty. He went white, almost choking on a bottle of cider.

  He jumped to his feet. ‘Hi Johnny, how are you?’ he asked, pretending to be a great mate. Johnny said nothing but sat down on a chair to watch the film on television.

  Mackers and I exchanged worried glances, wondering why Johnny McGinty had walked into this house at this time when only we two youngsters were there. We wondered if he was going to give us a kicking for something or other. We sat still, hardly daring to breath.

  After about half an hour, when Mackers and I had begun to relax a little, McGinty got to his feet and I heaved a sigh of relief, believing he was about to leave.

  He put his hand down the front of his trousers and took out a hand-gun.

  ‘Shit,’ I thought. ‘Please God let nothing happen.’

  At that time in my young life, guns spelt danger and possible death. We had always seen the Army and police walking around the streets with their rifles and hand-guns; a number of my friends had been injured by plastic bullets and I had seen an increasing number of Republicans walking around at night with their AK-47s. And I had also heard and seen the effects of the IRA’s favourite act of terror, the well-documented kneecapping.

  ‘Do you know what this is?’ Johnny asked, pointing the weapon at Mackers.

  ‘Y-y-y-yeah’, he stammered, looking ill. ‘It’s a gun.’

  ‘I know that, you little cunt,’ said McGinty. ‘What type of gun?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘Do you know?’ he asked, turning to me.

  ‘No idea,’ I replied, not wanting to say any more in case I annoyed him with the answer.

  ‘It’s a Lug
er, a 9mm German Luger,’ he replied. ‘Do you know anything about these guns?’

  Both Mackers and I shook our heads.

  He knelt down with one knee on the ground, put his hand down the front of his trousers again and took out a handkerchief, spreading the contents on the carpet beside the gun. There must have been a dozen or so bullets there. He looked at both of us and then slowly began filling the magazine, putting about six in the Luger, before carefully wrapping the rest in his handkerchief and putting them back into his trousers.

  ‘Come with me,’ he ordered and walked into the hall, through the kitchen and out of the back door into the small back garden of the terraced house.

  I had never been so frightened in my life. I was praying for Maria to return, to save us, for I was convinced that McGinty was about to kneecap or shoot us. I couldn’t think why he would want to shoot us, but the fact that our lives at that time were preoccupied day and night with killings and beatings had obviously taken its toll.

  ‘Watch this,’ he said and took the gun, knelt down on the ground and, placing the barrel on the grass, pulled the trigger. The noise of the shot seemed to reverberate around the neighbourhood and I prayed someone would hear and come to investigate. At that age I didn’t realise that during that phase of the troubles, people never investigated the sound of gunfire in Belfast, for fear of getting involved, and perhaps shot, for their curiosity.

  McGinty got up and walked over to where the metal dustbin stood in the corner of the garden. He adjusted it slightly, stepped back three fight and fired again into the bin. The noise was even louder this time and I wondered where all this would lead, convinced he was only showing off before turning the gun on us.

  ‘Your turn,’ he said to Mackers, handing him the gun.

  Gingerly, Mackers took the Luger and fired a single shot at the bin, before quickly handing the gun back to McGinty.

  ‘Now your turn,’ he said to me.

  I took the gun, unsure what to do because I knew McGinty to be a hard man, one of those boastful big-heads who liked to pretend he was an important part of the IRA. Others knew him to be a wild man, unafraid of anything and capable of carrying out any atrocity.

  I pointed the gun at the dustbin, shut my eyes and squeezed the trigger tight with both hands. Nothing happened. It seemed I hadn’t the strength to pull the trigger hard enough.

  ‘Pull the trigger!’ he shouted. ‘Pull the fucking trigger!’

  But I didn’t. I was frightened something might go wrong; that the gun might backfire or that the bullet would ricochet and kill me or Mackers.

  ‘If you don’t fucking fire that gun I’ll shoot you in the kneecap,’ he yelled.

  That did it. I closed my eyes tight and pulled the trigger as hard as I could. The gun jumped and the bullet missed the bin and went into the garden wall.

  ‘I told you there’s nothing to it,’ he said, taking the gun from me. He fired two more rounds and I suddenly realised that all the bullets had been fired. Although my heart was still thumping, I began to relax a little.

  ‘Inside,’ he said, nodding his head towards the kitchen.

  Once inside, he stripped down the gun, washed it in the sink with washing-up liquid and hot water and dried it with a tea towel. I thought it was an odd thing to do to a gun but I said nothing. Then he put it back together again, stuffed it down his trousers and walked out, leaving Mackers and myself literally shaking with shock.

  ‘We must tell no one about this,’ I said to Mackers when he had left, ‘for if he finds out we’ve been telling stories about him he’ll kill us.’

  When Maria returned some 30 minutes later, she asked us if everything had been alright.

  ‘Fine, not a squeak,’ I replied, and before she had taken off her coat, Mackers and I were outside the house, running back to the safety of our homes as quickly as possible.

  From that time on, I would always say ‘hello’ to Johnny McGinty whenever I saw him and, in turn, he would shout to me in a loud voice, ‘Shoot the bins, Marty, shoot the bins!’ and laugh as he passed by. I felt it would be wise for me to have McGinty as a friend rather than an enemy and I would always stop and chat to him.

  One Sunday afternoon, I was at home and heard shouting outside. When I went to investigate I saw an army foot patrol had stopped a taxi which was Johnny McGInty and one of his best friends, Geordie. The Army had ordered the men out of the vehicle and a very drunk McGinty had half-fallen out. As I walked towards the group, McGinty suddenly went berserk, flailing away with his fists, trying to make contact with the officers who had stopped him. His pal joined in and together they tried to punch their way free but they were far too drunk. Within seconds of the first punch being thrown, the eight soldiers joined in, punching the hell out of the two men who were in no fit state to defend themselves.

  I thought it was my duty to rescue poor McGinty and I ran towards the melee in the middle of the street. As I neared the fight, a soldier stepped in front of me, blocking my path. I turned and punched the soldier in a bid to escape and, as he tried to evade my fist, he tripped and fell over a small garden wall.

  I ran on towards McGinty shouting at the soldiers, ‘Get off them! Leave them alone! Leave them alone!’

  As I reached the skirmish, the soldiers had managed to grab McGinty and Geordie, pinning their arms behind them, but some of the soldiers had taken some punches and I could see bruising and marks on their faces.

  Hearing the noise and the shouting, other people had come out of their houses to see what was happening and I heard my mother shouting at me at the top of her voice, ‘Get down here, you mad bastard, come here at once.’

  But I ignored her orders as I wanted to make sure that the soldiers would not start hitting the two men again. My mother walked briskly towards us but when she realised the ruckus was over she went back home, allowing me to remain at the scene. I became involved with a crowd of young men, all in their 20s, who never had jobs and never wanted to work. They did, however, become professional shoplifters, driving all over the Province, hitting different towns, somehow managing to keep one step ahead of the law. They all lived on the estate and I ran errands for them.

  At first, I had no idea that the goods they were selling had been stolen, but I didn’t remain innocent for long. They would ask me to call at the house where two of them lived and take away a bag, a black plastic dustbin liner full of merchandise, and they would tell me how much to charge. Very quickly I learned the ropes – if an item was marked at £60, then they would demand £20 and I was allowed to keep £10 for myself.

  Of course, many of the items were only marked at £20, so I would receive just £2, but I would usually sell 10 to 20 items a day, perhaps two or three times a week. I felt like a millionaire.

  I also had some narrow escapes. On one occasion, when I was nearly 16, two of the young men gave me £10 to go and collect a car they had parked a mile from home.

  ‘Why don’t you go?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re too tired,’ one of them replied.

  ‘Is it full of stuff?’ I asked.

  ‘Maybe,’ he replied, ‘but I’ll give you a tenner if you pick it up.’

  I thought about it for a split second. ‘Give me the key,’ I said. ‘I’ll get it.’

  I took the £10 and went to find the car, parked as they had told me on a hill a mile away. I could see nothing inside but presumed the boot to be full of stolen gear. No sooner had I opened the door, started the engine and driven gingerly away than I looked in the rear-view mirror to see two RUC Land Rovers bearing down on me, their blue lights flashing. As I went round corners I could see the Land Rovers leaning over wildly, their tyres screeching as they raced after me.

  ‘The bastards,’ I thought, referring to the friends that had happily put me in such danger for a miserly £10. I realised that the RUC ‘jeeps’ were much slower than the vehicle I was driving, so I drove as fast as I could around the streets where I lived and which I knew well. I lost them, turned into a road a
nd then into a friend’s drive. I slammed on the brakes and leapt from the car, running like hell across the gardens, fearful I would be caught.

  ‘You bastards,’ I screamed at my mates when I finally found them. ‘You knew the car was being watched.’

  If I had been a little older, I would have hit one of them when he turned to me and demanded back the £10.

  ‘Fuck off,’ I said and ran off as they laughed at me.

  My reputation for providing stolen jeans, suits, expensive china ornaments and light electrical goods spread widely and people began asking me for individual items; anoraks for kids, electric shavers for young teenagers and videos and TVs which I never dealt in. Some adults began calling me ‘Arthur’, after the TV character Arthur Daley. I hated that because it made me feel like an old man.

  My budding reputation also got me into trouble with the police because they had heard of this young teenager, Kate McGartland’s lad, who always seemed to have lots of money. They began stopping and searching me whenever I was walking around the streets. Those who knew mw well would stop and search me, asking for my full name and address which they already knew by heart. I knew they were trying to rile me, and would make me stand and wait while they questioned me.

  On one occasion, an officer was searching me and began to probe, frequently and forcibly, between my legs.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ I shouted and pulled myself away.

  ‘I’m just searching you,’ he replied.

  ‘Well keep your hands to yourself, you’re hurting me,’ I said.

  ‘Stand still and shut up,’ he said, ‘otherwise you’ll be down the station. Now let me search you.’

  ‘OK,’ I replied. I loosened my belt and, in the middle of the street, dropped my trousers to my ankles.

  ‘You perverts!’ shouted some women who were walking past at the time, making the officer look uncomfortable.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ shouted others who were gathering to see what was going on.

  ‘Satisfied now?’ I said and I could see the other RUC officers looking surprised and not a little embarrassed at what was going on.