Энди МакНаб. Немедленная операция(engl) Immediate Action By Andy McNab COVERT. COCAINE. COLOMBIA. ANOTHER MISSION. ANOTHER WAR. ANOTHER FACE-OFF WITH DEATH ... "I took my belt kit off and got down on my belly. All I had with me was my pistol as I kitten-crawled toward the perimeter. I put my hands out, put pressure on my elbows, and pushed myself forward with the tips of my toes. Six inches at a time, I moved through the undergrowth. I stopped, lifted my head from the dirt of the jungle floor, looked and listened. I heard my own breath, and it sounded a hundred times louder than anything around me. The leaves crackled more than they normally would; everything was magnified ten times in my mind. I inched forward again. It took an hour to cover twenty meters. We were right on top of the target now, and movement was the thing that was going to give us away." Also by Andy McNab BRAVO TWO ZERO The true story of an S.A.S Patrol behind enemy lines in Iraq Published by Dell Publishing a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. 1540 Broadway New York, New York 10036 If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book." Copyright 1995 by Andy McNab All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Bantam Press, London, England. The trademark DellO is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. ISBN: 0-440-22245-1 Reprinted by arrangement with Bantam Press Printed in the United States of America Published simultaneously in Canada September 1996 The windows and doors of the building were boarded up and bristled with barbed wire, but that wasn't going to keep us out. An old sheet of corrugated iron naled over the frame of a small door on the side was loose. jamming a length of wood into the gap, I heaved with all my weight. The nails gave. Several pairs of hands gripped the corner of the sheet and pulled. The metal folded on itself sufficiently to create a hole that we could crawl through. Murky light spilled down from a run of six or seven skylights in the flat roof thirty feet above our heads. In the gloom I could see lumps of metal here and there on the bare concrete floor, but apart from that the place seemed empty. There was a dank smell of mold and rotten wood and plaster. It was totally, eerily silent; had we made the slightest noise it would have echoed around the vast space. Probably nobody on the outside would hear it and raise the alarm, but I didn't want to take the chance. I looked at the others and nodded in the direction of the stair-well at the far end. As I took a pace forward, my foot connected with a tin can. It went skidding across the floor and clattered into a lump of metal. From over my shoulder came a whispered curse. I could see that the stairwell would take us up to the offices on the half floor, then up again to a hatch that was open to the sky. Once we were on the roof, that was when the fun and games would start. It felt colder thirty feet up than it had at ground level. I exhaled hard and watched my breath form into a cloud. I started to shiver. I walked to the edge of the flat roof and looked down at the tops of the lampposts and their pools of light. The street was deserted. There was no one around to see us. Or to hear the crash of breaking glass. I spun around and looked at the three figures standing near one of the skylights. There should have been four. A split second later there was a muffled thud from deep inside the building. "John!" somebody called in a loud, anxious whisper. "John!" I knew even before I looked through the jagged hole that he would be dead. We all did. We exchanged glances, then ran back toward the roof hatch . John was lying very still; no sound came from his body. He was facedown on the concrete, a dark pool oozing from the area of his mouth. It looked shiny in the twilight. "Let's get out of here," somebody said, and as one we scarpered for the door. I just wanted to get home and get my head under the covers, thinking that then nobody would ever find out-as you do, when you're just eight years old. The next afternoon there were police swarming all around the flats. We got in league to make sure we had the same story because basically we thought we were murderers. I'd never felt so scared. It was the first time I'd ever seen anybody dead, but it wasn't the sight of the body that disturbed me; I was far more concerned about what would happen if I got nicked. I'd seen Z Cars; I had visions of spending the rest of my life in prison."thought I'd rather die than have that happen to me. I'd had a very ordinary childhood up until then."wasn't abused; I wasn't beaten, I wasn't mistreated. it I, was Just a norma run-of-the-mill childhood. I had an older brother, who was adopted, but he'd left home and was in the army. My parents, like everybody else on our estate in Bermondsey, spent lots of time unemployed and were always skint. My mum's latest job was in a chocolate factory during the week, and then at the weekend she'd be in the launderette doing the service washes. The old man did minicabbing at night and anything he could get hold of during the day. He would help mend other people's cars and always had a fifteen-year-old Ford Prefect or Hillman Imp out the front that he'd be doing things to. We moved a lot, always chasing work. I'd lived at a total of nine different addresses and gone to seven schools. My mum and dad moved down to Heme Bay when I was little. It didn't work out, and then they had to try to get back on the council. My mother got pregnant and had a baby boy, and I had to live with my aunty Nell for a year. This was no hardship at all. Aunty Nell's was great. She lived in Catford, and the school was just around the corner. Best of all, she used to give me a hot milk drink at night-and, an unheard-of luxury, biscuits. From there we went on the council and lived quite a few years on the housing estates in Bermondsey. Aunty Nell's husband, George, died and left my mum a little bit of money, and she decided to buy a corner cafe. We moved to Peckham, but the business fell through. My mum and dad were not business people, and everything went wrong; even the accountant ripped them off. We went onto private housing, renting half a house. My uncle Bert lived upstairs. Mum and Dad were paying the rent collector, but it wasn't going to the landlord, so eventually we got evicted and landed up going into emergency council housing. Money was always tight. We lived on what my mum called teddy bear's porridge-milk, bread, and sugar, heated up. The gas was cut off once, and the only heat source in the flat was a three-bar electric fire. Mum laid it on its back in the front room and told us we were camping. Then she balanced a saucepan on top and cooked that night's supper, teddy bear's porridge. I thought it was great. I joined my first gang. The leader looked like the lead singer of the Rubettes. Another boy's dad had a used-car lot in Balham; we thought they were filthy rich because they went to Spain on a holiday once. The third character had got his eyes damaged in an accident and had to wear glasses all the time, so he was good for taking the piss out of. Such were my role models, the three main players on the estate. I wanted to be part of them, wanted to be one of the lads. We played on what we called bomb sites, which was where the old buildings had been knocked down to make way for new housing estates. Sometimes we mucked around in derelict buildings; the one on Long Lane was called Maxwell's Laundry. We used to sing the Beatles song "Bang, Bang, Maxwell's Silver Hammer" and muck about inside it, throwing stones and smashing the glass. There were all the signs up, NO Y, and all the corrugated iron, boards, and barbed wire, but that just made it more important that we got inside. We'd get up . on the roof and use the skylights as stepping-stones in games of dare. It was fun until the kid fell and died. I changed gangs. For the initiation ceremony I had to have a match put to my arm until the skin smoked and there was a burn mark. I was dead chuffed with myself, but my mum came home from her shift at the launderette, saw the state of my arm, and went ApeShit. I couldn't understand it. She dragged me off to the house of the Rubettes' lead singer to moan at his old girl. The two mums had a big shouting thing on the landing, while we just stood there giggling. As far as I was concerned, I was in the gang; let them argue as much as they like. As I mixed more with the other kids, I started to notice that I didn't have as much stuff as they did. The skinhead era started and everybody had to have Docker Green trousers and Cherry Red boots. I said I didn't want any. We'd go to the swimming pool once a week, and the routine afterward was to go and buy a Love Heart ice cream or Arrowroot biscuits out of a jar. I never had the money for either and had to try to ponce half a biscuit off somebody. I never tasted a Love Heart, but one day I scrounged enough money from somewhere and made a special trip to buy one-only to find that it had been discontinued. I bought an Aztec bar instead and felt very grown up. Unfortunately there was nobody to show it off to because I was on my own. I tried the Cubs once but never got as far as having a uniform. We had to pay subs each week, but I managed to lie my way out of paying the first few times. Then, on Tuesday nights, we had to have plimsolls to play five-aside. I didn't have any, so I nicked somebody else's. I got caught and had the big lecture: "Thieving's bad." That was the end of Cubs. I knew that older boys got money by earning it, so I got chatting to the milkman and persuaded him to let me help with his Sunday round on the estate. He'd give me half a crown, which I used to buy a copy of Whizzer & Chips, a bottle of Coke, and a Mars bar. That left me with just sixpence, but it was worth it. It was all very important to me, buying the Coke and the Mars- bar, because it was grown-up stuff, even if it was only one day a week. One of the gang wore "wet look" leather shoes, which were all the rage. His hair, too, was always shiny, like he'd just stepped out of a bath. At our house we had a bath only on Sundays. He had one every night, which I thought was very sophisticated. We used to go into his bedroom messing around; one day I noticed that he had a ten-shilling note in his moneybox. As far as I was concerned, he was loaded and wouldn't miss it. I nicked it, and nothing was ever said."started nicking more and more. My mum used to have a load of stuff on the slate in the CoOp. When she sent me for milk and other bits and pieces, I'd take some extras and put them on tick. I knew she wouldn't check the bill; she'd just pay it when she had money. I'd never lived with my older brother. All I could remember was him coming home from the army with presents. I didn't really know him, and he didn't really know me. One time when he was home on leave, though, he noticed that my reading was crap and he started teaching me. I must have been about eight or nine, and I still didn't know my alphabet. He sat me down and made me go through it. It made me feel special that he was spending time with me. However, the short lesson wasn't enough to change me. When I got to secondary school, I had a rearing age of seven. I came into school late one day and was walking down the corridor. The housemaster collared me and said, "Where are you going?" "To my classroom." "Where are your shoes?" I looked down at my plimsolls. I didn't understand what he meant. Then it dawned on me. "I haven't had any shoes this year." I had to go and get a form for my parents to sign for grants. I was on a free bus pass, free school dinners. I even had to stand in a special "free dinners" queue in the school canteen. It wasn't just me; the main catchment areas were Brixton and Peckham, so a lot of kids were in the same boat. But all the same, it was one particular gang I wanted out of. The thieving got stupid. We started by nicking pens from Woolworth's for our own use, and soon we were stealing stuff for selling. We walked past a secondhand furniture shop with a few new bits and pieces among the display on the pavement. A small, round wine table caught my eye; we ran past and picked it up, then went down to another secondhand place and sold it for ten bob. We spent it straightaway in Ross's car on cheese rolls and frothy coffees. I stole money one day off my aunty Nell's neighbor. I took the pound note to the sweet shop, and my aunty Nell was behind me without me knowing. She didn't say anything at the time but phoned up the school. The headmistress summoned me to her office and said, "What were you doing with all that money?" "I found this old mirror," I said. "I got some varnish, done it up, sold it, and got two quid for it." I got away with it. I thought I was so clever; everybody else was a mug for letting me steal from them. Because my mum and dad were working hard, I had a lot of freedom. I repaid them by being a complete shit. My mum had broken her leg and was sitting in the front room one night watching Peyton Place. She said, "Don't eat the last orange, Andy, I'm going to have it for my dinner later on." I knew she couldn't get up and hit me, so I picked it up and started peeling it, throwing the peel out of the window. My mum went ApeShit, but I ate the orange in front of her, then ran out of the house when my father appeared. I slipped on the orange peel and broke my wrist. After school, and sometimes instead of school, we used to go thieving in places like Dulwich Village and Penge, areas that we reckoned deserved to be robbed. We'd saunter past people sitting on park benches, grab their handbags, and do a runner. Or they'd be leaving their cars unattended for a minute or two while they bought their children an ice cream; we'd lean through the window and help ourselves to their belongings. If a p car was hired or had a foreign plate, we'd always know there was stuff in the boot. And as we learned, they were easy enough to break into. In school lunch breaks we often used to take our school blazers off and hide them in holdalls so no one could identify us when we stole. We thought we were dead clever. The fact that ours was the only comprehensive school in the whole area didn't really occur to us. Then we'd go around looking for things to steal. We got into a car one day, took a load of letters, and discovered that they contained checks. We were convinced that we'd cracked it. None of us had the intelligence to realize that we couldn't do anything with them. We broke into a camping shop one night in Forest Hill. There were three of us, and we got in through the flat roof. Again, we didn't really know what we wanted. It was one of the places where you could go and buy swimming ribbons to put on your trunks. So the priority was to get a few of those and all become gold-medal swimmers. After that we didn't know what to do, so one of us took a shit in the frying pan in the little camping mock-up that they had as a window display. At the age of fourteen I was starting to get all hormonal and trying to impress the girls that I was clean and hygienic. You could buy five pairs of socks for a quid in Peckham market, but they were all outrageous colors like yellow and mauve. I made sure that everybody saw I was wearing a different color every day. I also started to have a shower every night down at Goose Green swimming baths. It cost five pence for the shower and a towel, two pence for soap, and two pence for a little sachet of shampoo. I wore clean socks, I was kissably clean, but I was overweight. The girls didn't seem to go a bundle on fat gits in orange socks. Then the Bruce Lee craze swept the country. People would roll out of the pubs and into the late-night movie, then come out thinking they were the Karate Kid. Outside the picture houses, curry houses, and Chinese takeaways of Peckham of a Friday night, there was nothing but characters head-butting lampposts and each other to Bruce Lee sound effects. I took up karate in a big way and got into training three times a week. It was great. I was mixing with adults as well as people of my own age, and I started to lose weight. I was also doing a bit of running. The schooling and all things academic were still bad. I got in with a fellow called Peter, who wore his cuffs and big, round butterfly collars outside his blazer. I thought he was smooth as fuck in his big, baggy trousers. He asked if I wanted to do a couple of weeks' work for his dad, and I jumped at the offer. His old man owned a haulage firm. Peter and I loaded electrical goods into wagons, then helped deliver them. We made a fortune, mainly because we nicked radios, speakers, and anything else we could get our hands on when the driver wasn't looking. I earned more than my old man that month. Even in adult life people would have perceived that as a good job. My attitude was, "Get out of school because it's shit, get a job, earn some money," and that was it. I didn't realize how much I was limiting my horizons, but there was no guidance from the teachers. They were having to spend too much time just trying to control the kids, let alone educate us. They had no opportunity to show us that there was anything beyond the little world we lived in. I didn't realize there was a choice, and I didn't bother to look. In the sort of place that we lived, a really good job would be getting on the print or the docks. Next level down would be an underground driver on London Transport. Other than that, you went self-employed. I landed up working more or less full-time for the haulage contractor, delivering Britvic mixers and lemonade during the summer. I managed to get extra pallets of drinks put on the wagons, sold them to the pubs, and pocketed the proceeds. In the wintertime I delivered coal. I thought I was Jack the lad because I could lift the coal into the chutes. I couldn't move for old ladies wanting to make me cups of tea. I thought I knew everything I needed to know. I pitied the poor dickheads at school, working for nothing. I was making big dough; I had all the kit that I'd wanted two years ago. I lost my virginity on a Sunday afternoon when I was fifteen. My mate's sister was about seventeen. She was also willing and available, but very fat. I didn't know who was doing whom a favor. It was all very rumbly, all very quick, and then she made me promise that I wasn't going to tell anybody. I said that I wouldn't, but as soon as I could, like the shit that I was, I did. The contract work finished, and I started working at McDonald's in Catford, which had just opened. Life there was very fast and furious. I was sweeping and mopping the floors every fifteen minutes. I could have a coffee break, but I had to buy all my own food. There was no way I could fiddle anything because it was all too well organized. I hated it. The money was crap, too, but marginally better than the dole-and besides, the McDonald's was nearer to home than the dole office. I started to get into disappearing for a while. A bloke and I did his aunty's gas meter and traveled to France on day passes, telling the ferries our parents were at the other end to collect us. On the way back we even stole a life Jacket and tried to sell it to a shop in Dover. I had no consideration whatsoever for my parents. Sometimes I'd come back at four in the morning and my mum would be flapping. Sometimes we'd have the police coming around, but there was nothing they could do apart from give me a big fearsome bollocking. I thought I was the bee's knees because there was a police car outside the house. I started going off the rails good style, sinking as low as tipping over Portaloos so I could snatch the occupants' handbags. One day three of us were coming out of a basement flat we'd just burgled in Dulwich when we were challenged by the police. We got cornered near the railway station by a handler and his dog. As soon as the police gripped me, I was scared. I bluffed in the van because the other two weren't showing any fear. But as soon as we got separated at the station, I wanted to show the police that I was flapping. I wanted them to take pity on me; I wanted them to see that I wasn't that bad, just easily led. The station was a turn-of-the-century place with high ceilings, thickly painted walls, and polished floors. As I sat waiting in the interview room, I could hear the squeak of boots in the corridor outside. I wanted so badly for somebody to come in; I wanted the police to know that I wasn't bad; I'd fucked up, but it was the other two's fault. My heart was pumping. I wanted my mum. It was the same horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that I'd had running home from Maxwell's Laundry. I had visions of ending up in Borstal or prison or being the new young meat in an overcrowded remand wing. I'd always looked up to the local characters who'd been in prison, and I thought they were really hard. Now I knew that they must have hated it, too. All their stuff about "being inside" must have been hollow bravado; it wasn't glamorous, and it wasn't exciting. It was horrible. When my parents came up to the police station and I saw the shame and disappointment in my mums eyes, I thought: Is this it? Is this what I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life? Having a cell door slammed behind me, was bad enough; it was claustrophobic and lonely in there, and I was very scared. But I'd never seen Mum like that before, and I felt terrible. I decided I was going to change. Alone in the interview room I said to myself: "Right, what am I going to do? I'm going to start getting myself sorted out." There had been one brief spell at school when I'd really got into English. I did a project on Captain Scott and got an A. I thought it was really great, but then I just dropped it. I got into history for a short while and enjoyed making a model of an Anglo-Saxon village. Maybe I could make a go of it. I didn't want to land up as just another local nutter who thought he was dead cool because he had a Mark III Cortina and a gold chain around his neck. So what was I going to do? There was no way I could get a decent job in South London. Academically I wasn't qualified, and certainly I didn't have the aptitude to work in a factory. In the back of my mind there had always been ideas about the army. When my uncle Bert had lived upstairs, I'd heard him talking to my mum once about the army. He'd joined just before the Second World War because they were going to feed him three meals a day. And I knew they educated you because my mum had said so about my brother. Aunties and uncles would say, "John's away now." My parents would reply, "Oh, yes, make a man of him." I'd seen all the adverts for the army-blokes on windsurfers who always seemed to have loads of money, going places and doing stuff. And at least it would educate me. Why not do three years, I thought, and see what it's like? My brother had enjoyed it, so why not me? If nothing else, it would get me out of London. As soon as the interview started, I said, "Please, I don't want to be in the shit because I want to join the army. It wasn't my idea going in the flat. I was just dragging along. They told me to keep dog. Then they came running out, and I ran with them," And I kept on bubbling. I got put into a remand hostel for three days while I waited to go in front of the magistrates. I hated every minute of being locked up, and I swore to myself that if I got away with it, I'd never let it happen again. I knew deep down that I really would have to do something pretty decisive or I'd end up spending my entire life in Peckham, fucking about and getting fucked up. On judgment day the other two got probation; I got let off with a caution. I was free to carry on where I'd left off, or I could show everybody, including myself, that this time I meant business. I jumped on a bus that would take me past the army recruiting office. want to fly helicopters," I said to the recruiting sergeant. "I want to go in the Army Air Corps." I took a simple test in English and math, which I failed. "Come and try again in a month's time," the sergeant said. "The test will be exactly the same." I went down to the public library and studied a book on basic arithmetic. If I could master multiplication, I told myself, I'd never again have to hear the sound of a cell door slamming. Four weeks later I went back in, sat the same test, and passed-by two points. The sergeant gave me a pile of forms to take home. "What are you going in?" my dad said. "Army Air Corps." "That's all right then. We don't want any of that infantry shit. You don't learn anything in that." I was given a travel warrant and went off to Sutton Coldfield for the three-day selection process. We were given medicals and simple tests of the "If this cog turns this way, which way does that cog turn?" variety and did a bit of sport. We watched films and were given talks about teeth arms and support arms and where the army was in the world. I was loving it. The Army Air Corps seemed to operate everywhere; Cyprus and Hong Kong looked good for starters. As I was going through the tests, though, the terrible truth dawned on me that there was no way I was going to become a pilot. A lot of the other candidates were in the brain surgeon bracket, loaded down with 0 levels and going for junior apprenticeships to become artificers and surveyors. You'd have to be in their same league to go for pilot training, and I didn't have a qualification to my name. All the time I had wasted humping coal and lemonade flashed in front of me as if I were a drowning man. For the first time since I'd been old enough to do something about it, I was surrounded by blokes who had something that I wanted, but this time it was something that couldn't be nicked. At the final interview an officer said to me, "You can go into the Army Air Corps and train as a refueler. However, I don't think you would be best suited to that. You're an active sort of bloke, aren't you, McNab?" "I suppose so." "Probably fancy a bit of traveling, seeing a bit of the world?" "That's me." "Well then, have you considered a career in the infantry? There's a lot more potential. The battalions move every two or three years, so you're going to different places. It's a more exciting life for a young man. We have vacancies in the Royal Green jackets." "Right, I'll have some of that." I was quite proud of myself. I thought I'd cracked it. I was a man; I was in the army now. I couldn't wait to get home and tell my parents the news. "What did you land up in then?" the old man asked, looking up from his paper. "The Royal Green Jackets." "What's that?" "Part of the Light Division." I beamed. "You knowlight infantry." "You wanker!" he exploded, hurling his newspaper to the floor. "You're not going to learn anything. All you're going to do is run around humping a big pack on your back." But I was not going to be deterred. A couple of days later, when it was clear that my mind was made up, my mum handed me an envelope and said, "I think you need to know all about this." I opened the envelope and pulled out my adoption certificate. It wasn't a shock. I knew my brother was adopted, and I'd always just taken it for granted that I was, too. I wasn't really fussed about it. "I met your natural mother when you were about a year old," my mum said. "She told me that she worked for a Greek immigrant who'd come over to England in the fifties and was running a nightclub in the West End. She sold the cigarettes in the club and was seventeen when she fell pregnant by him. She told me neither of them wanted a baby so she left you on the hospital steps in a carrier bag." My mum and dad had fostered me more or less straightaway and eventually adopted me. "She wasn't really concerned about you, Andy," my mum said. "She said to me, 'I can always have other kids." In September 1976 I had what I thought was the world's most fearsome haircut and boarded the train to Folkestone West. Double-decker buses were waiting to take everybody to the Junior Leaders' Battalion camp at Shorncliffe. As soon as we got there all eleven hundred of us were given another haircut. A really outrageous bone haircut-all off, with just a little mound on the top like a circle of turf. I knew straightaway I was going to hate this place. The first few days were a blur of bullshit, kit issue, and more bullshit. We couldn't wear jeans; they were ungentlemanly. We had to stand to attention if even a private came into the room. I thought I was hard, but there were people here who made me look like the Milky Bar Kid. They had homemade tattoos up their arms and smoked roll-ups. If they couldn't find somebody to pick a fight with, they'd just scrap among themselves. Shit, I thought, what's it going to be like when I get to the battalion? I wanted out. It was a very physical existence. If we weren't marching, we'd be doubling. We were in the gym every day, running and jumping. I actually got to like it. I found out I was quite good at running and started to get more and more into sport. As a young soldier, milling was part of any selection or basic training at the time. They'd put four benches I together to make a square and say, "Right, you and you, in you go," and in we'd go and try to punch hell out of each other. Most blokes just got in there and swung their arms like idiots. The hard nuts from Glasgow and Sheffield were a bit more polished, but I was amazed to find that one of the best punchers of all came from Peckham. Before I knew it, I was on the company boxing team. One good thing about getting into any sports team in the army is that you're excused from all the other training. Another is that you get to walk around in a maroon tracksuit all day, looking and feeling a bit special. I won my two bouts at welterweight, and my company won the battalion championships. We got to the army finals, and I won the welterweight title. As far as I was concerned, my future was sealed: I'd go to 1RGJ, the boxing battalion, be a boxer for three years, then get out. What was even better, 1RGJ were off to Hong Kong. A lot of the other blokes resented us sports people. Maybe it was the color of the tracksuit, or maybe it was because we were allowed straight to the front of the dinner queue as a privilege. The boxing team swaggered in one lunchtime, went to the head of the queue, and started slagging off the other blokes. "You think you're fucking it, don't you?" said one of the Glasgow boys. I answered with a smirk and walked on to the front and waited for the doors to be opened. A Glaswegian mouth came very close to my ear and said, "What's the difference between your leg and maroon tracksuits?" Ishrugged. "None," he said, "they're both full of pricks," and with a massive grunt he rammed his fork straight into my thigh. I staggered back a pace and looked down. The fork was embedded in my leg right up t'o the ends of the prongs. I grabbed hold of it and pulled gently, but my leg muscle had gone into rigid spasm, and I couldn't get the thing out. I wrenched as hard as I could and pulled it free. The prongs were red with blood as I did an aboutturn an . d marched from the canteen. There was no way I was going to say anything. It wasn't until I got around the corner that I covered my mouth with my hand and screamed. Boxing finished. I went back to the platoon, still with at least six months to do with the same intake. I was way behind. I'd done the weapon training, but I hadn't had time to consolidate it. I was really brought down-to-earth; they knew a lot more than I did. But I worked hard at it and even got a promotion. For the last three months we were given ranks, from junior lance corporal to junior RSM. It meant jack shit really. On Friday mornings we had the colonel's cross-country over a six-mile course in and around the camp. The whole battalion had to race. If you came behind the colonel, you had to do it again on Sunday, whether you were staff or a junior soldier After that, we'd go to a training area to practice being wet, cold, and hungry. I enjoyed it; at least we were away from the camp. I got better and better at it, and it made me feel good. There was a ritual. The provo sergeant would come out of the guardroom and greet everyone back. It was the first time we had been given any respect. We would be staggering back as a platoon, with our silly tin hats on, kit hanging off us, stinking, our faces covered in cam cream, and he would come out and give praise. "Well done! Keep it going!" he'd boom. It gave me a sense of pride that I'd never felt before, especially as he spent the rest of his time bollocking us. Then came the weapon cleaning, which took until the end of Saturday or Sunday morning. Then the weekend! We couldn't go home, and we were allowed out only until ten o'clock-and only to the local town. To the lads in Folkestone we were a nuisance because we had money. You could show a girl a really good time on three quid a week. I met a girl called Christine at the Folkestone Rotunda, and we started to see each other as often as we could. I really started to enjoy it all. I'd finally got to grips with the system of "bullshit baffles brains": just do what they say, even if you know it's a bag of shit, and it keeps everybody happy. And the more I enjoyed it, the more I didn't mind working at it, and the better I got. The exercises started to get more and more intense. We'd be out one or two nights a week, culminating in a two-week battle camp where all the different phases of war were practiced, with live firing attacks. Now, at last, I started to understand what I was doing. Before, I had just dug a hole and sat in it. Now I knew why I was sitting in it. Every eight weeks we had leave. I met up with my old mates in Peckham when I went back one time, but there was a distinct change. We'd drifted apart. Even after such a short length of time our worldviews had changed. All they were interested in was what I had been interested in when I left: mincing around. I didn't feel superior-the other way around, if anything. I thought I was missing out. They were talking about getting down to Margate, but on Sunday I'd have my best dress uniform on, marching down to the garrison church. Nonetheless, I couldn't wait to get to my battalion. I got chosen to take one of the passing-out guards and received a letter saying, "Congratulations on being presented with the Light Division sword. Well done, and I really hope your career goes well." I didn't have a clue what the Light Division sword was. I discovered that each regiment had this award, presented to the most promising young soldier. I also discovered that it meant a day's rehearsal where I had to practice going up, shaking the hand, saluting, taking the sword, turning around, and marching back off. At last the whole battalion had to get into the gym for presentations by the colonel to all the different companies. I thought the sword was marvelous and looked forward to seeing it mounted on my bedroom wall. But as I left the podium, a sergeant took it off me and gave me a pewter mug in exchange. The sword went back to the regimental museum. The passing-out parade was quite a big affair. My parents came down, and my older brother and his family. It was quite strange because they'd never been really that into it; Mum and Dad never even used to go to parents' evenings at my school. In fact, it was the first time any of my family had ever turned up to anything. It really was the day I thought I'd become a soldier. We wore I.J.L.B (infantry junior leaders battalion) cap badge and belt, and as soon as we came off the passingout parade, we could put on our own regimental kit, the Green jacket beret. There was another little matter to be attended to. Our beautifully hulled hobnail boots had to be returned to the stores, apart from those of the guardsmen who were going to take them to their battalion for ceremonial duties. So we all lined up and bashed them on the pavement until the bull cracked like crazy paving. No other fucker was going to get their hands on them and have it easier than we did. went on leave for a couple of weeks, then reported to the Rifle Depot at Winchester. I felt a mixture of excitement an worry as the eleven of us joined a platoon of adult recruits on their last six weeks of training. Compared with I.J.L.B, the discipline was jack shit. Once we'd finished our work for the day, we could get changed and walk but of the guardroom and downtown. At the end of the six weeks we got our postings. If you had brothers in particular battalions, they could claim you; otherwise, you just stated a preference and kept your fingers crossed. Third Battalion were known as the Cowboys and the 1st were the Fighting Farmers. two RGJ were in Gibraltar but due to come back to the UK quite soon for a Northern Ireland tour. I asked to go to 1RGJ because of the boxing and because they were due to go to Hong Kong. So of course, I was sent to 2RGJ. I wasn't best pleased-especially when I found out that they were called the Handbags. "Where do you come from?" the color sergeant asked me on the barrack square, as I stood blinking in the brilliant Mediterranean sunshine. "London." "I can hear that, you dickhead. Whereabouts in London?" "Peckham." "Right, go to B Company." My rifle platoon consisted of sixteen blokes. We'd been told that when we got to the battalion, they would get hold of us for "continuation training"-indoctrination into their special way of doing things. But 2RGJ was snowed under with commitments; they were all over the Rock, on ceremonial and border duties. Everybody was too busy to give the five of us any attention, and our first couple of weeks were spent just bumming around. " went into the main street the morning after I arrived. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but shops full of cheap watches and carpets from Morocco, most of them run by Asian or Arab traders. I bought my mum a peacock carpet for a fiver, with a pair of flip-flops bunged in. I thought, This is wonderful; I've only been here a couple of days and already I'm cutting majorleague deals down the kasbah. Full of enthusiasm after my year of training, I was raring to go. I thought the posting was brilliant: We were in the Mediterranean; there were beaches; there was sun. It was the first time I'd ever been abroad, apart from my day trips to France, and I was getting paid for it. So the attitude of some of the other blokes came as a bit of a surprise. Some of the old hands seemed so negative; everything was "shit" and "for fuck's sake." Or, very mysteriously, it would be "I'm just going to do some business," and off they'd go. It took me awhile to find out what they were doing. The majority of teenagers who joined the army had been exposed to some illegal substances. It was part of the culture, and they took that culture in with them when they joined. I had never been interested in drugs myself, mainly because I hated smoking and had never been exposed to them. I'd heard all the terms but didn't exactly know what was what. And now when I did get exposed to the drug business, it scared me; it was something totally alien. Drugs, I was told, had always been a bit of a problem. Once, when the battalion came back from an overseas exercise, a fleet of coaches had turned up at two-thirty in the morning. It was the local police, come to raid the battalion as a matter of course. They didn't find any illegal substances on this occasion, but they did find an officer who was engaged in an activity that was even more naughty in the eyes of military law. He was in bed with a corporal from the mortar platoon. We seemed to have the culture of the seventies but the army of the fifties. It felt as if I were living in one of the black-and-white movies I sometimes used to watch on a Saturday afternoon. Each morning we had to drink a mugful of "screech," the old army word for powdered lime juice. The colonel must have been reading a book about Captain Cook and thought it would stop us from getting scurvy. I heard about an officer who joined the Irish Guards. The adjutant pulled him to one side and said, "As a young subaltern, these are the rules. One, never wear a brown suit. Two, always call the underground the underground and not the tube. Three, never travel on a red bus. Four, always wear a hat and have an umbrella, and five, never carry a brown paper parcel." Nothing about how to approach the soldiers he was going to have under his command. Gibraltar in the summertime was packed with tourists, and because we were doing all the ceremonial stuff, we were God's gift to a pretty girl who liked a uniform. That was my theory anyway, and I set off one afternoon for the main street, wearing civvies and in my own mind very much our man in Gibraltar. I found a place called the Capri bar, with plastic palm trees inside and semicircular booths with tables. All very dark and sophisticated, I thought. To be as suave as the surroundings demanded, I ordered a Southern Comfort and lemonade, a very international drink at the time. As I sat there listening to songs by the Stylistics and the Chi-Lites, I could see now and again blokes that I recognized from the battalion walking past, looking at me through the window. The fellow who owned the bar was a Brit. He came over to join me for a chat. He had perfect, graying hair that had been sprayed and looked to be in his forties but probably still thought he was seventeen. He was wearing a blue jumper with a big red star. "Hello," he said, sliding into the booth next to me. "What, are you in the navy?" "No, I'm with the battalion up the road." "Just got here?" "Yeah." It was all rather nice. We chatted away, and then this Chinese woman came in. She was absolutely stunning. Flared trousers, high heels, and my boy was off in raptures. She sat and joined us. "You in the navy?" "No, I'm with the battalion." After a drink or two she moved over a place, and I thought, I've cracked it, it must be the sight of my drink, a woman like this was bound to feel comfortable in the company of an international jet-setter. More people were coming in, and the bar started filling up. The jukebox started playing slow Donny Osmond numbers. I was slowly getting pissed, and I didn't really pay that much attention when my new friend said, "Call me Pierre." To me, Pierre was a French blokes name. I hadn't realized it was also a Chinese woman's. Then, very, very slowly, I started to get the picture. I looked around and realized that everybody in the bar was a bloke. I looked again at Pierre-and the awful truth sank in. "Just going to the toilet," I said, disentangling her hand from my thigh. I did a runner, haunted by the faces of all the blokes I'd seen looking at me through the windows. I was going around for days afterward laughing manically and saying, "They do the best Spanish omelet in Gibraltar down the Capri. It's full of dodgy character's, of course, but it's worth it for the food." The battalion were coming back to England in November and heading more or less straightaway for South Armagh. I would be too young to go with them immediately; you had to be eighteen, because years before there had been too many seventeen-year-olds getting shot. It was bad PR, so they'd upped the age limit. I'd have to wait until after my birthday. We went to Lydd and Hythe for infantry buildup training. We spent a lot of time on the M.U.F (marksmanship under fire) range and were trained in all the different scenarios we were likely to meet. "We are going to be based in South Armagh-bandit country," said our company commander, "and B Company are going to Crossmaglen, a town that makes the rest of bandit country look like Camberwick Green." We were issued with street maps and told to "learn" South Armagh. There was a shooting during the buildup training, and for the first time I started to read more of the newspaper than the TV page. Toward the end of the training we were issued with an optic sight for our weapons. I'd never seen this bit of kit before, but I knew that it existed. That was it; I thought I was the international sniper. In the infantry at that time all the clothing was incredibly basic. We had a uniform, but no effective waterproofs or warm clothing. If you wanted stuff like that, you had to buy your own. The most exotic item we were given to help us through the rigors ahead was a pair of thick arctic socks. I was eighteen years old. I'd already been in the army for coming up to two years, but this was 'my first operational tour. Everything was great. The way I looked at it was I was having a good experience, I was with the battalion, I thought I was hard as fuck, and I'd have enough money to buy a car and show Christine a good time when I got back. Crossmaglen, a cattle market town known to us as XMG, was right on the border. This meant the players could prepare in Dundalk on the other side, then pop over and shoot at us. There was a big square in the center, with a number of small buildings with metal railings in front to hold the livestock. It was overlooked by Baruki sangar, which was less than a hundred meters away from the security forces base that we lived in. Named after a paratrooper called Baruki who got blown up, the sangar was a big corrugated iron and steel structure. Inside were three GPMGs (general purpose machine guns), an M79 grenade launcher, smoke dischargers, radios, and, most important, flasks of tea and sandwiches, because we were up there forever. There was one electric heater. Stag duty in the sangar was incredibly cold and very, very boring. It had to be manned by two of us all the time. To get to it, there used to be this mad dash. The two men on duty in the sangar would man the guns; we'd go out and run down the road; the two we were replacing would get out and run back. I was in Baruki sangar one day with a lance cor oral p called Bob, short for Billy One Bollock, I never knew where the nickname came from because he looked as if he were complete. A foot patrol came out of the base, and after the usual pound of running feet, all I could hear was "click, click, click." What the hell is that? I wondered, and looked out of the side hole. Standing nearby was the smartest man alive, posing in front of a camera for the battalion magazine. "That's Johnny Two-Combs," Bob said. "Comes from the Midlands, loves football. Plays for the battalion. Looks good, doesn't he?" Indeed he did. No one wore rank in XMG, and everyone normally looked like a bag of shit, wet, cold, and covered in mud. But this guy was wearing corporal's stripes, and his uniform was immaculate. He was about five feet ten inches, with blue eyes and perfect teeth, and not a single blond hair out of place. "He was playing in an army cup match, and the battalion started throwing combs'onto the pitch," Bob went on. "He picked one up and used it, asked if he was looking good, then carried on. I think he scored the winning goal." I watched as Johnny carried on posing, winning the war on his own for the camera. "The thing is," Bob said, "he is really switched on. You're looking at a future RSM there." The rifle company lived in "submarines" in the security forces base, long corridors three beds high but without lockers. Where you were, that was your space: You put your kit on your bed or under the bottom bed. I shared an area with Reggie, a corporal and my patrol commander, and Gar, a newly married rifleman who kept his photo album under his pillow. Reggie was twenty-five and rati the company seven-aside rugby team. He was tall and well built; his "egs were so large he walked like a bodybuilder. He had black, curly hair and the world's biggest arse and bad breath that he was forever making excuses about. Gar was aged about twenty. If he hadn't been in the army, he would have been a male model. He was very fit and had a perfect body. His ambition was to become a P.T.I (physical training instructor); every morning he would jump out of his bunk and shout, "Twice round my beautiful body-go!" The security forces base was laid out in a spider configuration, with submarines coming off a central area. All the support troops, plus any of the rifle company who couldn't fit in the submarines, lived in garden sheds in the compound, linked by duckboards over the mud that was ankle-deep. The whole compound looked like a building site, which it was, covered by antimortar mesh. The atmosphere inside the main base was very smoky, and at any time of night or day I could smell the odor of egg banjos (fried egg sandwiches) and chips coming from the cookhouse. There was a permanent smell, too, of damp clothing and wet floors. The heating didn't work very well, so it was either very hot or very cold. There were no windows. In the late seventies it was very much a foot-soldiering conflict in South Armagh. If we weren't in the town patrolling, we'd be in the cuds (countryside) patrolling, just us and the mud and the rain, our rifles and our bergens (back packs), out for however many days the task took. Being the rug (new boy), I had to carry the GPMG. For the first month or so I was quite switched on by it all. Then it started to get very boring. I didn't feel I was achieving anything because nothing ever happened. I'd just done all this training where every time you take a footstep something happens and you've got to react to it, but now that we were here nothing seemed to be happening. We patrolled, watched, stopped cars, put protection out at VCPs (vehicle checkpoints), and carried out house searches, and that was it. We used to go out on patrol in the cuds with welly boots on because of the mud. There was a four-day routine. We'd be picked up by helicopter and taken out for four days, living in the field. Then we'd have four days on town patrol, wearing boots rather than wellies. This was a twenty-four-hour presence; there were always three patrols in the town. Then we'd do four days in sangars, doing cookhouse fatigues, cleaning the bogs Out, and doing the area cleaning, a military term meaning work for work's sake. On one memorable occasion the ser eant major ordered me: "McNab, you are to go out and sweep up all unwanted puddles." Everything we needed had to come in by helicopter: food, ammunition, letters, people. The helipad was a structure of wooden slats outside the camp; when a helicopter was due, sangars had to stand to, and the aircraft would swoop in quickly. There was a housing estate next door and the boys used to take pops at anything that moved. The navy crews were the best, in their Wessexes; they were more daring and always on time, which was important after a long patrol, when you were waiting to be extracted. I was the doorman in the sangar one day; that meant that as people jumped from the helicopter and ran toward the door, I'd open it just wide enough for them to run inside. I didn't have a clue who the character was that was running toward me. All I could see was a figure bent double, with a pile of paperwork in a wicker shopping bag with a handle like the ones grannies do their shopping with. "Who are you?" he said. "McNab, sir." "I'm Corden-Lloyd." He beamed as he shook my hand. Then, in a brilliant piss-take of the sort of bone questions senior officers seem to need to ask squaddies when they visit, he said, "Enjoying yourself? Mail getting through? Food all right? Any problems?" This was great, a colonel shaking my hand, taking the piss out of himself, asking me how I was, what platoon I was in. There were no military vehicles in the cuds to back up patrols because too many had been taken out by culvert bombs. However, there were two Saracen armored vehicles that stayed in the town. They had antiarmor metal mesh over them to stop RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) penetrating; the mesh would initiate the rocket before it penetrated the armor. They were called cans, and they never went outside the town. We could move from position to position around the town in them, which was great, especially when it was pissing down. The can crews themselves had a pretty shifty job. They just sat, and the gunners just stood. The cans were essentially firm firebases for when we had big contacts, with a turret-mounted machine gun. Their most useful feature, however, was secured to the rear. It was a thing called a Norwegian container, which held about two gallons of tea, with a plastic mug hanging off. The can drivers used to fill them up before a patrol, so we could go around the back for a brew. After about two hours it was lukewarm, stewy stuff, but in the early hours of the morning it was nectar. I was on foot patrol in Crossmaglen in the early spring of 1978, at a time when the policy was to pull down any republican tricolors we saw. It wasn't a question of just going up and lifting it. It had to be done carefully, because there was always a possibility that it might be a come-on or it could be a booby trap. One had been put up on the Newry road leading out of Crossmagien by the church, right on the edge of town, at the start of the cuds. It was a typical rural scene of undulating fields and hedgerows. The road was lined by telephone poles, from one of which hung a tricolor. There were four patrols out from my platoon. On the net the commander said, "When we get the changeover, one patrol will take down the tricolor and we'll carry on patrolling." My patrol was getting ready to go out. The weather was cold and damp. All the concrete was wet, and there were unwanted puddles everywhere. We were wearing nylon flak jackets on which each bloke had written his blood group. I had a civilian duvet jacket underneath my combat jacket. There was a quick five-minute briefing in one of the garden sheds by the multiple commander. "You take the center of the town; you take the left; you take the right. The other patrol will stay out and take down the tricolor. Once that's done, they'll come back in and we'll carry on our patrol." It was no big deal; it was just another tricolor to be taken down. We got by the main gate, and four at a time the patrols would come forward into the loading bay and load their weapons. The guard commander would then get on the radio to Baruki and tell them that the patrols were ready. Their job was to cover us as we were coming out. Patrol by patrol we bomb-burst out. It would be just another routine patrol, three hours in the town, back for four, then go out again for another three hours. We were going to be the center patrol, around the town square, the nearest patrol to the one that was going to take down the tricolor. 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 slagging 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. We'd get a tray, go in and get four slices of bread, make big sandwiches and a mug of tea, and go and claim our places for the show. Blokes would be there straight from the shower, squashed up next to blokes in shit state straight from the field. Everybody would be getting stuck into a fistful of egg banjo. The room stank of cigarettes, sweat, mud, cowshit, and talcum powder. At the time, just after Christmas 1978, Debbie Harry and Kate Bush were on the same T.O.T.P. Debbie Harry was singing "Denis," and Kate Bush was doing "Wuthering Heights." When Kate Bush came on, the whole rifle company used to shout, "Burn the witch!" 'Then these blokes turned up as well, and I thought, They're only human after all because they've come in to watch Debbie Harry and Kate Bush. They didn't push in; they didn't get the prime spot; they just slotted in where they could; then pushed off again. Their behavior amazed me; they came in with respect. I envied them their apparent freedom to come and go as they pleased. I thought, it must be an amazing life, just flying in, doing the job, then going back to wherever they live. But there again, I thought, there was no chance whatsoever of a lowly rifleman like me making the grade, and that was that. There were eight infantry battalions at Tidworth, our new base in Wiltshire. The entertainment facilities in the town consisted of three pubs (one of which was out of bounds), two chip shops, a launderette, and a bank. The army spent all day teaching us to be aggressive, and then we'd go down to the town, get bored and drunk, and use our aggression against each other. We'd then get prosecuted severely as if we'd done something wrong. We did all the garrison sort of stuff like field firing exercises; then we started training again for Northern Ireland. The battalions wouldrotate, on average, one tour a year. I saw it as a great opportunity to save money. As a rifleman I could save a grand a tour because there was even less to do over the water than in Tidworth. There were three other bonuses. One, we got fifty pence extra pay per day, and two, we got soft toilet paper instead of the hard stuff in UK garrisons. It was actually dangled as a carrot during training: "Remember, it's soft toilet rolls over the water." And three, it was a pleasure to get away from Tidworth again. For the next three years the routine was going on exercises, get stinking drunk in Tidworth and Andover, and going over the water. People were coming back with their grand and getting ripped off buying cars that promptly fell apart. One bloke bought a hand-painted cream and chocolate brown Ford Capri for nine hundred pounds, and within two days things were falling off it. I looked at buying a Capri myself, but the insurance was more than the car was worth. I was still going out with Christine. She was living in Ashford, so I got down there weekends and whenever else I could. There was certainly no way she wanted to come and live in Tidworth. She had a job and still lived at home. We were in love-"we think"-and everything was coming up roses. There began to be talk of the battalion going to Germany for five years, and I knew this would present a problem for our relationship. If you were "wife of", accommodation was provided; if you were just "girlfriend of," then it was up to you to go rent a place downtown. We'd never be able to afford the German rents, so I thought, what the hell, let's do it, and that was us married. It was a white wedding; the plan was that she would stay in Ashford, and after the next Northern Ireland tour we could get a quarter in Tidworth. I got made up to lance corporal in time for the next tour. Still based in South Armagh, I was now a "brick" commander, in charge of a four-man patrol. As such, I had to write a short patrol report after each patrol: what we had seen, what we had done, what we would like to have done. While I was on my way to the operations room one night, three or four blokes turned up in a car with all their equipment. I saw on the map that certain areas had been put out of bounds; I knew these boys were going to go do some stuff. It made me think that as the infantry battalion we were working our arses off here, but these guys were working to a very different agenda. We used to come back from a patrol and think, We've done this and we've done that, tis really good stuff, but at the end of the day we were just walking Figures (standard target, depicting a charging enemy soldier). We were so isolated in our own little world. Seeing these guys suddenly made me think, Hey, what else is going on that we'll never get to hear about? I felt what was almost a pang of jealousy. I went into the briefing room to pick up a patrol report. There were masses of kit strewn everywhere on the floor. The thing that really struck me was an Armalite that was painted weird and wonderful camouflage colors, dappled with bits of black and green. In the infantry there was no way we could tamper with our weapons like that. Weapons were sacred; we could clean them, but that was about it. There was a torch mounted under the Armalite, held on with bits of masking tape on the furniture stock. I thought, That's quite Gucci; I wouldn't mind one of those. As I turned, I found myself face-to-face with one of the regiment blokes. Or rather, face to arse. He had no kit on, and all I could see was the crack of his bum as he was bending over to put his trousers on. I could see he had a fearsome suntan and had obviously been away somewhere nice before he'd come on this job. He turned around and said, "All right, mate?" I went, "Hello." He said, "You can go now if you like." I said, "Okay, I think it's time for me to go now." That was the last time I saw any of these particular S.A.S men. Again, I was surprised at how they looked. One of them was positively skeletal; he was the only man I'd ever seen with the veins on the outside of his body. We were patrolling one Saturday evening as a multipletwo four-man patrols. The multiple commander was Dave, a corporal, and I was the 2 i/c (second-in-command), in command of the other brick. I had first met Dave in XMG but didn't have too much to do with him as he was in another platoon. On promotion I was sent to 6 Platoon and became his 2 i/c. Dave was known as a maverick and was always on the edge of being demoted or fined. He came from the East End of London and kept very close contact with his family and friends. He was in his mid-twenties, and his arms were covered in tattoos. He had a girlfriend back in London, but the more I got to know him, the more I saw him as single for the rest of his life, wrecking any car that he had after two months and having dealings with dodgy people from the Mile End Road. We got on very well, and he became a close friend. We were going out at six o'clock in the evening and assembled for a quick five-minute brief. Dave told us the direction we were going to go out, whether we were going to use the front gate or the back gate, information on any activity in the town, anything that we needed to know from the patrol that had just come in. "There seem to be a lot more people running around the community center than usual," he said. "And perhaps some activity in the derelict house on the corner of Liam Gardens. We'll check it out as we pass." Derelicts were usually to be avoided since they were natural draw points for booby traps. Something had looked different in that house to the last patrol; it could be just an old druggle in there, or it could be something put in as a come-on. We loaded our weapons in the loading bay and stood behind the main gate, waiting for the order to go. It was a lazy, hot summer evening, not much traffic, and the birds were singing. We listened on the net to the'other patrol who were in the town, speaking in code words and numbers because our comms were not secure and the players had scanners. You don't saunter out of a security forces station; you bomb-bust out-which means that you run like a fucking idiot for about twenty-five meters to get out of the immediate vicinity, before regrouping. If they were going to put a shoot in on it or had a bomb rigged up, the one place they definitely knew soldiers were going to be was near the gates as they started a patrol. We all bomb-burst out. Rather than go directly into the town, we'd decided to take a route around the edge of it, in waste ground. We wanted to use the ground as much as possible to keep us away from the eyes of dickers (IRA observers) in case they had something for us. We didn't go through obvious features like holes in hedge lines or natural crossing points, which could be targeted and used to place bombs. We'd never touch anything military-looking either, like a shiny bit of kit that was out on the ground. Soldiers had been blown up picking up a water bottle, thinking that another patrol had lost it and they'd do them a favor by retrieving it. We came to a small river that we had to cross. No problems, we patrolled through that. Then we started to come up onto the waste ground just short of a housing estate. This was right on the edge of town, and from there it was cuds all the way down to a place called Castle Blaney on the other side of the border. At that time of a Saturday night the streets were full of coaches that had come up to the estate to pick up the locals and take them down to Castle Blaney for "the crack." They'd go for a night out, then come rolling back at two o'clock in the morning. And quite rightly so; if I were stuck in Keady on a Saturday night, I'd want to put the kit on and go over there on the piss. We were patrolling along in dead ground. They couldn't see us, and we couldn't see them, but I was expecting that once we got nearer the housing estate, I'd see a few people. We'd leave them alone. It was pointless going through crowds because it just incited them. Our intention was to go around them, have a quick mooch around the housing estate, and see what was going on. More information was picked up when a patrol was stood still than when it was on the move. It was called lurking; we'd get to a position and just stop. It might be in somebody's backyard on a housing estate; we'd stop, get in the shadows, wait and listen, and see what was going on. It used to be great entertainment for the squaddies; we'd watch everything from domestic rows in kitchens to young couples groping in the mother's front room. Dave's patrol was to the right of me, about 150 meters away, and he was in dead ground to us. There . was no need to talk on the radio. We'd been out there quite a few months already now, and we were working really well together, supporting each other. Once we came near the estate, we were hidden from view by a row of three or four shops-houses, basically, but with shop fronts. We turned right and went along the back of the buildings until we came to the fence line and the gate. By now the waste ground was more like disused farmland; there were old wrecked cars on it, tin cans, bags of garbage. There were goats and horses running around all over the place, so the ground was gungy and churned up. It was summer, but we still had rain at least once a week, and the ground was wet. There were large puddles everywhere. We got to the fence line, and I got lazy. If I crossed the fence, there would be all this car wreckage and rubbish in the way, and I didn't want to negotiate that. So I took the easy route. As I started to come through the gate, I came into view of the people in the street. I heard hollering and shouting and screaming all over the place, which was unusual. Normally there would just have been talking and lots of laughing, from groups of people smelling of Brut and hair spray, the girls in sharply ironed blouses. As I looked up at the crowd, I realized that everybody was shouting, grabbing hold of kids, pulling them out of the way. Something was up, but I didn't know what. I started to pan around to have a look. Still there was chaos; there must have been maybe 120 people there waiting for the coaches, and they all were reacting to my presence. I looked directly over the road, and as I then started to an left toward the shops, crossing the road, p again there was just the normal group of vehicles-three or four saloon cars and a cattle truck, which was not unusual in the area. But then, just as I passed that, I saw a group of characters with masks on and weapons. The one that I really latched on to was a,boy with his fist in the air, doing aChe Guevara with his Armalite, chanting away. I couldn't have been more than twenty meters away from him. I saw his eyes open wide with alarm inside his mask. He started to shout and fumbled with his weapon. I also shouted, fumbled for mine, and cocked it. His weapon was already cocked, so he just started blatting like an idiot. I blatted back, getting the rounds down at him and the other masked people. Another fellow came up from behind the wagon and started to fire down in my general direction. They were flapping as much as I was, in a frenzy to get into the cattle truck and get away. One of the boys got into the back of the wagon and started firing, and the others clambered in. I got rounds into one of them. He was screaming like a pig as he went over the other side. Then there was lots of screaming coming from inside the vehicle, where other people were also taking rounds. By this time Scouse, another fellow from the patrol, had come up from the dead ground but couldn't get over the fence because of the firing. So he was firing from that side of the fence. The other two were down in the dead ground, totally confused about what was going on. It had all happened so quickly. Lots of firing was going down. Everybody was screaming and shouting; I was kneeling and firing away. In my twenty-round magazines I always made sure that the top two were tracer. I worked on the theory that when we were in the cuds, I could use my tracer to identify targets for other people. I had another tracer halfway down the magazine, so when that went off, I'd know I'd fired ten rounds. The last two of the magazine were tracer again; when the fourth tracer fired off, I'd know I'd fired my second-to-last round and the working parts had come back and picked up the last round. I'd take the magazine off, put on another one, and that would be my reloading drill done. Time and time again I'd practiced all this, until I could almost do it blindfolded. Come the day, it all went to ratshit. For one thing, I was far too close for the tracer to ignite. And I certainly wasn't counting the rounds. I was just firing like a man possessed. Then: bang, bang, bang, click. The dead man's click. The working parts still worked, but there wasn't a round in the chamber to fire. I was flapping like fuck. I got on the floor, screaming my head off: "Stoppage! Stoppage!" to let everyone else know I wasn't hit but unable to fire. I could hear the different noises of the weapons: The SLR mode a loud, bass sound as it fired; .the Armalite was not as loud, and they were firing bursts. I tried to get hold of another magazine out of my pouches, and everything seemed sort of slow and deliberate. It wasn't; it was all really fast, but it was as if I were outside myself, watching myself going through the drills. I knew what to do, but the faster I was trying to do it, the faster I was fucking up. I had that feeling I'd had when the kid fell through the roof: I wanted to pull the covers over my head and wait for it all to go away. I concentrated on my mags; I didn't want to look up and see what was going on. If I didn't look, maybe I'd be all right. What I should have been doing was getting into a position where I could look at the enemy; I was supposed to be so good at changing mags that there was no need to look at what I was doing. But I wasn't. I couldn't get the pouch opened up, I was fumbling inside getting my magazine out. It was the wrong way around. I had to turn it around, put it in, cock my weapon. It was all done in a matter of seconds, but it felt like forever. I could hear some firing, I heard shouting, but loudest of all was the sound of me hollering and shouting inside my head: "I don't like this! I know I've got to do it!" I knew if I just lay there, twenty meters from him, the chances were that I'd be killed; as long as I was firing, things would be okay. My chest was heaving up and down. I knew I had to do it. I knew I couldn't just lie there. I rolled over and started firing again. The stoppage had taken me out of action for no more than three to five seconds. Twenty rounds later, bang, bang, bang, click. The vehicle was moving, and by this time Scouse was firing into the cab area of the wagon, hoping to drop the driver. But these cattle trucks were armored. They were sandbagged up with steel plates welded in to give them some form of protection. I was still the only one that side of the fence. As the vehicle started to move off, I got up and ran forward, past the shop. I didn't know if there was anybody left outside the wagon who'd done a runner. Had they run into the housing estate? Had they run into the shops? Had they run down to the junction, which was only about ten meters away, and turned left? Or turned right, up an old disused railway line? Who knew? I had no idea what was going on. In my peripheral vision I saw a group of people on the floor of the shop, cowering. A man stood up quickly. As far as I was concerned, he could have a gun. I turned around and gave it a couple high through the window so he got the message. The glass caved in, and the bloke threw himself to the floor. "And stay down!" I shouted. I didn't know who was more scared, the people in the shop or me. It was a stupid, bone reaction of mine to shoot through the glass, but I didn't know what else to do; I was so hyped up that anything that moved was a threat. I ran up to a left-hand junction about ten meters away from the point of the contact. Time and time again during the buildup training we'd practiced two ways of looking around corners. You can get very low and look around, close up to it, or, better still, you can move away from the corner and then gradually bring yourself around so you present less of a target. It was all very well in training because I knew there was nobody around the other side with an Armalite aimed at me. But here there could be. I took a deep breath, got down on my belly with the weapon ready to swing around, and had a quick squint. There was nobody there. I brought myself around and followed on down the road a bit, just to check that there weren't any runners that way. Then I returned to the scene. One poor fellow who had been part of the crowd was now halfway up the street. He had been in a wheelchair; the chair was lying on its side and he was crawling toward the housing estate, cursing and shouting. People were running from their houses to help him. I could hear mothers shouting at their children, doors slamming, the sound of people running. A woman in the shop was screaming, "There's nobody in here, there's nobody in here!" They knew that we were wound up, and they didn't want to be killed by faulty judgment. By this time Scouse was with me and the other two blokes who had come over the fence line. I went up to the bloke who was carrying the LMG and started kicking him. "Where were you?" I shouted. I had been all hyper; I'd wanted someone else there, and they weren't. But it wasn't their fault; they couldn't get there. We started to go forward, looking for runners, at the same time getting on the radio and talking to the SF (security forces) base to tell them there had been a contact. No need, they'd heard it anyway. All they wanted to know was "Any casualties? Any casualties?" At this stage I didn't know if any of us had been hit or not. The patrol to the north were running like loonies to get down to us. People were pouring out of the SF base; Land Rovers were turning up with people in tracksuits and flak jackets. There was a massive follow-up. The dog handlers arrived within minutes; roadblocks were thrown up. The police had to be informed what they were looking for. I got on the net and was trying to describe the vehicle. All I knew was that it was a dirty old yellow cattle truck, and because I had been on the floor looking up at it, I had seen that it had a fiberglass top to let the natural light in. All the cars parked in the area were riddled with rounds-5.56 from the players, 7.62 from us. There were empty cases all over the road. One of the blokes from the sangars at the SF base reported that he had seen somebody running up the disused railway. We couldn't see Jack shit. A Dog did his casting around and picked up the scent. The handler said, "Okay, let's go!" There was myself, the platoon commander who'd come out of the SF base, the dog handler and his mutt, and two other blokes, and off we went. It was a very tense time. It was our job to protect the dog handler, and at the same time we didn't know what the hell was up there. Was somebody behind cover, waiting to fire? We ran across fields. There was an old pig hut at the top of a hill, and the dog got agitated. The dog handler said, "We've got something here." "He's got to be inside," said the platoon commander. The dog handler stayed where he was, and the other fellows stayed to protect him as the rupert (officer) and I started to move up toward the shack. The officer shouted, "Any fucker in there, get out now! Otherwise we are coming in for you!" Nothing happened. He turned to me and said, "Right, when you're ready, get in there." I thought, Oh, good one, delegation of tasks. We'd done plenty of FIBUA (fighting in built-up areas) in training, but this was for real. I put my weapon in the shoulder, flicked off the safety catch, took a deep breath, kicked the door open, and went for it. The shack was empty. We cast around with the dog, but it was getting nothing. By the time we got back down into the town, the incident had been contained. The area had been cordoned off, and all the forensic people had.arrived and were doing their stuff. There was activity everywhere, sirens blaring, helicopter rattling overhead. As the colonel arrived with his team, we heard on the radio that a body and two wounded had been dropped off at Monaghan Hospital in the south. The boy had taken rounds. Two others had gunshot wounds. Everybody around the area who had radios was going, "Yes! Well done! Good shit!" A few days later we learned what had happened. The cattle truck and a Ford Granada had driven into that side of Keady. The people in the Ford Granada got out and were going to get into this cattle truck and then drive past the other patrol to the north and drop as many as they could, then carry on driving over the border. When the contact was initiated, it must have been very confusing for them. The player who was firing at me was also trying to give information to his team. As they got into the cattle truck, they were firing from a step that gave them higher elevation, and what they would have seen was Dave's patrol about two hundred meters away, moving through the river. Dave's patrol started to get incoming, but he couldn't fire back because he knew we were in the middle. The people in the truck didn't know that we were there; if they had, they would have been able to put some heavy fire do