They were traced through their car’s number plate and immediately RTU’d. This began to play on my mind. How could the number be traced when the plates were false and changed on a weekly basis? It should have been simple for them to be able to bluff their way out of it unless someone wanted the SAS to take the fall. I was starting to suspect that the higher chain of command didn’t relish special forces troops running loose in the region.
The situation only got worse when two Irish members of Seven Troop snapped – in spectacular fashion. These two guys had become sick of simply taking photographs of hardened terrorists when they should have been slotting them. What made it worse was that some of the IRA were regularly raiding post offices and filling their boots full of cash. Tony, a Bogside boy and now a Seven Troop man, had gone to school with some of these criminals, and was now forced to take photos of them living the high life while he and his mates struggled on Army pay. One night it got too much for them. Quite simply, they lost it.
They went out and did an armed robbery on a post office themselves, more to relieve the boredom and frustration than for any serious mercenary desires, and snaffled a load of cash. This was lunacy especially since the Regiment wasn’t even meant to be in Northern Ireland!
If it got out that the SAS had been involved in the robbery the reputation of the Regiment would be mud. Besides the usual suspects there was also an unexpected, silent enemy lurking in the background, waiting for their opportunity to attack with the big guns – the senior officers of the British Army themselves. Many of them didn’t understand the concept of special forces and couldn’t hack that a bunch of renegades and mavericks could achieve what the traditional order couldn’t. After the debacle with the bar snatch, Tony and his mates’ escapade was the final straw. They were quietly arrested and later jailed although the whole thing was officially hushed up. But of course it signalled the end of B Squadron’s time in Northern Ireland, and we were unceremoniously ordered out of the province. At the time the GOC even went so far as to remark that the SAS would never return to Northern Ireland.
He was wrong. All it took was a prolonged killing spree by the PIRA down in South Armagh. In response, on 7 January 1976, Prime Minister Harold Wilson publicly announced that the SAS would be committed to Northern Ireland. At least this time we thought we would be able to put the cameras away and take up our weapons. But some things never really changed. Our hands were still tied by the policy of minimum force and we were given specific orders to ‘capture’ terrorists, not to kill them.
By 1978 I was back in Londonderry myself operating out of a secret SF base. We spent four months patrolling, setting up ambushes and providing surveillance, but we had only one kill to show for it – an IRA man caught retrieving a hidden weapon, under the muzzles of an SAS ambush team.
Once again the frustration started to boil up. The desire to escape was as primal as that of a spawning salmon trapped downstream by a storm-fed torrent. Then, out of the blue, I got the order to go and see Maurice, B Squadron Officer Commanding.
11
Hong Kong
It was with some degree of trepidation and a vague, elusive feeling of guilt tightening my lips that I approached the OC’s office. Why had he called for me? Surely I couldn’t be blamed for our recent lack of success. It was the green slime who identified potential targets – we were just following orders. There had been a rumour that the IRA had used a scanner to lock onto our frequencies during an operation and had made an audiotape. Was my voice on the tape? Was I compromised?
I felt sure that I was in for the mother of all bollockings. Four years of bullshit regulations in Northern Ireland was obviously starting to make me paranoid. As I closed the door firmly but quietly behind me, my thoughts became even more paranoid. Was I being singled out as a scapegoat? Was I going to be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency, watched from afar by the hooded high priests of Whitehall?
‘Sit down, Sergeant.’ The tall, slim figure behind the desk remained firmly upright. Only his head tilted slightly as he scanned the report in front of him, making occasional pencil notes in the margin.
Power play, I thought. Making me wait, creating the impression that his paperwork is more important than me, gives him the upper hand, reinforces his authority. Psychological-warfare tactics. I braced myself for the worst.
‘Right.’ The OC looked up, giving nothing away. His swarthy features had not yet been washed away by the Belfast rain. He eyed me closely for a moment, then his gaze relaxed into a hint of a smile. ‘Pack your bags, Sergeant. You’re going to the exotic East!’
Kai Tak airport is unique amongst the world’s major international airports in that it is limited to a single runway. But then that is not surprising. Everything in Hong Kong is restricted, hemmed in and squeezed by the lack of space. Like an overcrowded refugee ship, the country has a population a tenth the size of Great Britain’s crammed into a tiny land mass of small islands and mainland territories, in all just two-thirds the size of London.
The concrete stick of runway was clearly visible in the distance as the military transport plane throttled back its engines. I felt a warm tingle of pride when I brought to mind my mission. I was here to professionally train the Special Duties Unit of the Royal Hong Kong Police in anti-terrorism tactics. It was one of the perks of being in the SAS. Our specialist skills were much in demand among security forces throughout the free world.
As we began our final descent, I looked out over a sea churned by a thousand vessels, large and small. Flying fish-finned junks jostled for position with lumbering freighters. Tiny yachts sailed impertinently close to huge ocean-going liners. Nearer to shore, beetle-shaped sampans scuttled along wearing protective belts of old car tyres around their hulls. They wobbled precariously on top of the water, buffeted by every passing swell, their human cargoes sitting unconcernedly beneath the coarse sun-bleached calico awnings.
The fierce sun liquefied the high-rise buildings hedging in the airport. Planes parked up in bays at the side of the runway soaked up the blistering heat like lizards on sun-drenched rocks. This is the life, I thought. Sunshine and training with the Royal Hong Kong Police to help create an elite counter-terrorism unit – the best possible antidote after nearly four years of rain-sodden boredom in Northern Ireland. I was as eager to get into it as a thirsty, callous-fingered labourer striding into a lunchtime pub for a pint of foaming beer. Things were really going my way at last.
I obviously hadn’t yet learned the lesson: beware of over-optimism. The previous training jaunt to exotic places had been considered a jolly too, a bit of R & R after the rigours of operational duties. Little had I known that that trip would nearly cost me my life, that it would prove more dangerous even than Mirbat. We’d taken a C-130 from Brize Norton to Khartoum, then travelled overland to the coast just below Port Sudan. We set up camp by the Red Sea, very close to Jacques Cousteau’s diving school.
The trip was to last six weeks. It wasn’t long before a certain amount of boredom set in, particularly as alcohol was illegal in Sudan. But we soon found a way of solving the boredom problem. One of the lads dug out the Admiralty charts and gave them a closer look. Near to where we were diving was a place marked on the chart as a large square block labelled ‘restricted, dangerous’. It was like a red rag to a bull. Further enquiries revealed that it was the site of the wreck of the SS Umbria, a Second World War Italian ammunition ship. We immediately sniffed booty! Ignoring all dangers of unexploded ordnance, we dived in eagerly and quickly located a hold full of unexploded bombs. They were unarmed. That gave us a clue. Further searches uncovered a stash of nose-cone mechanisms – all made out of pure brass. That would do nicely! Back in Hereford, they would bring a tidy sum in scrap.