Part 19 (1/2)

”You've got to remember what these people are going to do to you,” Mick said. ”If you look at the victims of the Shankill Butchers, you'll know that these people don't mess about. They start playing with you with electric drills and lumps of steel and rock.”

We were told that a lot of people in Northern Ireland had guns and were all macho with them, but it was the intention to use them that counted.

Sometimes blokes had walked straight up to people with guns and disarmed them because they didn't know when to fire.

We knew that every time we drew a pistol we must have the intention to use it; we were never to make a threat that we weren't going to carry out.

Mick said, ”It isn't enough to know how; you have. to know when.

The intention to use the skills is as important as the skills themselves. Otherwise, in a place like Northern Ireland, you'd be drawing your pistol every five minutes, and that's just going to get you killed and compromise your operation.

”Sometimes people will come up and say, 'Who the f.u.c.k are you?”

Or people will stare at you the whole length of a street. You've got to have that Colgate air of confidence; it's your most important weapon.”

Walking through any of the housing estates over the water, we'd get the boys coming up. They might be coming out of their houses or just mincing around having a f.a.g by the car. They'd look at us with their eyes, saying, ”Who the f.u.c.k are you?” If we looked at the floor and thought, Oh, dear, I'd better get out of here, that would alert them- they wouldn't know who we were, or what we were, but they'd sense there was something wrong.

”You don't draw your pistol,” Mick said, rounding off the lesson.

”You use your secret weapon: a good, loud Irish 'f.u.c.k off!”-and nine times out of ten they'll take you as one of their own.”

Nosh said, ”It's okay for you, you already have a bone accent.”

The training went on for weeks. We did everything from CTR skills to fast driving drills, shooting out of cars and shooting into cars, and I loved every minute of it.

I was picked up at Belfast airport and driven to our location. The smells and sounds inside the building took me straight back to Crossmaglen: fried eggs and talc.u.m powder, music and shouting. Four or five dogs mooched around the place, looking as if they got fed to no end.

”Finished your leave, have you?” said a familiar voice behind me, followed by a resounding fart. ”About f.u.c.king time. They said they were sending some w.a.n.ker from the Green jackets.”

”h.e.l.lo, Nosh.” I grinned.

He'd just come out of his room and was wearing a pair of jeans, flip-flops, and an old clinging T-s.h.i.+rt. His hair was sticking up, and there was a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. At least he had his teeth in.

Brew?”

I followed him over to the brew area just outside the living accommodation. The Burco boiler looked as if it was kept going twenty-four hours a day; next to it was a big box of NAAFI biscuits and jars of coffee and sugar.

”How's the ice-cream boys then?” I said.

I'd eventually solved the mystery of that nickname, discovering that the Air Troop had always had the p.i.s.s taken out of them. Wherever there was a camera, said everybody else in the squadrons, the Air Troop would be posing in front of it-usually with shades and a deep tan. It stemmed from the way we had to operate. When there was troop training or squadron exercises, Mountain Troop would go and live on a mountain, Boat Troop might go down to the dark and murky waters of Poole Harbor and paddle about in the freezing cold, but we'd have to go where the clear skies were, and that happened to be where the sun and Cornettos were too, so a few jumps, then rig and jumpsuit off, get an ice cream and walk around in shorts and flip-flops, looking good. No one said it 'Would be easy. There was one exception, and that was G Squadron Air Troop, which was known as the Lonsdale Troop because they were forever fighting one another. They even fought a pitched battle on a petrol station forecourt one day because they couldn't agree about who should get out of the minibus and do the filling up.

”Seen anybody yet?” Nosh said. ”The ops room is up the top there. just leave your kit here. f.u.c.k knows where you're sleeping. I think you're going in Steve's room. But if you go upstairs and see who's up there, they'll be able to sort you out. Tiny got his bike nicked in London, so he's really f.u.c.king pleased about thatmake sure you ask him about it because he gets all bitter and twisted. What's even worse, I'm living with him now, and he hates it. Got to go now, Blockbusters is on.”

Nosh, I discovered that evening, after finding myself a bed s.p.a.ce in Steve's room, was still a nose-picking exmember of the civilized human race, living in a disgusting world of gunge. If he didn't like something on the television, he picked his nose and flicked the bogey at the screen. The gla.s.s was covered with things.

”He's decided he wants to learn the guitar,” said Frank. ”He spends all his free time knocking out 'Dueling Banjos.” Not that you'll be able to tell. It sounds like 'Colonel Bogey' to me.”

”Talking of which,” Steve said to me, ”don't look inside the guitar.”

”Why not?”

”Just don't.”

I did. To judge by the volume of the crop, it was a miracle Nosh's head hadn't caved in.

Besides fatting, picking his nose, and strumming, his other pa.s.sion in life was eggy-weggies and Marmite soldiers. Every night he'd go to the cookhouse to get his boiled eggs and Marmite toast; then he'd come back, do the crossword, watch the telly, have a f.a.g and a fart, and go to sleep.

Johnny Two-Combs was also with us, from Boat Troop. There still wasn't a hair out of place. The last time I'd seen him was in a bar in Hereford. He was wearing a black polo-neck jumper, a yellow s.h.i.+rt over that, and black trousers. He went up to a girl and said, eyes half closed and half flickering, doing his best Robert De Niro, ”I just want to tell you that you have the most beautiful eyes.”

It was the most ridiulous chat-up line I'd ever heard.

Half an hour later he was escorting her into a cab.

Colin had been in charge of the troop when I went to Malaya.

Getting words out of him was still like drawing teeth; it would just be a sniff and ”That was good,” or a sniff and ”That was s.h.i.+t.”

Eno had been on my first Selection and pa.s.sed, getting in six months before me. He was from the Queen's Regiment, a rarity in the Regiment.

Predictably, everybody spoke to him in a camp voice but for some inexplicable reason also shouted, ”Three queens, three queens,” whenever they saw him. A thin little midget, Eno was a tremendous racing snake, heavily into triathlons. He smoked twenty a day but was so fit that at one champions.h.i.+p he stood at the start line with a f.a.g in his mouth.

”Got to spark myself up, ain't I?” he said. Eno was very much like Colin, never flapped, never got excited, and you had to beat him up to have a conversation.

Jock was there, too, whom I'd met on Selection. There seemed to be no compromise with him. He had a policy of working really hard, being incredibly serious at work; then when it was fun time, it was outrageous fun time.

We were at a squadron party once; he went up to the colonel's wife, and he said, ”Do you fancy a dance?”

She said, ”Yes, that would be lovely,” so Jock walked her onto the middle of the dance floor, pulled out a Michael Jackson mask, and taught her to moon-walk.

Frank Collins was still Mr. Calm and Casual. He never shouted, never got annoyed. Steve told me he had been one of the youngest soldiers in the Regiment when he did the emba.s.sy in 1980. From the first night of the siege he and the rest of the a.s.sault team were ready on the roof, dressed in full black kit and expecting the order to go in at any moment. It must have been tense stuffbut not for Frank.

Apparently he was so relaxed he took a pillow with him to snooze away an hour or two. I knew he was into climbing, canoeing, free fall, and religion, and I found out he was being called Joseph at this stage because he was into carpentry as well.

”You'll never see Frank when there's nothing going on,” Nosh said.

”He'll be doing the family business.”

He was going down to one of the local timber yards and making tables and cupboards and things that he was going to be taking back to the UK for his house. In fact they were quite good-big kitchen tables and things.

I was lying on my bed one day, scratching my a.r.s.e and drinking tea, when Frank came in said, ”You bored, or what?”

”Yeah, I'm doing nothing, just hanging around.”

I ”Do you want something to read?”

”Yeah, what you got?”

”I've got something with s.e.x, violence, intrigue, you name it, it's got it.”

”Okay, yeah, I'll have a read of it.”