Immediate Action Read online

  Nicky Smith, being search-trained, was told that he was going to go and take it down. The plan was that once we had come out on the ground, we would provide an outer cordon for his patrol, just be milling around the area.

  They called for one of the cans that were on the opposite side of town.

  The plan was for Nicky to climb up on the mesh, have a quick look at the flag, and, if it was all right, bring it down. It was no problem. He'd done it scores of times before, and it was in broad daylight.

  The traffic was stopped either side in VCPS; we were manning the VCP that was stopping people coming out of the town along the Newry road. We checked driving licenses and number plates and asked them where they were going and where they had just been. I was stuck in a doorway, covering the two blokes who were running the VCP. I was "ballooning"-hunching down, then standing up, making sure I didn't present a static target.

  After a minute or two I would walk into another doorway or get between two cars. It was important to keep moving.

  I wasn't paying much attention to Nicky Smith and the search team.

  All I was concerned about was that the sooner it was finished, the sooner the can would be free, and then maybe we could get a quick cup of tea out of the Norwegian.

  The can drove up to the base of the telephone pole.

  The gunner was manning the Browning to give cover because the location was exposed, right at the edge of town; it could be a come-on.

  The driver had the armor plate that protected his face down so that he could see what was going on.

  Nicky climbed on top, had a good look, and gave a tug. There was a fearsome explosion.

  As an eighteen-year-old squaddy I'd never heard the quick, sharp, piercing bang of high explosives. There was a moment of disbelief. I thought, Nab, can't be. I didn't know what to do and was looking around for some direction. Reggie had been checking a car; he had the boot open and was taking some stuff out. He stopped, looked up, and looked around. The civilians caught in the VCP knew what was going on.

  They had more experience than I did of explosions going off.

  Reggie slammed the boot down, and the car shot off.

  He called us to him, and we went running down the road. As we arrived at the Saracen, we saw the body being pulled down by the platoon sergeant. There was screaming coming from inside the can. The back doors were open, and people were trying to sort out the crew.

  What remained of Nicky's body was now lying by the rear wheel of the Saracen. His head was cut off diagonally at the neck, and his feet were missing. All the bit in the middle was intact-badly messed up but intact. The mesh was clogged with bits of his flesh and shreds of his flak jacket. Bits and pieces were hanging off every edge.

  The whole can seemed to be covered in blood.

  "Get a poncho!" the platoon sergeant shouted.

  Up on the hill on the opposite side, there were people visiting the graveyard. They stood still; cars were doing U-turns; nobody wanted to be involved. They'd seen all this before; they knew that if the rounds started flying, they might become casualties themselves.

  Was it a simple booby trap? Or was it command-detonated by somebody in the vicinity?

  I All I saw was people getting on radios; all I heard were lots of orders being shouted. I didn't know what to do. I was scared. I felt really happy that there were loads of other people around me who had the appearance of knowing what they were doing.

  There was a fellow in the brick (patrol) at the time who was a right pain in the arse; he would be A.W.O.L on a Monday morning, come back-Tuesday night, go on a charge. He never wanted to do anything.

  But he was really switched on this day. When we got there, the sergeant in charge of the brick was sorting everything Out, and this fellow just ran up and started stitching all along the hedgerows with an LMG (light machine gun). If it had been detonated by a control wire, maybe the bomber was still in range. This bloke was a renegade, always in trouble, but when he had to do this stuff, he knew what he was doing.

  The QRF (quick reaction force) had run out of the base and were going to put roadblocks all around the town at preset points to stop anybody coming in or going out.

  The bomb had taken Nicky out severely, spreading him out over fifty to sixty meters. All we wanted to do was to get the main bits of what was left of him onto a poncho and get him back to the base.

  I was picking up the remains of the person I'd been eating breakfast with, who used to sit next to me honking about the state of the food. I was extremely angry, extremely scared, and real life hit me in a big way.

  The locals were coming out of the pubs and their houses, clapping and cheering. They were chuffed; there was a Brit squaddy dead. I was flapping like fuck. I started to get angry at these people.

  Four of us carried the poncho, one at each corner. The others gave protection as we went through. The poncho was soaking wet with blood.

  He was literally a dead weight. I was soaked up to my elbows In blood.

  We got him back, but then we had to return and clear the area.

  Helicopters were arriving from Bessbrook to pick up the other casualties. We were sweating and panting, drenched with red. We had to use big, hard yard brooms to get all the bits and pieces off the wagon and throw them into a bag. We burned the brooms afterward. Then came the indignity of having to go out and look for one of Nickey's feet, because it wasn't accounted for. It was found'half a street away.

  The welts of our boots had his dried blood in them.

  Our hands had ingrained blood around the nails. All our equipment was full of his blood. Even the map in my pocket was red with blood.

  Nicky Smith was twenty years old. He was a nice bloke, with a mother and a girlfriend. I'd seen him write in a letter just the week before:

  "Only forty-two more days and I'll be home."

  My vision of the army at the beginning was getting money, traveling, and all the other things I'd seen in the adverts: You're all on a beach, windsurfing and having fun. Maybe they were Nicky's visions as well.

  Even going to Northern Ireland was exciting because it was another experience. Maybe, I now thought, they needed a few posters in the recruiting office of dead boys in ponchos.

  All too often British soldiers who died on active service in Northern Ireland would get a brief mention on the news-"Last ni lit a British soldier died then go unremembered. But I resolved to myself that I would never forget Nicky Smith. I would always keep the newspaper cuttings. I would always have his bloodstains on my map.

  I was haunted by images of disembodied feet and the Saracen spattered with blood like a child's painting. It made me fucking angry, and I personally wanted to put the world to rights. I wanted to get the people responsible. I suddenly felt that I had a cause, that I was doing something, not just for political shit or because I was saving money to buy a car; I was there because I wanted to do something for my own little gang.

  Saracen armored.car had got bogged down in the cuds near Crossmaglen, and me and another rifleman, Gil, were put on stag to guard it.

  Council estates in rural parts of Northern Ireland consisted of nice bungalows, paid for by subsidies from the European Economic Community. A new one was under construction; the Saracen had gone into the site to turn around and had got bogged down in the mud. Another Saracen was trying to drag it out. The company were called out and were in all-round defense with an inner and an outer cordon but split up into groups of two and three. All our arcs overlapped each other, giving us 360 degrees' cover around the vehicles.

  As we took over, the other fellows told us where our arcs were, what they'd seen, what they hadn't seen, where we were in relation to other people on stage. We lay in the, hedgerow looking out; it was cold, and the grass was soaking. My trousers were wet through.

  My feet started to go numb, my hands were already frozen, and I couldn't cover my head up because my ears had to be exposed so I could listen. I was bored, I was pissed off, and I spent two solid hours slagg
ing down can drivers for burying their vehicles in the mud.

  The SLR (self-loading rifle) at the time had a bipod attached to the barrel that was like a pair of chopsticks with a spring at one end.

  It was a necessary bit of equipment because the rifle was too heavy to hold properly with its cumbersome night sight on. Every now and then I'd have a look through to see what was going on.

  In the early hours of the morning, as I scanned the countryside yet again, I saw some movement. I refocused the night sight and blinked hard. I recognized what I was seeing, but I didn't believe it.

  I quietly said to Gil, "We've got two blokes coming down the hedgerow here."

  Gil said, "Yeah, okay, fuck off, big nose."

  "I'm telling you, we've got two blokes coming down.

  Have a look."

  They were skulking down in front of us, maybe just over a hundred meters away-not that far away at all.

  "Fucking hell, you're right!"

  As they got closer and came into direct line of sight, I could clearly see that one of them was carrying a long (rifle).

  "What the fuck do we do?" Gil said.

  I didn't know. Did we issue a challenge? After all, they might be two of our blokes. But what if they weren't and they went to ground? There was no way of contacting an officer or NCO. We were riflemen, so we couldn't be trusted with a radio. Shouting at the inner cordon would just create confusion; we might as well just do it, do what we'd been taught: issue a challenge, and then, if necessary, fire.

  Easier said than done. We weren't allowed to have a round cocked in our weapon; we would have to issue a challenge, cock our weapons at the same time, and then get back into the aim.

  I pulled the bolt hack and shouted, "Halt! Stand still!

  This is the army!"

  The characters turned.

  We fired.

  The inner cordon saw the tracer and thought we were being fired at. They opened up on us because that was where the fire was coming from. It was the first time I'd ever fired at people, and the first time I had been fired back at-and it didn't help that it was our own boys.

  We had been taught a thing called crack and thump: When somebody's firing at you, what you're supposed to do is listen for the crack and then the thump as the round hits the ground. From that you can work out distances. An interval of one second, for example, would mean that the weapon was about a hundred meters away. However, the theory wasn't working out. I didn't hear any cracks; all I could hear was the thumps.

  Gil and I got our heads down in a ditch and yelled at the inner cordon to stop.

  The firing increased. Reggie had gone up into one of the half-finished buildings to get a better perspective. He followed the line of the inner cordon's tracer and opened up with an LMG, giving it the good news down on us.

  After what seemed like hours, there was a deafening silence.

  Moments after that there was shit on. The world and his wife were trying to get in on the contact. People in the security base had been listening on the radio and legged it down toward the border, hoping to cut them off.

  Pockets of little contacts were starting all over the place.

  Patrols were opening up on cows, trees, and each other. It was chaos.

  I could see tracer flying. If it hit something solid, it would ricochet and then whiz!straight up into the air.

  Soon the follow-up was in full swing. Dogs were helicoptered in to try to pick up the scent, and off we went: me and Gil, the company commander, the company commander's escort, and the dog handler, traipsing through the fields, rivers, and swamps of South Armagh.

  The dogs picked up blood, but the players were good at their trade.

  "The way to evade dogs is to get on flat, open ground," the handler said. "If you start running along riverbeds, it just keeps the scent in those areas."

  "Running over a stream is lack shit use, too," he panted as we jogged along behind the dogs. "All the dog does is a thing called casting on the other side, and he'll pick up the scent again. If you get into a wide-open field, the scent is dispersed. You want to do a lot of zigzagging, which slows the dog down, makes it harder for him to pick up your scent."

  Sometimes the dogs lost the scent and sniffed around aimlessly.

  The handler sent them forward to cast for it.

  They'd pick it up again, and off we'd go. It was exciting stuff, like hare and hounds. It brought out a really basic human instinct.

  It was exciting to be part of something so much bigger than my own little rifle company. There were two helicopters going around on Night Sun, a fearsome big floodlight, with people on the ground directing them by radio. The effort put in to get these two people was massive, and I was a part of that. I was one of the two who instigated it, and it felt really good.

  We were out all night and came back well into first light, empty-handed.

  Our trousers had been shredded by barbed-wire fences. I was soaking wet, cold, and hungry and totally knackered. We still had to carry on work the next day; there were still stags to do, patrols to go out.

  But it didn't worry me at all because I felt so excited; at last I had done what I was there to do.

  Two days later a character turned up at a hospital in the South with a 7.62 wound in his leg. We were sparked up. Gil and I were the local heroes for the next day or two. In a rifle company we were just two dickheads, but now we had our fifteen minutes of fame because we were the latest ones to have had a contact.

  Then all the banter started about who claimed the hit.

  Both of us were crap shots; it was a surprise that anybody had been hit at all.

  The rest of our time in Ireland was just as busy. We had a bomb put outside Baruki sangar one night. It was an old trick, and it always worked: Two slappers came by, hollering and shouting at the boys inside, flashing their arses and working parts. While the lads were checking out the special of the day, a player walked behind the sangar and placed a bomb. When the stag changed, as they opened the door, the bomb should have gone off.

  The two blokes inside didn't have a clue what was going on.

  Luckily the bomb was discovered just in time, and there was a controlled explosion.

  Our colonel, Corden-Lloyd, was very keen on individualism. As far as he was concerned, we all had to wear the same outer clothing, purely so that we'd be recognized in the field. But what we wore underneath was down to us.

  In theory, we should have worn army-issue shirts, thick woolly things that were a pain in the arse. The UN shirt was a much more comfortable alternative, but it was expensive. Corden-Lloyd worked 'out a deal with the manufacturers and took a vote. "If everybody buys two UN shirts, we'll wear UN shirts when we get back to Tidworth," he said. They would work out at sixteen pounds for two-quite a lot, but money well spent.

  Very sadly, the purchase could not be completed. Colonel Corden-Lloyd was aboard a Gazelle helicopter that came down. PIRA said that they shot it down, MoD said it was mechanical failure. Whichever, the best officer I'd ever met was dead.

  When I joined the battalion in Gibraltar, there were one or two blokes that were getting ready to go on selection, running around the Rock on a route called the Med Steps, but being the rug, I'd no idea what it was all about. Then I heard-they were going for the S.A.S, pronounced Sass.

  It was only much later that I found out that to people in it or who work with it, it's not the Sass or even the S.A.S.

  It's just called the Regiment.

  A fellow called Rob lived in a little room in the base at XMG that was no bigger than a cupboard. Sometimes I'd go past and I'd hear the hish of radios and catch a glimpse of plies of maps of South Armagh all over the place. The room was like a rubbish tip; there were bergens, belt kit, and bits and pieces everywhere. Then Rob would go missing, and nobody saw him for weeks and weeks.

  He turned up in the washrooms one day, so I was scrutinizing, seeing what he looked like. He wasn't six feet six inches tall and four feet wide, as I'd expected.

/>   He was about five feet six inches and quite normal-looking. He was wearing a pair of skiddies, a T-shirt, and flip-flops. His washing and shaving kit consisted of a bit of soap in a plastic teacup from a vending machine, a toothbrush, and that was it. He had his wash and left, and that was my introduction to the Regiment.

  There was a warning one day that a chopper was due in ten minutes.

  All the spare hands that were on cookhouse fatigues had to come running out to pick up the load, so the helicopter would have the minimum amount of time on the ground. it could be delivering anything from equipment to food. Sometimes it would have a patrol on board.

  As the rug I was simply told, "There's a helicopter due in in ten minutes, and there's some plastic bags. I want you to pick up the plastic bags and bring them into the camp."

  The chopper came in, the corrugated iron gates were flung open, and everybody ran like an idiot to pick up whatever was going to get dropped and then run back into the camp. I picked up two black plastic bags.

  Both contained what felt like Armalites. Then four or five blokes jumped from the helicopter. They had long curly hair and sideburns that came down and nearly met at the c ' bin like the lead singer of Slade, and they were wearing duvet jackets, jeans, and dessies (desert boots).

  Basically the donkeys, which was us, picked the kit up and legged it in with them. We were told not to speak to these people, just to let them get on with what they were doing. Not that any of us wanted to speak to them anyway; we didn't know how they'd react. All we knew was that they were the Special Air Service, big hard bastards, and they were going to fill us in. Me, the eighteen-year-old, I wasn't going to say jack shit.

  There was only one TV in the whole camp, and that was in a room full of lockers and bits and pieces of shit all over the place. So everybody used to get in really early and book a place, sitting on top of lockers and hanging off chairs, getting on wall units and all this, to watch.

  Even if blokes were asleep, you'd wake them up for Top of the Pops.

  The cookhouse was no bigger than a room in an ordinary house, and that- included the cooking facilities.