The Underworld Captain: From Gangland Goodfella To Army Officer Read online

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  Angie had finally made up her mind and decided I would be her boyfriend. Our relationship was still in the very early days, but one evening when I was on leave and we were together in my mum’s house, the conversation swung around to the future. I was aware Angie was still very unsure about what she wanted to do, so the time we spent together was sometimes stressful, but as we talked I said, ‘Well, would you think about getting married?’ I was only 17, which shows how immature I was. It was said almost as a joke, but I remember her response: ‘Yes, I suppose I’d think about it.’ There was never an outright, ‘Will you marry me?’ but by the end of the evening it was mutually agreed that we were getting married.

  The next day we met outside Boots in Argyle Street and bought an engagement ring. It cost £40. We were both young. We had probably made a decision based on our situation at the time, not how it would be in the future, and it wasn’t really thought through properly. Almost from the moment the ring was slipped on her finger, Angie was having doubts about the wisdom of our plans.

  My first posting was to be to the Falklands. We had more or less decided we would get married before I left, but then we had second thoughts. I felt I was too young – I was still going out, enjoying myself. I kept asking myself, ‘What happens when you marry? Does all of this stop?’ So I felt maybe I didn’t want to go ahead. Everyone kept telling me I was too young, that it wouldn’t last.

  * * *

  I kept my nose clean and Passed Out on 12 December 1983. It was a great moment for me, not least because I had managed to swell myself out to nine stone and had grown a couple of inches. However, no one from my family was there to see it, nor was Angie about to travel. The only person able to get there was Jim Brannan’s brother, John.

  I went home for Christmas and New Year with mixed emotions. I was a fully fledged soldier and had lots of money to spend, but I knew I had to report back on 3 January and in late February would be off again, away from Angie, and this time not to another part of Scotland but to the South Atlantic.

  I wanted to make the most of our time together and to show my feelings for her by getting her a really special present. I did my best by selecting a gorgeous Pringle sweater. It looked terrific, but I bought one for someone around a size 20! Angie was size 8. She gave me a beautiful chain and we also swapped envelopes containing money. Once again, I felt I messed up: Angie gave me £40; I gave her £20.

  I went to a party in Possil for New Year, but it turned out to be disappointing and ended in the place being raided by the police. There had been a break-in at a nearby shop – it turned out that’s where the people holding the party got the drink. The police arrested a few of us, accusing us of having broken into the shop, and carted us off to a police station. I got picked up for no other reason than I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was released and never charged, but I was totally astonished by the whole thing. I didn’t even know there had been a break-in.

  The arrest was bad news for me. When any member of the armed forces is arrested, the police contact the Royal Military Police and provide them with all the details. In those days, as far as the army was concerned, you were considered guilty until you could prove yourself innocent. A few days after I was released, I returned to the barracks. When I appeared in the guardroom, a corporal told me to report to Bravo Company, giving me directions on how to find them. Off I marched, with all my kit, to find the whole company, 120 men, on parade. The Company Sergeant Major (CSM) asked who I was and I replied, ‘Private Shannon.’ Saying my name was the equivalent of showing a red rag to a bull.

  ‘So, it’s you. It’s you, is it.’ He went mental shouting. I wondered what was going on, but before I could ask he had pulled me to the centre of the Company and ordered it to about-turn so that everyone had their back to us. They did this in one very smart drill movement. Next thing I was being punched and kicked all about the place until I was decked. I had to take it for three painful minutes. He was knocking fuck out of me, shouting, ‘You’re the thief. You’re the one who broke into the shop.’ It was no use trying to tell him I was innocent. This was my introduction to the battalion.

  When the blows ceased, the CSM shouted at me to stand up. He said, ‘That’s for getting caught. Now, get your kit and follow the corporal. He’ll show you your room and give you a brief tour of the camp.’

  It turned out the corporal, an older guy, had known my brother Jamie, who had spent a few years in the same regiment and had been a popular guy. That was before he got into trouble by going AWOL and was discharged. I was different from Jamie – I loved the army – but it didn’t prevent others tarring me with the same brush. They thought they could goad and bully me to the point where I, too, could no longer soldier, but in my case it didn’t work. Thankfully, this kind of tormenting disappeared from the armed forces about 20 years ago.

  I started to settle in and got my head down. From the first day, I was nicknamed ‘Del’ after the pop singer, Del Shannon. It was the same tag that had been given to Jamie when he joined. I was popular from the beginning but noted how some soldiers thought it was clever to slag off me or my brother. I remembered who they were and, as time went by, like Charlie Davis, they would come to pay for their impertinence.

  There were around ten Glaswegians in the Royal Scots, but since the regiment was largely composed of men from the east coast of Scotland, some were frequently picked out for special treatment. I tended to be left alone, but my mate Steven Fox, from Craigend, was the victim of particularly cowardly attacks from morons who went out night after night boozing, couldn’t hold their liquor and came back fighting drunk. I felt so sorry for him, but there was not much I could do, as I had to look after myself for now and could not afford to be seen to step out of line again.

  We were in what had been a Close Observation Company (COP) that had only recently returned from a two-year tour of Ballykinler in Northern Ireland. In this company were the best soldiers in the regiment. They were ruthless but professional, and made sure there was no bullying, insisting instead on character building, stressing the importance of this as we continued to train for the Falklands. In order to get us prepared for the dreadful terrain and weather we would encounter on the Falklands, we were made to go hillwalking every day throughout January and February, carrying our full kit over the Pentland Hills to the south-west of Edinburgh. Day after day, torrential rain battered us, and we bent our backs against freezing blasts of gale-force winds that froze every part of our aching bodies. The idea was to build us up for what was to come. We were the new kids on the block and had to expect this sort of treatment. Maybe it was because I was small, or perhaps the CSM was still wreaking his vengeance on me for what he saw as me having brought the company into disrepute by being arrested, even though I was declared wholly innocent, but I was always given the man-portable multi-role recoilless rifle produced by Saab in Sweden and known popularly as the Carl Gustav 84 mm. It weighed eight and a half kilos – but after lugging it around the Pentlands in downpours and hurricane winds for most of each day I was convinced it weighed the same as me. It wasn’t worth complaining. Nobody cared. It was a case of survival and every man for himself. My one consolation was knowing that each weekend I could return to Glasgow to meet up with Angie. But as the weekends passed, the day when I would set sail for the south raced nearer.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The battle for the Falkland Islands was long over, but the diplomatic fighting continued and, while the talking dragged on and the threat of another invasion attempt hung over the bleak landscapes, British troops remained there in strength. There were vast areas to patrol, including fields, beaches and peat moors holding the unseen and ever-present danger of thousands of deadly land mines left by the Argentine invaders. Alex had known during his training that once he joined the regiment he would soon be on his way to the South Atlantic. For months he and his colleagues had read about and familiarised themselves with locations such as San Carlos, Bomb Alley, Goos
e Green, Mount Tumbledown and the town of Stanley. Now, they were about to see them at first hand. He had been ordered to deploy on 5 March 1984.

  * * *

  I would see Angie every weekend until I left for the Falklands. On our last night together it was soul destroying knowing it would be months before I could hold her again.

  Next morning, as I was boarding one of the buses taking us to the Royal Air Force base at Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, I heard a call and turned to see the wife of the company sergeant major. She asked if she could have a word, and when I joined her she gave me a teddy bear. It was meant as a good luck mascot.

  ‘Look after him while you are away and give him back when you return safely,’ she said. I promised I would, but frankly I was embarrassed when I joined the other soldiers carrying the cuddly toy.

  From Brize Norton, we boarded an RAF jet that took us – and the teddy bear – to the Ascension Islands, south of the equator. That flight seemed to take hours, and when we arrived and disembarked it felt as though we were walking into a fire. The heat was merciless. But the journey was far from over. We had each been allocated a muster area to which we now marched and waited to be called forward to board helicopters transferring us onto the SS Uganda. It was to take us on the final leg of our long trip.

  The Uganda started life as a passenger liner between London and East Africa before being converted into an educational cruise ship operating mainly in Scandinavia and the Mediterranean. In 1982, she was used as a hospital ship during the Falklands conflict before a refit made her ready to shuttle troops between the Ascensions and the Falklands.

  Once on board, we were shown our accommodation: four-high tiered bunks, with twenty men to a cabin. It was grim, but this was to be our home for the next two weeks until we disembarked at Port Stanley. It was my first experience of a cruise and for the first few days everything was fine. We stuck to the same sort of programme as on land – keep-fit sessions, weapons training, signals and anything else the officers could think up to keep us occupied. There were other diversions, such as trying to scrounge food to make up for the appalling stuff dished up to us. Watching the antics of the staff entertained us as well. They were mostly merchant seamen, some of them openly gay and on the lookout for company, and with the arrival of hundreds of fit young soldiers they must have thought all their Christmases had come at once. I don’t know if there were any takers, but at least you could share a good laugh with them.

  * * *

  During the voyage, the soldiers would often be found in a shop selling small personal electrical items such as portable music players and digital clocks. They were expensive and so were kept in a glass-fronted case with sliding glass doors held in place by an alarmed lock. One enterprising Scot with a history of thieving was confident that by applying pressure to one of the doors it would be possible to ease the door past the lock without setting off the alarm. Surrounded by mates who hid what was going on from the eyes of staff, he was endeavouring to carry out this manoeuvre when the glass shattered and the alarm went off. In a second, with the hand of a practised shoplifter, he snatched a digital clock and secreted it in his combat jacket. Chaos ensued. A cursory glance revealed the clock had vanished and staff demanded to know who had been near the cabinet. There would have to be an inquiry.

  Officers were summoned, but when an initial investigation turned up neither clock nor thief, the matter was put in the hands of the Royal Military Police. They decided to wait before pouncing.

  The culprit, meantime, fearing a search of every man and his equipment, realised he had to get rid of the offending item for the time being. Sneaking off to the engine room, he hid it behind an array of pipe work, intending to retrieve it on the homeward voyage, hoping that by then the hunting hounds would have been called off. To this day, the clock sits in a house in the north end of Glasgow.

  * * *

  Midway through the voyage, the Atlantic weather took over. For a week, I was constantly seasick. Initially, I had been unwilling to sample the food; now, I simply could not keep anything down. When the Falklands finally hove into view, I felt relieved, but weakened. On first sight, I thought Port Stanley looked like Legoland. It was surreal: small houses, all painted in different colours, and in the background a cold, drab landscape. My initial impression was ‘Oh God, what’s this?’ My fears were compounded when we began chatting with the outgoing members of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, whom we were relieving. As they stepped off the same helicopters that would take us ashore, they wished us luck, warning us we’d need it!

  In the distance, I could see the Coastels, floating accommodation ships normally used by oil rig workers. We would be living on board them for the next five months. They looked cold and uncomfortable. When we climbed into them, however, we discovered they were fantastic – better than our army quarters at home. Once we settled in we were given instructions as to what our routine would entail. There were to be three platoons, each rotating in three six-day cycles, comprising patrols, when you stayed out for the full cycle, relying on having supplies dropped by helicopter; sangar duties around Port Stanley airfield; and fatigues combined with being part of a Quick Reaction Force based at the Coastels.

  My favourite cycle was going on patrol around the outskirts of Port Stanley, climbing Mount Tumbledown, Mount Longdon (where Platoon Sergeant Ian McKay of 4 Platoon, B Company, 3rd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment won a Victoria Cross for a heroic charge on enemy positions in June 1982 that cost him his life), Wireless Ridge and Two Sisters Ridge. I was 18 years old and walking in the footsteps of heroes.

  The war had been over for almost two years, yet it was as if we existed in a time warp. The enemy had long since disappeared, but everything was still in place, seemingly waiting for them to return. At the same time, danger lurked everywhere. We had been warned to be on the lookout for minefields, yet still managed to walk into them without knowing it. Fortunately, none of us was injured because there were a lot of brave people working there at the time trying to find them. It was slow, risky work, but in the meantime the patrols had to continue.

  One day as we walked from Tumbledown to Longdon, we crossed a peaty area. Reaching the other side, we climbed a fence and, looking back, saw a sign showing red triangles marking the site of a minefield. Had we come from the other direction we would have spotted the sign. As it was, we had walked right through the field and emerged unscathed. The odds against one surviving were high; for the whole squad to escape injury or death the odds must have been phenomenal.

  I was never scared of being blown up by a mine. My attitude then was that the only time you thought about the chances of being blown up was not before it happened but after. Soldiers tend to tell themselves, ‘It’ll be somebody else, it won’t be me.’ If it does happen to somebody right next to you, then maybe it can get to you, but your attitude is more likely to be, thank fuck it was him and not me. That’s not being callous, just realistic. After it happens, you simply crack on. When tragedy occurs, soldiers usually turn to black humour as an antidote to fear or worry, and it is this that keeps them going.

  There were other dangers. We were constantly finding live grenades too, and when we did our orders were just to mark them and then move away, leaving disposal experts to make them safe. Some areas were like Second World War battlefields, with weapons and equipment abandoned everywhere. There was never any temptation to take any of it because ours was superior. Despite the risks and the need to be ultra careful, this was heaven to me. I was able to walk along all these routes where troops had marched to battle, examine the battlefields themselves, discover where the various positions of both sides had been and imagine the fighting through the minds of both attacker and defender. I had pictured Tumbledown as a mountain of the nature of Ben Macdui, but it turned out to be not much steeper than Balgrayhill. Here were locations I had seen on television news programmes; now, I was standing on them, feeling glorious, almost as though the battle still raged. I saw things from the Argentine
viewpoint, in particular the defences they had placed around Stanley, and all I can say is thank God we had not been there to attack the city. It was one of the best defended locations I’ve ever seen. They were sometimes dug in five or six feet down, like underground houses. Seeing them reminded me that we were patrolling because we were on an operational tour; we were expecting Argentine forces to return and attack at any time, so there was an ever-present need for vigilance.

  As my career in the army developed, I would become increasingly familiar with the term ‘sangar’. This is a small, temporary fortified position, sometimes made of blocks or bricks, or even sandbags. Sangar duty in the Falklands meant spending six days inside, watching the area around the vital airfield at Stanley and heading out to patrol the perimeter, while always being on the ready for a surprise enemy attack.

  Least popular of the cycles were fatigues. I tried getting my head down and gave maximum effort to everything, but I just did not like fatigues. Sometimes you had to peel potatoes for five hours on end, and once that was done you were given any rubbish jobs someone in authority could think up. During one of these fatigue cycles, I was told to go and paint oil drums outside the CSM’s office. So, at about nine in the evening, along with another young guy, I headed down there to start painting. It was pissing with rain and we were using water-based blue and white paint, so every time we put the paint on it would just run. Around midnight, I went into the CSM’s office and explained the problem to an NCO. His response was to slap me around the ear and order me back outside.

  We continued painting for another couple of hours and then thought, ‘Fuck this,’ and went back to the NCO.