‘Well, Catholics couldn’t get jobs and their slums became worse,’ Martin explained. ‘The electoral laws were manipulated to favour owners of property, who were mostly Protestants. Even after more riots in the thirties and forties, nothing changed. Finally, in 1969, the Catholics took to the streets again, where they were attacked by Protestant police and vigilantes. This time they refused to lie down and the whole city went up in flames.’
‘I remember that well,’ Jock said. ‘I saw it on TV. Mobs all over the place, thousands fleeing from their homes, and Army tanks in the streets. I could hardly believe what I was seeing. A civil war on British soil!’
‘Right,’ Ricketts chipped in. ‘And by the time they were done, you had Catholics on one side, Protestants on the other, and the British equivalent of the Berlin Wall between.’
He pointed out of the window of the van, where they could see the actual ‘Peace Line’: a fifteen-foot-high wall topped with iron spikes, cutting across roads, through rows of houses, and, as they had all been informed, right across the city.
‘Which led,’ Sergeant Lampton added laconically, ‘to the birth of the masked IRA terrorist and his opposite number, the loyalist terrorist in balaclava.’
‘And here we are, caught in the middle,’ Ricketts said, ‘trying to keep the peace.’
‘Trying to stay alive,’ Gumboot corrected him, ‘which is all it comes down to. I’ve only got one aim in this piss-hole – to make sure that none of the bastards on either side puts one in my back. Fuck all the rest of it.’
The minibus was now leaving the city to travel along the M1, through rolling hills which, Martin noticed, were dotted with British Army observation posts. Even as he saw the distant OPs, an AH-7 Lynx helicopter was hovering over one of them to insert replacements and take off the men already there. The OPs, Martin knew, were resupplied with men and equipment only by air – never by road.
‘Hard to believe that’s a killing ground out there,’ Sergeant Lampton said. ‘If it wasn’t for the OPs on the hills, it would all seem so peaceful.’
‘It looked peaceful in Oman as well,’ Ricketts said, ‘until the Adoo appeared. It’s the same with those hills – except instead of Adoo snipers, you have the terrorists. They look pretty serene from down here, but you’re right – those are killing fields.’
Martin felt an odd disbelief as he looked at the lush, serene hills and thought of how many times they had been used to hide torture and murder. That feeling remained with him when the minibus turned off the motorway and made its way along a winding narrow lane to the picturesque village of Bessbrook, where the British army had taken over the old mill. Located only four miles from the border, it was a village with a strongly Protestant, God-fearing community – there was not a single pub – and it was presently living through a grim spate of sectarian killings.
As revenge for the killing by Protestant terrorists of five local Catholics, a splinter group calling itself the South Armagh Republican Action Force had stopped a local bus and gunned down eleven men, most of them from Bessbrook, who were on their way home after work. Only one passenger and the Catholic driver had survived. Since that atrocity, both Protestant and Catholic ‘death squads’ had been stalking the countryside of south Armagh, killing people wholesale. It was this, Martin believed, that had prompted the British government to publicly commit the SAS to the area. Yet now, as the minibus passed through the guarded gates of the old mill, he could scarcely believe that this pretty village was at the heart of so many murderous activities.
‘OK,’ Sergeant Lampton said when the minibus braked to a halt inside the grounds of the mill. ‘The fun’s over. All out.’
The side door of the vehicle slid open and they all climbed out into the Security Forces (SF) base as the electronically controlled gates whined shut behind them. The mill had been turned into a grim compound surrounded by high corrugated-iron walls topped by barbed wire. The protective walls were broken up with a series of regularly placed concrete sentry boxes under sandbagged roofs and camouflaged netting. An ugly collection of Portakabins was being used for accommodation and administration. RUC policemen, again wearing flak jackets and carrying Ruger assault rifles, mingled with regular Army soldiers. Saracen armoured cars and tanks were lined up in rows by the side of the motor pool. Closed-circuit TV cameras showed the duty operator in the operations room precisely who was coming or going through the main gates between the heavily fortified sangars.
‘Looks like a fucking prison,’ Gumboot complained.
‘Home sweet home,’ Sergeant Lampton said.
‘Settle down, men,’ Lieutenant Cranfield said when he had taken his place on the small platform in the briefing room, beside Captain Dubois and an Army sergeant seated at a desk piled high with manila folders. When his new arrivals had quietened down, Cranfield continued: ‘You men are here on attachment to 14 Intelligence Company, an intelligence unit that replaced the Military Reconnaissance Force, or MRF, of Brigadier Kitson, who was Commander of Land Forces, Northern Ireland, from 1970 to 1972. A little background information is therefore necessary.’
Some of the men groaned mockingly; others rolled their eyes. Grinning, Cranfield let them grumble for a moment, meanwhile letting his gaze settle briefly on familiar faces: Sergeants Lampton, Ricketts and Parker, as well as Corporal Jock McGregor and Troopers ‘Gumboot’ Gillis and Danny ‘Baby Face’ Porter, all of whom had fought bravely in Oman, before returning to act as Directing Staff at 22 SAS Training Wing, Hereford. There were also some recently badged new men whom he would check out later.
‘In March 1972,’ Cranfield at last began, ‘shortly after the Stormont Parliament was discontinued and direct rule from Westminster substituted, selected members of the SAS, mainly officers, were posted here as individuals to sensitive jobs in Military Intelligence, attached to units already serving in the province. Invariably, they found themselves in a world of petty, often lethal jealousies and division among conflicting agencies – a world of dirty tricks instigated by Military Intelligence officers and their superiors. The MRF was just one of those agencies, causing its own share of problems.’
Now Cranfield glanced at the newcomer, Martin Renshaw, who had endured Sergeant Lampton’s perfect impersonation of an Irish terrorist during the horrendous final hours of the RTI exercises during Continuation Training. What was more, he had done so without forgetting that it was only an exercise, unlike so many others, who were RTU’d as a result. According to his report, Renshaw was a serious young man with good technological training, pedantic tendencies, and heady ambitions.
‘As some of you have come straight from Oman,’ Cranfield continued, ‘it’s perhaps worth pointing out that certain members of the MRF were, like the firqats of Dhofar, former enemies who had been turned. Occasionally using these IRA renegades – known as “Freds” – as spotters, the MRF’s Q-car patrols identified many active IRA men and women, sometimes photographing them with cameras concealed in the boot of the car. Too often, however, MRF operations went over the top, achieving nothing but propaganda for the IRA.’
‘Just like the green slime,’ Gumboot said, copping some laughs from his mates and, as Cranfield noticed, a stony glance from his uneasy associate, the Army intelligence officer Captain Dubois.
‘Very funny, Trooper Gillis,’ Cranfield said. ‘Perhaps you’d like to step up here and take over.’
‘No, thanks, boss. Please continue.’
Cranfield nodded, secretly admiring Gumboot’s impertinence, which he viewed as a virtue not possessed by soldiers of the regular Army. ‘In 1972 a couple of embarrassing episodes led to the disbandment of Kitson’s organization. Number one was when a two-man team opened fire with a Thompson sub-machine-gun from a moving car on