Soldier Of The Queen

by Bernard O'Mahoney

  I kept shouting at him: "Get up, you cunt!" But he kept crying. We got on the radio and got people to come out and pick him up. Fortunately it was a quiet area and we weren't too far away from a base, so a Land Rover arrived very quickly and he was thrown into the back like a piece of rubbish. The man had had a complete breakdown. I was extremely angry with him. If he had felt that bad he shouldn't have left the camp. In a different situation he could have got us all killed. We heard later that it wasn't even the stress of Ireland that had got to him. Apparently he had just found out that his wife in Germany was being unfaithful to him. And worse — she was starring in porno movies in Hamburg.

  He was transferred rapidly out of Northern Ireland. I never saw him again.

  15

  Pray For His Holiness

  I had been separated from my two best friends when we had first arrived in Northern Ireland - and I didn't see them again until we were back in Germany.

  I found myself at St Angelo with people I hardly knew and, although I got on well with a few of them, I kept most of them at a distance. Things weren't helped by the fact that I seemed to be with different people every time I went on patrol. The only constant figure in my life from the old days was the officer we had nicknamed Major Disaster or MD. My usual problems with figures of authority didn't manifest themselves with him, probably because in my eyes he didn't have any authority. I knew he was as reluctant a soldier as I was. That knowledge gave us a shared bond. He was there to keep his daddy happy and I was there to keep out of prison. I had a good relationship with him and at times I felt we had a true friendship. Often on VCPs we would sit talking into the small hours about our very different lives and upbringings.

  MD conformed and always had - it made financial sense -whereas I had always rebelled. I think he liked what he saw as my free spirit and he would treat my antics with amused horror. Instead of ticking me off he would laugh and say: "Please, O'Mahoney. Not in front of me, you uncouth bastard." He was a strangely innocent character, vulnerable even. He could not spot danger and did not wish ill on anybody. I tended to see danger everywhere and wished ill on everybody. So although I liked him personally, I didn't particularly enjoy going on patrol with him, because he was always doing things that jarred the nerves. In the countryside dairy farmers would leave milk destined for the creamery in churns on wooden platforms by the sides of roads. The IRA had often used these milk-churns as bombs and most of us were extremely wary of them. In fact when you saw one your first thought was: "Bomb" — a good example of how the fear of terrorism distorts your imagination. You're scared of everything; you're scared of what might be there, even though most of the time it's not there. There were procedures for dealing with milk churns which usually meant taking a detour around them. MD's technique was to walk right up to them, take off the lid and stick his head inside. We would scurry for cover whenever we saw him striding off amiably down the road towards a milk-churn. He wasn't fearless, just clueless.

  He was always in trouble, because of the mess he made of everything. In the best comic traditions of the well-meaning British amateur he would bumble into complicated situations - and make them worse. Some of our patrols had a truly pantomime quality. While our pantomime performances were normally only witnessed by a few civilians, there were a few occasions when a senior officer got a ringside seat. One time a colonel decided to join us on a countryside patrol. He should never have come out with us, because he was too much of a target, but I suppose he'd wanted to make the point that he wasn't just a pen-pusher, that he could hack his way through hedgerows with the lads.

  MD had said to us before the colonel joined us at the briefing: "Let's put on a good show. Everything by the book." We tried not to let MD down. A helicopter dropped us in the middle of nowhere. We moved across open ground following the textbook procedure with MD leading from the front, desperately trying to remember everything he had been taught at Sandhurst. It was really a process of running and hiding behind rocks and hedges. At any one time half of you are covering the half who are on the move. So you would zig-zag for 15 to 20 yards, drop to the ground, preferably behind a rock or a hedge, and point your rifle at the cows. Then at the patrol leader's signal the other half would zig-zag past you to a point in front and do the same. The patrol leader needs to co-ordinate this movement efficiently to make sure no-one is left behind. Unfortunately, after we had travelled across several fields of peat-bog MD realised he had left the colonel behind: he was still crouched behind a hedge two fields back waiting for the order to advance. I only realised what had happened when MD, flushed and sweating, stood up and told us we were going back the way we had come. We retraced our steps until we reached the colonel whose rage-filled face peeped out from behind the hedge where he'd been left. He didn't say anything to Major Disaster in front of us, but MD told me later that back at camp the colonel had given him "a few words of advice".

  None of us liked having senior officers accompanying us on patrol. Fortunately, they didn't feel the need to put their lives on the line too often. We had been told from the first day in Northern Ireland that outside camp in front of civilians we were never to address officers as "Sir". And they would never wear badges of rank. These precautions were meant to prevent terrorists identifying them as officers (although I'd have thought that in most cases, especially in our "cavalry" regiment, officers only had to open their well-spoken mouths to be identified as officers). The thinking was that an officer would present a more tempting target than a mere squaddie. I understood the logic of this, but I still resented it, especially when the officers who in camp would put you on a charge for not calling them "Sir" were the ones who outside camp would be most upset if you called them "Sir". At checkpoints I made a point of calling officers "Sir" whenever I could, especially in front of Catholics.

  Some officers would get really freaked: "O'Mahoney! Don't call me 'Sir'. How many times do you have to be told?"

  There was one senior officer I especially loathed: rosy cheeks, little round glasses and a squeaky voice. He looked like that runt out of the Carry On films. One day Major Disaster informed us that this officer was going to come out with us. I thought: "Another idiot to carry." We spent the day setting up roving checkpoints. You were supposed to be polite to civilians ("Good evening, Madam. Could I see your driving licence, please? Thank you."), although that was not something I usually managed. However, whenever the senior officer was in earshot I tried to be reasonably civil. We set up a checkpoint in an area which contained a few notorious republican families. We would carry a green field book containing cards with pictures and details of known and suspected terrorists.

  In that area there was one family that seemed to take up a whole volume. One branch ran a pub. The husband had gone on the run in the Republic, but his wife had stayed behind to be unpleasant to soldiers. She would torch you with her hatred and abuse. I'd encountered her a few times and come close to breaking my vow never to hit a woman. I was sure we were going to bump into her: she was the type who'd drive around all day and night in the hope of meeting soldiers to abuse. She didn't disappoint me: just as the sun was going down she drove into view. I made her stop the car. Major Disaster and the other officer were standing nearby, but at the passenger side. This meant they could hear only what I said, not what she said. With this in mind I asked her for her licence politely.

  She replied: "You fucking English bastard." I think two soldiers or policemen had been killed in Belfast earlier in the day. She added that I would burn in hell with those bastards.

  I dropped the mask of politeness and started swearing at her loudly, telling her to give me the fucking licence or I would drag her out of the car and take it off her. I could see the senior officer's face changing to a look of deep concern. He was clearly horrified to hear me talking in this way to a woman.

  I heard him say to MD: "I think I'd better deal with this."

  MD said to me: "Mahoney, move."

  The senior officer came round to the driver
's side and said: "I'm very sorry about this, madam. May I see your driving licence?"

  She stared at him for about a second, before shouting: "You fucking four-eyed English bastard. I hope you burn in fucking hell with ..." I doubt whether he had heard a woman swear before, let alone swear at him. He wouldn't have looked more shocked if she had pulled out a gun and shot him. He stepped back and told me to deal with it.

  I pulled open her door and stuck my head right in so that I was inches from her face. I told her to give me the licence or she was coming out of the car by her hair. She handed me the licence.

  When she had driven off the officer said: "Top marks, O'Mahoney. That's how to deal with them."

  I said: "Thank you, Sir." He said: "Don't call me 'Sir' out here. You should know that by now."

  Back at St Angelo someone put up on the noticeboard a leaflet issued by the well-known Catholic priest, Fr Denis Faul. It contained advice about the legal rights of those detained by the security forces. It included one line which caused great amusement: "Suffer patiently while they beat you up." The funniest bit, however, was the section on what soldiers could and could not do at checkpoints. The leaflet read:

  1. Give your name, address, where you are coming from and going to.

  2. Do not answer any other questions about age, occupation or religion.

  3. Do not answer questions about other people, your family, relatives or neighbours.

  4. The security forces cannot photograph you against your will.

  5. When your car is being searched lock it and say "Which part do you wish to search first?" Accompany the uniformed man and unlock the

  boot, then lock it, unlock the car and bonnet in turn, locking each section in turn.

  6. If you dislike the way you are being treated (and especially any attempt by men to search women) you have the right to be searched in the nearest RUC station.

  7. They are not allowed to take any person away from the well-lit area of the public road — to take persons up side-roads or into fields or up the road on their own is a crime, as it is threatening behaviour.

  8. Any undue delay is illegal.

  9. Report to me or to your solicitor any grievance you have about fear being inflicted on you or your family on the public road by abuses of Emergency powers.

  There was only one thing on that list that I hadn't done to civilians at checkpoints - take photographs. For a while the injunction "suffer patiently" became a sort of comedian's catchphrase around the camp. If anything went wrong for you someone was bound to tell you to "suffer patiently". And when we swapped stories in the canteen about hostile encounters with the locals we would use the term as a euphemism for violence: "Did you make him suffer patiently?" "Yes, he suffered very patiently."

  There were always opportunities for violence, but the presence of officers or older and wiser NCOs meant that, a lot of the time, I behaved better than I might otherwise have done. Hunger strikers dwindling slowly towards their end made sure there was always tension in the air. Everything seemed to be going the Provos' way: in the Irish Republic two hunger strikers got elected to parliament in the June general election — and on the same day eight IRA men awaiting sentence for the murder of an SAS soldier escaped from custody in Belfast.

  I had only ever known Northern Ireland during the Hunger Strike, so I knew no different. But soldiers who had been born in the area, and UDR and RUC people, all said that things had got much worse. There was a lot more defiance and aggression from Catholics, especially young Catholic men, who tended to be the sort of people we got into scrapes with at checkpoints. It seemed at times that every young nationalist wanted to do his bit for the hunger strikers by getting stroppy with soldiers. Perhaps they saw getting a beating from us as a rite of passage. I could understand them. I knew I would have been the same. It is difficult to describe how I felt. It was not exactly a case of being torn between two sides -1 knew which side I was on. I was a British soldier and I had no time for the IRA, and yet I secretly admired the hunger strikers, even though sometimes I could feel elated at their deaths. The strange thing was that while I could allow myself to feel satisfied that a hunger striker had died, I didn't like to see English soldiers, especially middle-class officers, sneering at hunger strikers' deaths. Contradiction was the dominant force within my mind.

  I admired the way that even before a hunger striker was buried his successor had been named. Anyone could see they were not isolated fanatics: there were people queueing up to give their lives for the cause. Their resolve impressed me and underlined the fact that we were in a war we could not win, at least not at a price anyone was willing to pay. Some days I would feel a traitor to my uniform for thinking like this, especially when I'd read of the latest IRA atrocity and the pompous statement of justification that usually went with it.

  Everyone was so self-righteous; no-one was wrong. We all made our own excuses for our own acts of brutality. Life was full of injustice: everyone behaving unjustly to everyone else. That was the way of the world, it seemed to me. I had felt this from an early age and, in some ways, I suppose this feeling helped me resolve the contradictions I experienced in my mind. I stopped getting bothered about who was right and who was wrong. Everyone was right and everyone was wrong. My only goal was survival.

  I was manning a permanent VCP near the border one evening. I was in the central part, checking driving licences. A man in his early forties drove towards me. Word came through on my radio that the driver was a "blue devil" - an IRA sympathiser and low-level helper, the sort of person who would pass on information rather than pull a trigger or plant a bomb himself. I thought: "You sneaky fucker." He stopped and wound down his window. I told him I wanted to search his car.

  He said: "I'm only after being searched."

  I said I didn't care: I wanted to search him again. I could tell he was in a hurry, which pleased me. With the help of another soldier I started taking everything out of his car, slowly, and checking everything and everywhere, slowly. I let my colleague continue while I started asking questions of the blue devil.

  "Name?"

  "What's it got to do with you?"

  "Address?"

  "What's it got to do with you?"

  "Age?"

  "What's it got to do with you?"

  "Religion?" But before he could answer I said: "Catholic."

  At this point my colleague stuck his head out of the disordered car and asked the man to come over.

  My colleague pointed at a piece of dirt on the carpet and said: "What's that?"

  The man said it looked like dirt. My colleague said: "Dirt? It looks like explosives to me. Get the sample bag, Bernie."

  If you came across suspicious substances that you thought needed analysis you were supposed to pick them up with a pair of surgical pliers and place them in a special sample bag. Then you had to get the motorist to sign for the bag.

  I asked the blue devil to sign, but he refused: "I'm not signing nothing."

  I said: "Fucking sign it." He still refused and started shouting at me. I grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket. Instinctively, he grabbed me back. That was enough: that was assault and I was entitled to defend myself. I headbutted him full in the face. The impact sent him instantly to the floor. He lay there dazed, not unconscious, just not saying anything. I was going to give him a kicking on the floor, but Major Disaster came running over and intervened. He told me to deal with another motorist who had just driven in. I walked away.

  Back at St Angelo my relationship with Elizabeth was progressing, just as my relationship with the other UDR soldiers was about to decline to a very low point. I was sitting in the canteen one day with a group of soldiers from my regiment. Someone was reading an Irish newspaper. There were reports about the Pope's convalescence after his shooting in Rome. There was also a double-page pull-out poster showing him in better days celebrating mass in front of a huge crowd. In one hand he held his shepherd's crook; his other hand was raised to give a blessing to the pe
ople. Underneath the photo were the words: "Pray for His Holiness".

  I had an idea for a wind-up. I knew a joint RUC/UDR patrol was about to come in to the canteen. I got some sticky tape from somewhere and stuck the poster above the hot-plate. I sat back down with my mates and we all started giggling. Around five minutes later a group of about twelve UDR and RUC men walked in as expected. Among them was Billy Bunter, the one who kept calling me a Fenian and telling me to keep my head down in a gun-fight. They made their way towards the hot-plate, talking and laughing. We pretended to eat our food.

  Suddenly I heard Billy Bunter shout: "You Fenian bastard!" I looked up and he was pointing at the poster. What happened next was extraordinary: at least six UDR men ran to the poster and tore it violently from its place. Then in a group frenzy they ripped it to pieces, spat on it and finally stamped on it, all the time shouting madly. My mates and I were laughing at their antics. Billy saw us and ran over, his face afire with anger. He looked at me and shouted: "Who put that up there? Who fucking put that up there?"

  I said: "What are you talking about, you idiot?" We denied having anything to do with it - and no-one outside my group had seen me put it up.

  Billy said: "You saw it up there and you did nothing about it." They were all deadly serious; I'm sure they would have been less offended by a bomb. Elizabeth told me later that two of the UDR people had gone to the ops room to see if anyone knew who had put it up: they actually asked an officer if he would launch an enquiry to find the culprit. Fortunately, he decided there were other more urgent priorities. I told

  Elizabeth I'd done it purely as a joke. Even she was a bit po-faced about it, telling me I shouldn't have done it, although she accepted that Billy and his boys had over-reacted a little. The incident created a lot of bad feeling between our regiment and the UDR. It overshadowed the rest of the tour. It seemed to confirm the suspicions of some UDR soldiers that our regiment was a haven for IRA sympathisers.