The Underworld Captain: From Gangland Goodfella To Army Officer Page 13

  In the early days in particular, I would telephone Angie every day. If I could phone twice a day, I would do so. Angie worried about me all the time when I wasn’t at home. During the times when I was in Ireland and it came over on the radio or television that a soldier had been killed, her heart would skip a beat. When something happened in Northern Ireland, the soldiers’ phones tended to go down, so nobody could ring their family until that of the casualty had been informed, which added to the uncertainty.

  We never made a big scene when I was leaving to go on a tour. I’d just go into Angie at night, give her a kiss and say, ‘Cheerio.’ I would never do the big dramatic thing, with tears and histrionics and ‘I don’t want to go.’ I’ve always done it as though I was going to be back the next morning. That’s the way Angie used to deal with it as well otherwise she couldn’t handle it. It was always done almost as a matter of fact. It’s how the two of us would cope with it and we didn’t like it any other way.

  Even when I used to come back, even though we would make a bit of an effort between us to show how glad we were to be together again, we didn’t go out of our way and do the sort of dramatics you see in An Officer and a Gentleman. I always tried to fit back in as soon as I could. My thoughts were: ‘Don’t make a fuss of anybody. Don’t make out as if I’ve been away for a long time. No matter what’s happened, don’t go on about it. Just crack on and get back to normal as quickly as you can.’

  In all, I did six tours to Northern Ireland and my feeling on the last was precisely the same as on the first: I loved it. I loved the adrenaline rush, the challenge, the whole lot. I thrived on being put in situations that were adverse or dangerous. Never did I feel fear. I used to see guys greeting at the prospect of going out there or over things that they saw or experienced, but not me. It didn’t frighten me in the slightest and I never, ever worried about it. But I did read up as much as I could before I went on what was happening out there.

  I admit that my first tour in West Belfast was an eye opener and a couple of times when I was on patrol it was scary, but I never really thought it was my time to be injured or killed. It was always somebody else’s. I kept telling myself, ‘I’m never going to get it. If somebody else is going to get it, then I’m not so much happy, but I’m happy it’s not me.’ That’s the way the majority of soldiers look at it.

  * * *

  There was a particular reason for there to be special interest in the arrival of the regiment as it sat in four-ton trucks for the journey from Aldergrove airport just outside Belfast to the base at North Howard Street Mill in the great city. They were the first troops to be equipped with the SA80 firearm. For a start, it had a sight that could magnify a target four times. There were rumours that terrorists thought this was some kind of super gun, but, as any soldier knew, the weapon was only as good as the individual in whose hands it lay. In fact, had the Provos known that in each truck only one man carried ammunition – and, at that, just ten rounds – the welcome might not have been so muted. Alex wondered about the wisdom of the arming arrangements as, for instance, they drove past the notorious but now demolished Divis Flats complex. While the army had established an observation post on the top of the Divis Tower, which dominated the housing scheme, there was considerable resentment in the area towards the armed forces and police. Locals had not forgotten the tragedy in August 1969, when little Patrick Rooney, aged only nine, was killed as the Royal Ulster Constabulary fired a Browning machine gun into the Tower from an armoured car. The RUC later justified its action by claiming its officers had come under sniper fire.

  Alex’s regiment had been told it would be based at the Mill for the length of the tour, which was to be five months. It turned out to be one of the bloodiest and bitterest periods of the whole Ulster troubles.

  Initially, things were relatively quiet. Alex began in the Battalion Operations Room and Intelligence Cell, where a continuous flow of information from men on the ground enabled the secret watchers and listeners to see and hear all that was being played out by the IRA and army on a daily basis. He thought it to be a good education on the military doctrine of both sides and in the use of high- and low-level intelligence by the army. But around Christmas, the terrorists struck.

  * * *

  I was walking up the stairs in the Mill towards the cookhouse on the level above me, where the rest of the guys from ‘B’ company were. Suddenly, there was a massive bang and I seemed to be covered in soup. We had been told that if anything happened, we were to run straight to our rooms and cover our bodies with our mattresses in case debris fell on us. And that’s what we did. I remember running in and throwing the mattress over me, and then the second explosion went off. It turned out we had been hit by a rocket-launched grenade and a Mark 12 or 13 mortar fitted into the back of a blue Hiace van. One of the devices exploded over an area known as Falls Court. Neither actually hit the Mill, nor did the damage result in the massacre of troops, which had been the intention of the amateur artillerymen responsible, but the sheer size of the bombs ripped off tiles and shattered windows. In fact, the attack backfired on its perpetrators. There were no military casualties, but houses in North Howard Street suffered damage and a number of residents received minor injuries.

  It was my first experience of a mortar and it was one I’d never forget. A few weeks later the bombers tried again, and this time fired a Russian-manufactured RPG-7, a portable shoulder-launched anti-tank rocket-propelled grenade, into the gymnasium. Again, it was relatively ineffectual.

  These incidents had the effect of ensuring troops were kept on their toes, but if their principal effect was to cause discomfort to eardrums, they were as nothing compared with what was to come.

  * * *

  Alex remembers January and February of 1988 as being busy with the usual riots, petrol bombings and attempted killings of the so-called soft targets, such as off-duty members of the RUC or UDR and any other civilians who happened to get in the way of the various terrorist groups.

  It was the Loyalists who suffered the first setbacks. On 8 January, a routine search by the RUC of a three-car convoy in County Armagh uncovered a vast array of firearms on their way to the Ulster Defence Association, and a week later two members of the Ulster Defence Regiment, a British Army infantry regiment, were murdered in separate incidents. More murders followed before the month was out, a Catholic civilian dying in County Down and a policeman in Belfast.

  There was obvious hatred toward the army in Belfast, and likewise towards the politicians who had put the troops on the streets and commanded them to remain. This anger, compounded by the belief that soldiers and police were under orders to kill without warning, became fury when it was announced that for reasons of national security nobody would be prosecuted following the Stalker Sampson Inquiry into allegations that the British government had operated a shoot-to-kill policy in the province. John Stalker, a former senior policeman, reported that the Royal Ulster Constabulary had carried out such a policy. His findings embarrassed both the RUC and the government, which was desperately trying to soothe Irish nationalists angered both by the presence of British soldiers on the streets and by claims of brutality by the troops. This hatred within the community was inevitably vented on soldiers such as Alex Shannon.

  The temperature of the rage increased when judges in London threw out appeals by the group known as the Birmingham Six, who had been in jail since being convicted of pub bombings in the Midlands in 1974. New forensic evidence suggested the men were innocent, but back to prison they went and they would remain there until being released in 1991, declared victims of miscarriages of justice.

  February was no better. Private Ian Thain of the Light Infantry had been convicted of murdering Thomas ‘Kidso’ Reilly, a road manager with the all-girl pop group Bananarama, and jailed for life in 1984. Now it was revealed he had been released and had returned to his regiment, a development the terrorists used to their considerable advantage in the crucial public relations war. The following day the
IRA blew up and killed two members of the UDR. Five days later, the IRA lost two of its own when a bomb they were planting went off prematurely. But the worst was still to come.

  * * *

  While I was working in the Battalion Operations Room, all sorts of specialists would call in from time to time. One of these was Corporal Derek Wood of the Royal Corps of Signals, who usually arrived to fix and maintain radios and install measures to ensure that communications between us and men elsewhere remained secret. He frequently turned up in civilian clothing, a woolly hat or rolled-up balaclava on his head. I asked him why he dressed that way because frankly I felt his appearance made him stick out as though he was some undercover operator. Naturally, the terrorist organisations, in particular the IRA and PIRA, made particular efforts to track down and identify members of the SAS and undercover teams. Corporal Wood laughed this off as if I was joking with him, but I was deadly serious. Our exchanges about his appearance preyed on my mind for the rest of my career, especially in light of the tragic events that were about to take place.

  On Sunday, 6 March 1988, three members of a PIRA active service unit were in Gibraltar. Their intention was to explode a car bomb at the spot where a band from the Royal Anglian Regiment would be parading for the weekly changing of the guard at the governor’s residence. British security experts had been tipped off about the bomb plot and mounted Operation Flavius to identify and arrest the trio, Danny McCann, Sean Savage and Mairead Farrell. The task was put in the hands of the SAS. These elite troops believed – wrongly, as it turned out – that the bomb was already in place. As a result, when three of their members, armed with 9 mm Browning high-powered pistols, confronted the terrorists and saw McCann reach into a bag, they shot him, thinking he was about to remotely detonate the bomb. Farrell died in the same way, apparently moving to open her handbag, and when Savage made a movement to his pocket he too was killed. An examination of the bodies revealed all were unarmed. McCann had been shot five times, Farrell eight, and at least sixteen bullets had hit Savage. The set of car keys in Farrell’s handbag led police to a vehicle parked in Marbella containing Semtex. The shootings, reported as ‘Death on the Rock’, sparked a wave of condemnation of the SAS action and the threat of retaliation by the dead terrorists’ masters.

  When I saw and read about the incident, I immediately recognised volunteer Danny McCann, who was 30 when he died. He was a well-known IRA terrorist who had been jailed twice and was part of the West Belfast Brigade at a senior level. When I was out patrolling, I would stop him and check his details, searching him at every opportunity. He was not singled out for any special treatment; this was the routine with all known terrorists whether Republican or Loyalist.

  McCann had told me during these searches that he was a butcher by trade and that his father owned a butcher’s shop on the Falls Road. It was said that after his son’s death McCann’s father was having brochures advertising holidays in Gibraltar put through the door of his shop on a daily basis, supposedly by the resident infantry battalion – my regiment, the Royal Scots.

  As you can imagine, the whole regiment had been on a high because we’d managed to successfully deal with all the IRA could throw at us over the previous few months in Northern Ireland, but the events in Gibraltar sent the province spiralling almost out of control.

  On 14 March, Volunteer Kevin McCracken, aged 31, set out to guard the home of the Savage family, who were preparing for the funeral of Sean. A committed member of the IRA since 1975, he had been jailed for 13 years in 1977. He had helped in the September 1983 mass escape of 38 members of the Provisionals from ‘H’ Block of the Maze prison and had been released in 1985. There are conflicting versions of what happened on 14 March.

  According to IRA sympathisers, McCracken was shot in the back by an army sniper and, in the 15 minutes it took for an ambulance to arrive, was beaten up. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. My version, from conversations with other troops, is this.

  A patrol from our ‘A’ Company was behind some shops having a quick smoke break when one of the team spotted some movement that looked suspicious down a lane next to the shops. He told a superior, who was and is one of my closest friends, what he had seen and they began to investigate. As the superior walked into the lane, he noticed a boiler-suited individual wearing a balaclava and carrying an AK47 rifle. It was Kevin McCracken. He was shot with the superior’s SA80 rifle. As McCracken lay on the ground, the soldier tried to save him, even though he realised that his patrol had probably been the dying Volunteer’s target.

  Ten days after they were killed, the bodies of McCann, Savage and Farrell were taken for burial to Milltown Cemetery in Belfast. Feelings against the security forces were so strong that it was decided, after discussions with Republicans, that the army and RUC would stay away from the funeral. After a service and requiem mass, the cortege, carrying coffins draped in the Irish tricolour, arrived at the cemetery, where gunfire was heard. Many thought this was the traditional IRA salute to dead Volunteers; in fact, it was the start of a horrific attack by UDA fanatic Michael Stone.

  Hiding hand grenades, a Browning semi-automatic pistol and a Magnum revolver, Stone had infiltrated the mourners intent on murdering IRA commanders. As he launched his onslaught, the crowd surged after him, defying the grenades and pistol shots. Stone was caught by enraged mourners, but, as he was about to be taken away by the IRA for execution, he was intercepted and arrested by the RUC and ‘A’ Company of the Royal Scots. He had killed three people – Caoimhin Mac Bradaigh, John Murray and Thomas McErlean – and wounded more than sixty others. Badly injured, Stone was taken to Musgrave Park Hospital for his own safety, where he was guarded around the clock by RUC officers. As his condition improved, he began receiving gifts and get well cards from around the world. He would eventually be jailed for a total of 682 years.

  Three days later came more tragedy, and once again I knew one of the victims. Corporal Derek Wood and his friend Corporal David Robert Howes were driving in a silver Volkswagen Passat along the Andersonstown Road towards Milltown Cemetery when they found themselves mixed up in the cortege carrying the body of Caoimhin Mac Bradaigh. They realised they had taken a wrong turn, but their efforts to extricate themselves led mourners to believe the two men, in civilian dress, were Loyalists hell-bent on another Stone-type attack. The car was surrounded and Wood, who was carrying a pistol, shot into the air. As television cameras recorded the horrific scenes, both were dragged into a taxi. They were then taken to a waste ground, stripped, tortured and murdered. Wood was shot six times and stabbed four times.

  On the day both these soldiers were killed, I was waiting to be picked up from Belfast City airport by members of the Motor Transport Platoon in a covert vehicle. I watched the whole terrible event live on television in the airport bar. I realised I too was about to head back into the area of the tragedy in an unmarked car. As you can imagine, what I had just watched freaked me out to the extent that when the vehicle came to pick me up I went straight into the weapons bag and took out the SA80, loaded it and made ready with a magazine of 20-plus rounds. I sat with the rifle on my lap all the way back to the Mill, saying to myself, ‘If you’re coming to get me, then there are nineteen bullets for you and the last one for me.’

  I can’t criticise the two dead corporals because I don’t know how or why they ended up in the middle of the funeral gathering, but I am aware that at this time it was common for some individuals who had access to civilian vehicles to go out cruising, mainly in Republican areas, that were completely out of bounds at all times to these vehicles. How do I know that? I had done it myself once in early January. I found the experience strange and thought at the time that I wouldn’t be doing it again. It was too dangerous. The guy I was with kept telling me to stop worrying, but he taught me a lesson that I used later on in my military career: don’t take risks with other people’s lives.

  I would point out to any individuals I happened to be training that by their dress the c
orporals had made themselves stick out like sore thumbs, attracting attention. I often referred to Derek Wood and would stress the difference between Special Forces and Specialist Forces, pointing out that the two were totally different. It was dangerous for the latter to believe or act as though it were the former and vice versa.

  I have come across many Walter Mitty characters during my service, particularly in Northern Ireland – men who believed that because they were posted to Special Forces they had remarkable abilities and became overconfident. Often they would be no more than drivers, medics or storemen. These beliefs in themselves could be dangerous and on occasions could lead to death. There were many lessons learned from the tragedy of the corporals, as I discovered when I went on a Close Observation Platoon course as a team commander.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Alex’s first tour of Northern Ireland was coming to an end in May 1988, but the killings went on. A bomb hidden in a gas canister killed Royal Artilleryman Lyndon Morgan, aged just 20, as he was on foot patrol at Carrickmore, County Tyrone, in April. Elsewhere there were regular attacks on RUC officers. What caused concern to many service families were the killings by the IRA of three members of the RAF in the Netherlands on 1 May, one by a sniper, the two others as a result of a bomb attached to their car. It meant the terrorists were spreading their murderous talons into the European mainland where the wives and children of many troops on duty in Ulster lived. Among them were Angie and Thomas, now aged two. Undermining the morale of the vulnerable was part of the IRA strategy, of course. Realising their families were now living in fear could cause troops to lose concentration and put themselves and colleagues at greater risk. Apart from occasional leaves when Alex could join her and Thomas, Angie had been on her own. She was looking forward to her husband coming home, but when he did he had news that meant she was about to be alone yet again.