Belfast. The home of barricades, bombs and marching bands. The graveyard of the professional soldier’s ambitions, the career charnel house of the military intelligence officer. We were heading into the gutters and backstreets, bowed under the weight of bergens loaded to overflowing with Whitehall edicts and Rules of Engagement to be obeyed like the Ten Commandments. We were to face an opposition unfettered by constitutional laws and diplomatic niceties. It seemed we were completely pinioned, like men buried to the neck in sand, watching the rising tide of political confusion, intelligence confusion, military confusion and legal confusion. Belfast! A nervous breakdown just waiting to happen.
To most of us mere soldiers the answer was simple. All you had to do was take out the ringleaders and the rest would fold like a pack of cards, putting the ‘revolution’ back twenty or thirty years. The Head Shed could not see this, and kept banging on about the democratic society and working within the law of the land. I began to have a sneaky suspicion they could smell easy medals, but I couldn’t prove it. One thing I did know: with its sinister streets and alienated population, Belfast was no place for highly trained special forces. This was a job for armed police – switched-on operators who knew the law and could pick their way through the minefield of rules and regulations.
We hadn’t got off to a good start. When we passed under the redand-white striped security barrier at the main gate to Bradbury Lines on our way to the ferry terminal at Liverpool, our regular freelance journalists were encamped as usual a few metres from the main gate. It was a public highway so we were powerless to stop this. God only knows what they made of our sudden departure and it was no doubt the cause of much journalistic musing. Absolute secrecy would be the key to our very survival, let alone our success, so it was crucial we weren’t tailed.
Thankfully we weren’t, but things continued to get worse. By the time we arrived at the departure lounge of the ferry terminal, a latenight hush had descended all around. The lounge consisted of two linked rooms. The one further from the door – the larger of the two – was completely deserted. Dimly illuminated, the faded holiday-resort posters peeling from the walls failed miserably to cheer it up. In the corner of the smaller room by the entrance, a young couple in their early twenties huddled together. The woman was half asleep, her head lolling on the man’s shoulder.
We split into ones and twos and drifted into the corners, trying not to appear too conspicuous. Easier said than done – we didn’t exactly look like holidaymakers. Even though we were dressed down in our Oxfam reject specials to give the impression of itinerant building-site workers or casual hotel kitchen staff, and even though we assumed a nonchalant, bored air as if to say we’d made the journey so many times that we could afford to relax into indifference, it was hard to remain unnoticed. We studiously avoided all conversation, other than the occasional whispered remark, in order not to fill the rooms with telltale English accents. But in spite of all the obvious precautions it was extremely difficult for a team of highly alert men who had spent weeks and months as a family, eating, sleeping, drinking and training together, to melt unobserved into the background. We tried hard not to let the bond, the group consciousness that mates in a team create automatically, project and spill over into the confined space of the departure lounge.
Suddenly the door at the end of the room rattled open and in trudged a soldier dressed in full combat gear. I recognized him immediately. A year earlier he had been attached to the Regiment as part of the administrative support team, and six months ago he had been posted back to his parent unit. He must have been returning from leave to rejoin his regiment in Northern Ireland. He took one look round the room, his eyes twitching with recognition, and promptly darted into the toilets. Christ, I thought, this will be all round the NAAFI in Palace Barracks, Holywood by tomorrow night – our cover blown and we haven’t even set foot in Northern Ireland yet!
The crossing brought a further twist of complications. We’d all assumed false names and adopted new regiments for the duration of the passage. One of the lads had a passion for painting wild flowers, believe it or not. In between operations in the more remote exotic locations, he would often search out an especially rare specimen, display it in a beer bottle and do a quick pencil sketch to take home with him. He had chosen the suitably horticultural pseudonym Orchid and completed his disguise by promoting himself to Sergeant. Unfortunately, he’d also decided to attach himself to the Royal Tank Regiment. Halfway across the Irish Sea, as fate would have it, a major from the Royal Tank Regiment decided to check the passenger list. He spotted the name Sergeant Orchid and put in a request for a meeting over the ship’s tannoy system.
‘Sergeant Orchid, Sergeant Orchid, Royal Tank Regiment. Report immediately to Major Jones in the Bursar’s office.’
The tannoy boomed through the night air above the hissing sound of the bow-split waves rushing down the side of the ship. We were in the bar, riveted in our seats. No one dared move. One or two looked up and glanced at the others, saw their impervious, stony expressions and quickly lowered their gaze once more. Sergeant Orchid swallowed a mouthful of beer and continued to read the day-old newspaper he had picked up in the departure lounge. He betrayed not a single flicker of emotion. Without speaking a word we all knew one another’s mind. We’d decided to sit it out in the hope that the major would eventually lose interest and conclude that there had been a clerical foul-up. It paid off. After one repeat of the message and a further agonizing wait, the tannoy fell silent. Our trip was beginning to look like the roughcut of a Carry On film, a real comedy of errors.
The final dangerous farce was played out on the ferry terminal in Belfast. As we disembarked, the pungent smell of diesel fuel, decaying seaweed and gutted fish flaring in our nostrils, a creased photo of our Belfast contact man was produced. The passport-size colour photo was of a young and impressionable-looking Rupert with short, slick black hair and an old school tie. It had probably been taken when he was serving with the Eton Rifles. We scanned the disembarkation area looking for a likely candidate. Nothing! Just a rather seedy-looking character with long, straggly hair. He was hunched into a well-worn donkey jacket, smoking a cigarette and looking distinctly furtive. With one arm crooked he was leaning heavily on a red sign marked with white lettering, ‘Passengers only beyond this point’. It tilted at a precarious angle under his weight, even though its base was set in a concrete-filled tyre to prevent it from blowing over in the wind. The man gave no sign of recognition and looked more hostile by the minute.
I began to feel anxious. Our first time in Northern Ireland and already we were drawing attention to ourselves – a dozen heavies with long hair and second-hand clothes trying desperately to look inconspicuous. A movement caught my eye. It was Kevin. He’d just drawn out a grey, crumpled, elephant’s ear of a handkerchief and was unconcernedly flapping it about. He trumpeted loudly into it, sniffed, then stuffed it unceremoniously back into his trouser pocket, finishing off the job with an exaggerated wipe with the back of his hand. My heart sank. Nicknamed the Airborne Wart, with a face like a blistered piss-pot, Kevin would look suspicious at a memorial dinner for Al Capone! What chance of passing himself off as an innocent traveller arriving in Belfast in the middle of a bleak January night!