Contact (12 page)

He gets back into his battered wreck of a car and drives off, the raucous sound of the broken exhaust echoing back off the walls. There is nothing going on, the town is quiet as if lying in wait to see what reaction they have sparked by the helicopter incident.

I get the feeling of being one of those shooting-gallery targets that go round on a conveyor belt, endlessly waiting for someone to knock it down. Trouble is, if you get knocked down here, you don't get up. Turn right at the next corner, tell the
O.
P. that we are moving around the waste area by the hall. This is where I suspected that the rocket was fired from, so we'll just take a look around for any evidence.

"Boss, there's a hole in the glass in that top window and another through the netting covering it."

Bill's voice low and whispere
d. I look up and see that there
is a flight of steps leading up. Creep up, checking for trip-wires as I go and find an open door at the top leading into a large room running the width of the hall and about twenty feet deep. The window in question has a good view of the helipad and so could have been the place for the rifles to have been fired from, but because of the back-blast from the rocket launcher, it must have been fired from the ground, possibly by the corner of the hall.

"Find anything down there, Bill?"

"Not a thing."

"O.K., let's go back in."

"Hello 1, this is 11, open back door, over."

"1 Roger out."

We move back in with the O.P.s covering us and go through the unload procedure just inside the gate. A quick de-brief and it's up to the Mess for a brew and a think about the next patrol. The first day drawing to a close in front of the T.V. with a mug of hot, sweet tea. Mind wandering. Eyes closing, to jerk open again, guiltily. Thoughts drifting in the warmth of the tiny room. . .

The room is dirty, smelly, cold and damp. We look just like the enemy we are supposed to represent.
J
eans, anoraks, boots or sneakers and the wild look that comes from being hunted. Three days of being the I.R.A. Three days of getting into the role of murderer. Three days of enjoying the total lawlessness of it all.

"Listen. We'll blow up the patrol tonight. One of the Saracens I think. A thunderflash in a bag of
flour should do the trick. Cause a bit
o
f a stir. Where's Jones, the little shit?" I ask, looking round at the assembled crew. There are sniggers and sidelong looks. It takes a second or two to sink in. "Leighton, go tell the dirty bugger that when he's finished fucking that W.R.A.C. he'd better
get his horny ass in here. And Leighton . . . Come back with him." This time the place erupts.

Outside there is the rumble of a passing armoured car. "Get that light out. There's bound to be a patrol around." The light goes out and we sit in the darkness; waiting; listening. Outside there is t
he
unmistakable tread of Army boots. There is the rustle in the doorway and I can see in my mind a
soldier standing tucked in, ri
fle at the ready, scanning the windows and the roof-tops. Waiting just as we are waiting. He moves on. Inside the house there is an audible sigh of relief.

"Right, we'll meet up again at 2200 hrs. at the junction of Grosvenor Road and the Shankill. Bombers, you know who you are. Jones and Leighton are the diversion, the rest of you, as soon as the bomb
goes off, start something with the troops that arrive on the scene. The object being to ensure that the bombers escape. You know your routes you two?" A nod of assent and then they all disperse. Some out of the back door, some through the tunnel in the roof connecting several houses and a couple remain here with me. Including the W.R.A.C. Private. The waiting isn't
going to be that dull after all.

Later, and we are silent shadows creeping through the darkened cold wet streets. Listen to every sound. Hope you've calculated the timings of the patrols correctly. A scrape of a tin can over to the left. Stop. Melt into a shadow and listen again. Round the corner at the end of the street, the sight of a rifle barrel nosing its way round the brickwork. Shit. They've slipped in an extra patrol. There's nothing to do but to carry on. Up over the wall, through the
garden and lie low in a shed until the patrol passes. Think. What would I do in their position? Have a back-up, that's what. But where? All the questions bouncing through my head. Right. Leave everything rest for ten minutes and then
get on with it. Watch says ten to ten. It's
going to be close.

The other three
guys with me wait silently. Hope they are learning from this.

Ten minutes gone.

"Let's go. Keep down and keep quiet.
"

Crawl back over the wall into the street and on towards our destination. The house I'm looking for is just up the road. The roar of a Saracen in low gear gets louder. Got to get into that bloody house. It's a sprint for the last fifty metres and we make it. Just. In the door and up the stairs to be confronted with the barrel of an M.1 carbine.

"Oh. It's you boss.
"

"Hi Jimmy. A little late I'm afrai
d. Ran into a patrol on the way
here. I think they've been tipped off that something's in the air, so to speak.
"

"I think you're right. Do we go ahead?"

"Yes
,"

He turns to the window and waves down at the garden. The bombers are hiding behind the wall. It's like watching a movie from up here. The Saracen crawling down the street. The two bombers waiting by the wall. Waiting for the signal. Waiting . . .

0400 hrs. May 1976.

Somewhere

Out there

Lurking

Lies our

Greatest

Fear.

"HELLO 1, THIS is 12. Contact, wait, out."

The Ops. Room goes quiet and for a long ten seconds everyone holds their breath. One of the patrols down near the border has just been zapped, but so far we don't know whether it's a bomb or gunmen. The words set the adrenalin flowing and the monster in my stomach wakes and lurches around, the wait dragging on agonisingly.

"Who is it?" The whispered question and anxious look.

"Sgt. Donne's patrol, I think."

In some of the eyes there is excitement, in me there is only dread, because tomorrow it could be me out there. The call goes through to TAC. for a chopper and the stand-by section are ready and waiting by the helipad, but it is going to take time before the thing arrives. Still we wait.

Finally, Sgt. Donne calls through, his voice unsteady, shaky, panting between words. The patrol was attacked by an estimated five gunmen with automatic weapons from a small hill close to the border. None of the patrol were hit but one of the gunmen may have been. A loud sigh of relief goes through the Ops. Room and everyone starts to breathe normally again.

The O.C. is dressed ready to go out to the scene though why he should beats me when the whole thing is over and done with, he's just going to get in the way and be a bloody nuisance.

"Well, we can't claim a hit
without a body so we will just
have to wait and see if there are any funerals in Dundalk or if someone gets admitted to the hospital there." The 2 I.C., tension relieved, tilts back on his chair smiling.

"Come on Clarke, you wanker, get out there."

"I'm staying right here, thank you."

"You're out that way tonight aren't you?"

"Yep, an
O.
P. in that derelict on the border for the next five days. That's why I'm not going out there now!" With that, I give him the two-fingered sign and go off to grab hold of Bill to let him know the timings for the patrol tonight. There really has been too much excitement already today.

"Quack, quack." Denny, my platoon Sgt., creeping up on my day-dreaming.

"What was all the fuss about, boss?"

"Eddie just got jumped on the border by some gunmen. No casualties but he didn't sound too happy."

"Oh well, such is life. When are you out tonight?"

"A Puma's coming in at 2200 hrs. to pick us up. We get dropped off about two thousand metres away and march in to the
O.P
. site."

"You seen the weather forecast? I doubt you'll be getting a helicopter tonight. Rain. Quack, quack."

"Oh cheers, aren't you the optimist. Just what I need, to struggle across country in the rain, at night. Fuck this cunting place."

"Now, now, boss." He goes off making Donald Duck noises.

I find Bill and give him the timings for briefings and disappear off to the cookhouse to make sure all the rations are ready.

"The choppers can't fly because of the weather, Tony." The O.C. telling me what I've already guessed. "But TAC. have offered us a Q. van."

"No way!" says I emphatically. "No way. The local Provo Unit in Newry sent TAC. a list of all the Q. cars and vans with registration numbers, makes
and colours. Don't tell me TAC.
have changed the colours. No. I'd rather walk
, even on a night like tonight.
"

"Well, it's
there if you want it. The S.A.
S. use them."

"Maybe, but not in this area. Christ, if the other side got
wind of one moving around here, you'd never find the bits!"

"When do you plan on leaving, then?"

"In an hour."

Drive around this area in a Q. van! Some of these guys live in cloud-cuckoo land. The only reason we stay alive down here is by not giving the I.R.A. the opportunity to hit us. Q. vans indeed!

The lads are sitting in the briefing-room, yawning, camcream-covered faces looking odd in the clean white room. I tell them that all the forced marches we did in Aldershot are going to pay off because there ain't no helicopters. Chorus of cheers and swearing.

Route explained, we are by the gate and as each man steps out into the night, there is the metallic clicking of rifles being cocked. It's five thousand metres as the crow flies to our destination, but on foot in the pouring rain across country it is going to take us all night just to get half-way. It is blacker than hell with the rain driving into our faces, soaking through our smocks and freezing us before we've gone a couple of hundred yards. The only thing making us do this is discipline and lack of imagination. I try to think of nothing but the job in hand, otherwise I would start jumping at my own shadow and not get ten feet before becoming a nervous wreck. The howling wind and the rain all join together to make the whole thing freaky as hell.

The route takes us well clear of the houses, round the outskirts of the town, at first moving west, then south, and finally turning east to circle round the little cluster of houses called Monog. A large hill rises up behind the village like a brooding black dinosaur, trees like spikes flailing around in the wind. The grass in the fields is tall and thick and wet, making walking difficult and filling our boots with water. At least walking uphill like this
the exertion keeps us warm, but
at every hedge we have to stop, collect together, go through, stop again, collect again and when the last man is through move off once more. It is time-consuming and energy-sapping but essential. Bombs and booby traps don't go to sleep at night.

At last, after what seems an age, we are on top of the hill. We quickly move away from the skyline into the lee of the hill and settle down for a brief rest and sort out the rest of the route. I'm doing the map-reading and leading, which is really by feel and instinct as the features are not recognisable in this weather, so taking bearings on an object is a waste of time.

"We are never going to get in tonight, boss."

"You're right Bill, but we've got to get as close as possible so that tomorrow night we can take our time moving in. Where's Cpl. Jonson?"

"Just following up my tail end."

"
O.
K. boss, all in now." Cpl. Jonson appearing out of the darkness, rain dripping down his beret on to his face and off his nose.

"We'll make a firm base about here," I say, pointing to the map which is lit by a pinpoint of light from a torch cupped in my hand, "and hole up until midnight tomorrow. It is going to take us until first light to get there at the rate we have been going, so for Christ's sake don't let anybody lag behind."

"O.K. boss."

"Let's go."

I haul my sodden body off the ground, rearrange the pack on my aching shoulders, snuggle my S.L.R. into the crook of my arm and we are off again. It is not so much the contacts with gunmen that scare the hell out of me, it's walking into a booby trap or stepping on a landmine. In the dark like this there is no way of being able to scan the ground for likely areas, you just put one foot in front of the other and hope. I don't find it exciting in the least. It scares the living shit out of me.

The rain stopped an hour ago
with the beginnings of dawn.
That time of the day that gently pushes aside the night, the mist hanging in the valleys like cobwebs, draped over the trees, wrapped around the edges of hills, hiding small farms that gradually poke their chimneys through the greyness as the mist disperses with a slight stirring of a breeze. I look at the lads spread around the hollow of rock we found, pale faces smudged with cam-cream that has all but come off with the rain and the exertion. Some are falling asleep in their soggy clothes, others are making a brew.

"I've put the three guns up on the edges of the hollow, boss, with good views and fields of fire. You've just got to work out the stags for your patrol."

"Cheers, Bill." Turning to my radio op. "Smith, have you got a brew on yet?"

"Just coming boss."

All the talk is in whispers, all the movements slow and deliberate. Undoing the pack of rations takes time if we're not to make any noise. The whole thing now being second nature. Rubbish is carried with us until we get back to base, dirty tins sitting in a pack for five days gradually growing mould. Smith brings a steaming mug of tea and we sit sharing it in the gathering light, him sitting there with his headphones on listening to the radio traffic, me hunched over the map going through the route tonight and all the possibilities about being compromised. The particular derelict we are going to is literally right on the border and has been the scene of O.P.s before, which were discontinued after a particularly nasty incident when it was attacked with mortar and small-arms fire. Anyway, I figured it might be worth the risk of putting one in to monitor the traffic across the border. The success of the thing depends on whether we can get in unseen and remain that way until we finish. If we get spotted there are going to be a lot of nervous soldiers about. Shit, what did I volunteer for? I've got to have a loose cog in my brain.

"Did you see London's rifle sir, where the bullet smashed it? He was a lucky fucker, he said the rounds went between his legs. Shit, he was a lucky fucker." Smith talking to himself
more than me.

"They reckon they got one of the cunts though. Saw him being dragged off by one of the others."

I grunt an acknowledgement. I wonder what's going through his mind? What went through mine when I was that age? Envy? Thinking to himself and wondering what it must be like to come under fire like that?

Don't think. I've been there and it is a scary thing. Something you can best do without, I want this to be a nice peaceful tour. What am I saying, we hadn't been here two minutes and a chopper was
hit, then some idiot of an S.A.
S. officer shot some guy he said was trying to take his rifle off him and caused a storm because nobody believed a word of
it. Then a whole car-load of S.A.
S. got picked up in the Republic in a civilian car in civilian clothes and armed to the teeth. The excuse was that they got lost. Well, if that's the élite then what the fuck must the rest of us be like? Cowboys, the lot of them; there are some guys I've recognised who have failed our selection tests,
so how did they get into the S.A.
S? I wouldn't give them the time of day. A few years ago after the Belfast tour, we took part in an exercise as enemy, with them. After a couple of days we were asked to take twenty-four hours off to give them a chance to regroup because we had completely compromised all their R.V. points. They are
a joke.

Still, it's not worth getting hot under the collar, it just annoys me when guys like us, who spend all the time on the ground doing the donkey-work, get the worst equipment and the cannon-fodder tasks. Shit, this whole mess is getting to me.

Luckily the sun came out during the day and we were able to get our clothes dry. Nobody has been near us all day, so hopefully they don't know we are in the area. With the return of another night, the clouds start forming overhead and pretty soon we are going to be in for another rainstorm. Quack, quack. Just what we need to start five days without being able to move or talk or anything.

The patrol into the O.P. site has gone well so far, with nobody sighted and the village, just before the border, passed without so much as a dog barking. The lads are working well and I'm glad we managed to get a rest after last night's trek through the rain; it has made all the difference. The closer we get the more alert we get, stopping at the slightest sound, listening for long minutes, eyes trying to pierce the darkness and interpret the shapes. Buildings take on a sinister presence, trees become giants hovering over us, waiting to strike. Every stone wall, every gatepost, every hedge, hides a bomb and as the imagination starts to take over, I stop to take control of myself again and be rational. Exercises were never like this.

The other members of the patrol seem to be totally unconcerned as we near our objective. Cpl. Menzies and Cpl. Jonson break off and take their patrols to their positions. I have organised it so that my patrol mans the actual O.P. site and the others cover our rear and over to the hill where previously the mortar attack had been launched from. I've chosen a spot just away from the derelict, not trusting the place for fear of booby traps; in the junction of two walls which will give us cover from fire as well as view. It is full of six-foot-high stinging nettles, so requires some careful work to get right into the middle of it.

There is a large tree overhanging the wall so we can stand watching the road quite happily without being seen. I've brought along a small tape-recorder so that we don't have to write anything down, just whisper all the information.

"Smith, signal 1 in position," I whisper in the radio op.'s ear, and the O.P. is operational. Home for the next four days.

Two on stag at a time, one on the observation point, the other guarding. The two not on stag sleep. Four hours on, four hours off, staggered so that while one is starting the other is into his last two hours. Watch, guard, eat out of tins, no cooking allowed, sleep and then begin the whole process again. The longer you remain in these things, the greater the risk of being compromised. Four young soldiers were killed in a border O.P. when they fell as
leep in their sleeping-bags and
were shot whilst trying to escape. The lesson was painfully simple. Drop your guard just once and the bastards will get you. All these thoughts going through my head as I take my stag and whisper the registration numbers of passing cars into the tape and watch as a farmer cycles past whistling to himself
in the rain.