The Loose Screw (8 page)

On the following Monday morning at some unearthly hour, and nursing some serious hangovers, we boarded the transport for our journey to Norfolk for the final phase of our training. Norfolk is bleak at the best of times, but we hit it at the beginning of January, and it was freezing. During the brief and rare occasions that we were not out on the training area at night, we slept in corrugated iron Nissen huts, which were left by the American air force after their stay during the Second World War. These huts were actually quite comfortable and offered protection from the rain and bitter wind that swept across the Norfolk moors.

By the time we were due to leave, we had even managed to stoke up the ancient iron stoves in the centre of each hut, despite constant objections from the resident fire officer, and these proved very effective in throwing out some welcomed heat. During the exercise we learned all the different patrolling techniques that we would need to apply to our rural environment in Fermanagh.

We also spent a lot of time practising our reactionary drills and mastering the various pieces of equipment that would detect or prevent the presence or detonation of explosive devices. The other important part of the training was mastering our helicopter drills. These were now being used on a regular basis in the Province to prevent attacks on patrols on the ground, which previously relied on landrovers to drop them off or pick them up along the border areas.

The training was hard and we had to use all our infantry skills just to try to keep reasonably warm and dry, but it was also very enjoyable as we were training for a real-life deployment. We all knew that some of us may well be killed or seriously injured during the tour. To that end, we also knew that we owed it to one another to learn as much as we could and to fine tune all our skills so that we could watch out for each other over the water. Obviously there was the usual humour and mandatory whining, or ticking as we called it, but that is what keeps you going. You will find that most soldiers moan about everything they do, but this is only their way of motivating themselves to maintain the high standards that are expected of them and that the British Army always produces when called upon to do so. If there was nothing legitimate to moan about your average British soldier would make something up. It's just been a tradition in the army since Britain formed its first fighting force to repel our country's would-be invaders. The important thing in life is that you get the job done, and I defy anyone to deny that the British forces ever do anything less.

During the period of training I saw very little of Simon and Steve as they were busy doing the same with their own respective companies. Garry, however, was obviously with me in B (Support) Company, and if anyone can moan that boy certainly can. He had recently fallen in love with a lovely girl called Sarah whom he had met in a nightclub in Margate. They are still together, although she deserves a medal as far as I'm concerned for putting up with him for so long, and are living in married quarters in Ireland at the time of writing this. Sarah was from a good family from Whitstable and was very quiet and nervous when they first met. It took her a while to adjust to her new boyfriend's mates, but I am glad to say she learned very quickly how to deal with it all and now she is very much in command in her house.

The training complete, it was time for a short period of disembarkation leave, generously given by the army before you deploy to somewhere that is classed as dangerous to your health. Short was the operative word and in just five days' time, at the beginning of February 1989, we boarded a Hercules C130 transport plane at RAF Brize Norton bound for RAF Aldergrove in Belfast.

When we left the aircraft at Aldergrove I remember thinking it was like the scene in the film Platoon, when Charlie Sheen's character lands in Vietnam for the first time. Obviously, and thankfully, there were no body bags on the runway and it was an awful lot colder than Vietnam. We did, however, pass a platoon of weary looking Irish Rangers, who we were to take over from and who rubbed into our staring faces the fact that they were going home.

On the runway a fragile old lady stopped each one of us and greeted us with a smile. She put her tiny arthritis-ridden hands on all of us in turn, gave us a short blessing and furnished us with a pen and a tiny diary printed onto a single sheet of pocket-sized card. The diaries had various prayers on them and the words "We the people of Ulster are proud of our security forces". Later I learned that this old lady was over seventy years old. Despite numerous threats from various terrorist groups and indeed on one occasion having had both her legs badly broken by some brave bastards, she was at the airport to welcome every flight of soldiers into her country -a truly brave, dedicated and lovely lady.

We made our way to a pair of huge twin-rotor Chinooks and filed into their bellies in two single lines. No sooner had the last man entered than their powerful engines roared to full power. We set off on a hedge-hopping low-level rollercoaster ride to the small border town of Clogher and our hilltop base, which was to be our home for the next four-and-a-half months. The tactical low-level flying was, we were told, necessary as the IRA had acquired a small shipment of surface-to-air missiles and had used them against a military helicopter shortly before our arrival. Something else that had occurred shortly before our arrival was that our new base in Clogher had been the target of an IRA mortar attack. Thankfully the attack was not accurate enough to kill or injure anybody, but it did succeed in damaging parts of the camp and, as a result, we would have to live in a temporary portacabin structure half buried underground and already infested with rats and mice.

The Chinooks landed in the field adjacent to the base and we quickly filed out and made our way to the relative safety of our new home behind its wire fence and manned lookout towers known as 'sangers'. Nothing stirs the blood more than the sight of a fully loaded and armed company of soldiers, and I remember thinking that the IRA would have one hell of a fight on their hands should they decide to have a go at us.

We soon settled into our new home and after the usual formalities of kit and ammunition issue, not to mention the briefing by Major 'Mac' McGarrigle, the company's veteran commander -all given for the benefit of the Panorama film crew who were to film us as part of their Families At War series -we began the monotonous routine that would be our existence for the next few months. The duties we had to carry out were to be split between the three platoons who made up B Company, which were now Clogher's residential security forces.

As well as our own local area we had a commitment to share the responsibility for the whole battalion's area together with the other three companies of Green Jackets who themselves were just arriving in their own bases around Fermanagh. We had three areas of responsibility and each platoon was to carry out six weeks on each, which was further broken down into three two-week rotas.

The three areas we had to cover were local patrols around the immediate vicinity of our base and nearby town. This included guard duty in the camp's sangers to watch for any imminent threats and give reassuring cover to other patrols as they entered and left the safety of the base, which is a particularly vulnerable time. We also undertook long-range patrols, which were carried out usually along the dangerous 'bandit' country border areas with the Irish Republic. And finally we had to man the equally dangerous (due to the remoteness of their locations and the fact that there were only eight men in each one) vehicle checkpoints, which were sited all along the border of the Irish Republic. We soon settled into this routine way of life and in no time at all, despite the fact that even that early on in the tour we all were suffering from a distinct lack of sleep, we were carrying out our tasks like veterans.

As I mentioned earlier, most of our moves, and certainly those in and around the border area, were done by helicopter. Due to the recent addition of door gunners armed with general-purpose machine guns in every helicopter, to combat the growing threat from the ground, we soon took on a Vietnam War approach to our situation. The other and far more dangerous method of transport at our disposal -when the officers had used up all of the battalion's allowance of flying hours, which were allocated on a monthly basis, going to meetings and functions in Belfast or Lisbon -was by CPV (civilian pickup vehicle). These were usually transit vans that eight or more of us would have to squeeze into the back of with full kit and weapons fully loaded. We could not see anything at all through the rear, as they were totally blacked out. Apart from the danger of ambush by armed terrorists or the new MK1 mortar designed to take out such vehicles, we ran the risk of running into illegal checkpoints manned by groups of terrorists. Such groups could have emptied a hundred rounds of ammunition into the side of us before we had had a chance to untangle ourselves and react. Personally I hated using CPVs and would rather have stayed out on patrol than have got into the back of one of these 'metal coffins'.

The remainder of the tour thankfully passed without any serious incident. We had a few near misses and plenty of false alarms. We were assured by the intelligence boys at the end of the tour that we had successfully managed to avert all the attacks that were planned against us but had to be aborted due to our professionalism and careful planning.

There are many memories of that first tour for me, but it would take years to write all the funny and not so funny incidents we were involved in. My main memories are of the cold, wet, bog-filled fields, the feeling of total loneliness and homesickness at times, and the fear that we all experienced deep down most days but we all masked well with the good old British soldier's sick sense of humour.

One of the most common ways of hiding your fear of death is to talk openly about it as if it wouldn't matter. A common phrase we said to one another was "It's a good day to die", or other such jokes like, "If you die today can I have your spare boots?" I remember going out on patrol with 'Fatboy Geordie' Tompson and as we cleared the base he turned to me and said, "Jim, if I die today you can have the rest of me Jaffa Cakes, they're under me pillow." For Geordie to leave someone his Jaffa Cakes was like leaving someone your most prized possession. This type of talk may sound a bit egotistical to some, but we were all mainly young men under twenty years old who were facing the possibility of death around every corner every day, and that was one way we coped with that prospect.

Generally, we found the majority of Irish people we came across to be very decent, friendly folk. I do not pretend to be an expert on Irish history. I did, however, do a lot of research into the background of the Irish problem and realized that both sides throughout history carried out atrocities. Like with everything I do in life, I went to Northern Ireland with a totally open mind, did my tour, treated the people I met according to how they treated me, and came home again with no bitter and twisted feelings about any side caught up in the Province's troubles.

We returned to Dover in June 1989 and embarked on a long-awaited leave to spend the fifteen hundred pounds or so that most of us had saved while being in Northern Ireland. I had two objectives during this leave. One was to have a bloody good holiday somewhere hot and the other was to make it back in one piece for Garry and Sarah's wedding in July.

The first objective was completed with a last-minute booking that I and Simon got to Kos for a week. The main thing I can remember about the holiday, for obvious reasons, was our 'apartment'. It was in such a ghetto that the bus that took us to it late at night from the airport wouldn't stop and only slowed down enough for us to jump off while the tour operator nervously pointed us in the general direction. The only other thing I remember was that we spent most of our time sheltering from the sun in Popeye's Bar drinking five-pint pitchers each with a fireman and his mate, a second-hand car dealer, both from Watford. It was a great holiday. We didn't do much sightseeing and we spent too much money, but it achieved its aim of relaxing us after our recent tour.

We just about made it back in time to join in at Garry's stag night in the Plough at Lewisham, and in one piece. That is until we were crossing the road later to get to the kebab shop and a white Triumph Dolomite nearly ran us over and we hurled a bit of abuse at the driver. The Triumph and the red Sierra behind it turned round in the road and stopped in front of us. I swear to this day that I would never have believed so many people could get into two cars. The bloke who built the Tardis for Doctor Who must have built them. About seven black youths got out of each car and ran towards us like a scene from Zulu Dawn. By this time we numbered about four or five and one of us had already been knocked down by the Sierra. We fought as gallantly as was possible with a bellyful of lager and spirits each, not to mention being seriously outnumbered, but this was one battle we were destined to lose. The only good thing was that Garry had been taken home earlier by his Uncle Kenny after he had passed out in the bar, but I can assure you it wasn't difficult to pick out the groom's mates at the wedding two days later.

On our return to Dover I began to feel increasingly restless. Many of my friends were getting married and some were leaving the army. I began to do some serious soul-searching. I was missing Natasha severely, but thought it was too late as I had heard that she was in another relationship, and I began to wonder what the army had to offer me. I began to start drinking too much, which in turn led me into various troubles with the army.

I became a regular at the colonel's office charged with everything from being absent to even assaulting the fat bandmaster. I was sent away on a driving course in Driffield, Yorkshire, only to team up with an equally troubled Irish Ranger named 'Shaggy' and after sharing a few nights in the local glasshouse we were both returned to our units in disgrace. My saviour was our new boss sergeant, 'Taffy' Smith. Taffy had himself gone through similar problems as a young rifleman serving in Hong Kong and he understood what I needed. He arranged for me to go on a period of detached duty to one of our TA (Territorial Army) battalions based in Oxford. This posting was just what I needed -six months of peace and quiet working virtually as my own boss teaching and assisting the members of the TA. I returned from Oxford a more settled young man and felt ready to rejoin my mates in the battalion and begin training with them for the forthcoming tour of Canada.