Braver Men Walk Away Read online

  The ground troops seemed to have the situation under control. Back at the Saracen Dave Cook, my number two, helped me to rig up what is the best life-saver ever developed for use in bomb disposal activity. About three feet high and constructed from lightweight tin plate and aluminium, the ‘Wheelbarrow’ trod where angels and sensible EOD operators dare not. It looked like a refugee from a low-budget sci-fi film, a rudimentary wheeled robot powered by a couple of 12-volt batteries and driven by an electric motor which whirred discreetly as it trundled to its target. Yet it was highly sophisticated and capable of undertaking a variety of tasks.

  There were rival designs, but they had proved horrendous, especially the ‘Skate’. This had 2-inch wheels and 2-inch ground clearance. When you sent it along the road to a suspect vehicle it would suddenly veer into the gutter, its wheels banging impotently against the kerb until you came out of cover and retrieved it. Another was called the ‘Dalek’. It weighed God alone knows how many kilograms and had a turn of speed that would have disgraced a snail. I had been encouraged to use both the Skate and the Dalek but found the best way to deal with the bloody things was to blow them up.

  The Wheelbarrow was different. Invented by Peter Miller at the Military Vehicles Experimental Establishment at Chobham, the electrically powered machine originally had a rope-operated tiller but had been progressively refined. Soon there were electrically steered versions all operated via a remote control console linked to the unit by a length of command cable.

  The inventor was as distinctive as his invention: you could ring Peter from Belfast and say the barrow didn’t cope too well today, and somehow he’d wangle a flight out the next morning and solve the problem. It was the kind of behaviour which probably didn’t suit the orthodox minds that ran MVEE because when Peter retired there was virtually no recognition of his work, nor has there been any since. His invention has saved many a life. He deserves far more acknowledgement than he has received.

  Hunkered down by the side of the Saracen, Dave and I watched our Wheelbarrow whirr away. We’d rigged it with an automatic snap-on towing hook, the idea being to position the barrow by the car then trigger the spring-loaded release. After the hook with its towline had been clamped on to either the suspension or back axle, the barrow would be detached and moved clear. With the free end of the line secured to the Saracen, the car would be towed out backwards into the middle of the road. If the IED went off then, the resulting damage would be far less.

  Navigating the barrow was now second nature to me. The control unit had fore and aft controls and a rotary knob which you turned to activate the secondary switchgear. The main thing was not to get the control cable fouled up in the wheels.

  I edged the barrow along the left-hand pavement and then, at a point almost opposite the alley, swung it around the concrete column of a street lamp. Because of the Elf’s position (the alley was at right angles to the road) there was no way of getting a direct pull. I then manoeuvred the barrow across to the Elf and triggered the spring release. There was a satisfying clang of metal on metal as the hook arm clamped on. I disengaged the barrow, using the fore and aft controls to move it clear.

  We hooked the free end of the towline to the Saracen. The high thick-ridged wheels began to turn and the Elf slowly emerged, its wheels passing over the control cable that still snaked from me to the barrow. The youths had most likely left the handbrake on and the car in gear to frustrate such a manoeuvre, but when you’ve a 1-inch diameter nylon towline coupled to an 11-ton Saracen the outcome isn’t in doubt. The Elf stopped safely in the middle of the road. I brought the barrow back to the Saracen; like an obedient retriever it waited, whirring.

  The safest way of dealing with the IED was to send in the barrow again, this time with a ‘Candle’, a 6-ounce charge of RDX/Aluminium (cyclo-trimethylene-trinitramine mixed with aluminium to enhance the blast and burn effect. The principle was simple: when the temperature of a flame is increased then so is the temperature of the escaping gas; the greater the temperature, the greater the volume; the greater the volume, the greater the blast effect.) I took a Candle from the protective case and began to wire it up. The Candle would be attached to a boom on the barrow, just aft of the unit’s automatic window-breaker. The barrow would then be manoeuvred alongside the car, the window-breaker aligned at a right angle to the glass, and the barrow driven slowly forwards until contact was made with the pane, whereupon the pressure caused the window-breaker to function. The barrow would be inched forwards again until the end of the boom was inside the car; at the press of a command switch, a signal would race down the cable, activate the boom release, and the Candle would then drop neatly on to the seat.

  But a Candle isn’t impact-sensitive; you don’t just drop it to make it go off. In this instance the Candle’s detonator would be attached to fifty yards of light twin-core cable held on a drum on the Wheelbarrow. After the Candle had been dropped, the barrow would be brought back towards the Saracen. As it travelled along the drum would turn and the detonator cable reel out behind it. As soon as the barrow was out of the major blast area, the firing circuit switch could be triggered to initiate detonation. The result, we hoped, would be to destroy within milliseconds the firing circuits of the IED and burn out its explosive.

  I held the Candle under my left armpit, leaving both hands free to connect up the detonator leg wires. It looked smooth, waxy and quite innocuous. Yet within 8,000th of a second of detonation occurring, a Candle’s blast wave will have smashed into an object a metre away with a force of over 400 kPa (kiloPascals) at a speed of over 700 yards per second.

  Were you unfortunate enough to be next to it at the time, you’d witness the sequence in all its spectacular detail: first the blue flash of initial detonation, a few milliseconds in duration, then the impact of the blast wave travelling outwards, fragments of casing spraying in its wake. After that would come the secondary, orange flash, the effect of air rushing back into the vacuum created by the blast where it would mingle with the combustible gases and instantaneously catch fire.

  I finished rigging the Candle to the barrow’s carrier arm and told Dave and the driver to get out of the way. I looked along the street. The road was still empty, the pavements still deserted. I flexed the command cable to remove some of the slack, picked up the control box and knocked the switch to send the barrow out and away from the Saracen. The motor whirred. The barrow juddered, moved a few centimetres, then stopped. It just stood there, whirring and vibrating. I worked out later what must have happened: the Elf’s wheels had actually scrubbed the command cable as the car had been dragged from the alley; all nine conducting cores had been stripped of insulation. All it had needed was for someone to grab the cable and flex it, as I had done, and the cores would touch each other and start arcing out as soon as the command circuit was activated. This meant that the barrow was now able to work through its full repertoire of actions without anyone touching the control box.

  The Candle dropped from the barrow’s arm and lay still, less than a yard away. A malfunction was the last thing I needed at a time like this: there was an IED out there still waiting to be dealt with. If the barrow was now going to start playing silly buggers the whole operation would be delayed.

  Along the command cable, unknown and unbidden, the arcing continued to track across the conducting cores, making the barrow shudder, triggering signals in high-speed sequence … triggering the firing circuit. I was still staring at the Candle when the blue flash came.

  The Candle had fallen to the ground in such a way that the main force of its blast went away from me. But there was still enough force to pepper my stomach with road gravel and to leave me bleeding from nose and ears; to lacerate my driver’s face and to drive the fabric of Dave Cook’s trousers into the flesh of his legs. There was enough explosive energy to hospitalize them both and stall the progress of the operation – at least, until I picked up another Candle, came out from behind the Saracen, went back to the car and tossed the Candle on to
the back seat. The Candle blasted into the bomb hidden in the box on the car’s back seat and destroyed it before it could do its job, then set the bomb’s explosive on fire, and the car too.

  I didn’t stay to watch but went off to hospital to see how the others were and get myself checked out. My head had been ringing ever since the first Candle detonated but that hadn’t mattered much at the time. Now the doctor peered in my ears, gave me some aspirin, and said I’d have trouble hearing properly as I grew older. Time proved him right.

  Home was Girdwood Park Barracks, a sprawl of single-storey aluminium-sheet buildings alongside Crumlin Road Prison. They accommodated a Commando Group of Royal Marines and the RAOC unit consisting of a captain, myself and four other senior NCOs, all of us ammunition technical officers; the north part of the camp was dotted with brick buildings housing the Ulster Defence Regiment. Behind the high walls, the security fencing, weapons towers and searchlights, life pursued some small semblance of normality: a non-alcoholic bar, small shop and, thanks to the Army Catering Corps, cook-house food that was both considerable and well-nigh constant.

  My first meal of the day would be cereal followed by a massive cooked breakfast and then toast plus enough tea to float the Titanic. Lunch would often be something like gammon steak with all the trimmings, dinner, a choice of roasts or steak. In between I’d stock up on banjos – sandwiches of egg or bacon. But I still lost weight: no amount of food could compensate for the vast quantities of energy that all of us were burning, out there beyond the gates, in the tribal landscape of Belfast.

  From the air, it was not an unattractive city, an ordered place of grey stone and slate overlooked by green rolling hills and threaded by the River Lagan. You would have thought yourself anywhere in Europe until you saw the façades of buildings waist-high in sandbags; the one-dimensional terraces with blackened roofless frontages; the burnt-out cars rusting away on rubbish-strewn wasteland; the barriers and fences and gable-end walls that glowered with murals and graffiti. You saw paintings of King William of Orange on his white charger, or the Red Hand of Ulster, and knew the Loyalists laid claim to the neighbourhood; paintings of men in anoraks and balaclavas and an outline of Ireland blocked in with solid green meant that you were on Republican turf.

  Messages similarly betrayed the author’s identity: NO SURRENDER! and IT IS BETTER TO DIE ON YOUR FEET THAN LIVE FOREVER ON YOUR KNEES were common. And sometimes you saw what happened when those charged with keeping the warring tribes apart finally had enough of the blood, the smoke and the shoddy stupid rhetoric and made a contribution uniquely their own: THOUGH I WALK THROUGH THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH I FEAR NO EVIL BECAUSE I AM ONE MEAN BASTARD (1ST PARA).

  You saw all this and checked your own private map, the tribal map that showed the middle-class Protestant population east of the Lagan, the Catholic areas across the river – New Lodge, Ardoyne and Unity above, Andersonstown, Turf Lodge, Ballymurphy, Springfield, Clonard and Lower Falls below, rent asunder by the sprawling Protestant enclaves of Shankhill, Springmartin and Glencairn.

  Time for sightseeing, however, was limited. In a twenty-four-hour operational shift you could be tasked to twelve separate jobs, some of them taking two or three hours apiece. You made it back to the barracks and slept dreamlessly and briefly, then worked up to twelve hours on the twenty-four-hour standby. In a forty-eight-hour period you could be out for up to thirty-six hours and in that time you learned never to wonder about anything.

  The sign was on the wall of the control room the day I first reported for duty: LAUGH AND LIVE. I might not have fully comprehended its meaning at that moment, but I learned to very soon after. And the moral has stayed with me ever since.

  It is, in fact, a saying familiar to all involved in the fight against the bomber, a reminder that humour is your best friend as well as your best weapon against the enemy.

  It’s often a black humour, but that is dictated as much by circumstance as individual predilection: when times are bad, as they often are, and the demands of the job weigh heavy, the bad-taste joke is a safety-valve through which pressure is released and frustrations eased.

  True, it can be cruel, but usually only in those cases where the butt of the joke is infinitely more vicious. Which is why, for instance, there’s no need of apology for expressions such as ‘own goal’ (a phrase commonly used when a bomber is killed or injured by his or her bomb) or the wisecracks that spring forth after such an incident (‘if they ever get him to court, he won’t have a leg to stand on’, or ‘it isn’t true he lost his balls because there’s one in the Bomb Squad office and another in the Kings Road’, or ‘that’s one bomber who’s totally ’armless’).

  To an outsider, this kind of macabre humour may seem repellant – as if we should show more concern for the victim in such circumstances. To be honest, the only concern I’ve ever felt is that the bomber should’ve taken more of his kind with him.

  But the humour is often directed inwards as well. For instance, we all have our own particular fears about different types of bomb, about certain features of their design or construction which we especially dislike. Most operators tend to keep their private thoughts to themselves, but in Northern Ireland one individual became so voluble about his principal preoccupation that there was no option but to shut him up.

  The time bomb was his favourite subject: what it was, what it meant, what had been required of him in the various situations when he’d been called upon to deal with one. The fund of stories and lectures seemed endless; we grew bored stiff listening to tales about timer mechanisms and the speed of the ticking and the nature of the timbre.

  An opportunity to redress the situation was presented thanks to the mode of operation in Northern Ireland, where an operator is always accompanied at the scene by a number two, a colleague whose responsibilities include assisting the operator to don protective clothing and bomb helmet.

  Once the helmet is on and the visor is in place, it can be difficult to hear what your colleague is saying, especially as he will be standing behind you (because the jacket fastens at the back). For that reason, the number two signals that his task is complete, and your task can begin, by tapping you on the helmet, at which point you then trudge off towards the device.

  On this occasion, however, the number two did not tap the bomb helmet but instead affixed to it, with double-sided adhesive tape, an especially loud timer mechanism known as a ‘Jock Clock’. The action occurred unbeknownst to the victim: as far as he was concerned, the usual signal had been given. Off he went – only to slow down after three paces and then stop. ‘My God,’ he said. ‘You’re not going to believe this, but I can hear the bloody thing ticking from here …’

  A nail bomb is a simple tin – a beer or baked bean can – filled with explosive, packed with nails, and incorporating some kind of safety fuse. A crude grenade, the nail bomb is used for throwing at army patrols. However, because of the awkwardness of lighting the fuse (it can be difficult if you are nervous or a strong wind is blowing: you have to hold the match under the fuse’s waterproof cover and as close as possible to its black powder train) it’s not always obvious that the train has been ignited. The thrower must therefore decide within two or three seconds whether to hurl the missile on the assumption the fuse is lit or hang on to it on the assumption that it isn’t.

  This uncertainty led to many nail bombs being thrown with the fuse unlit, and soldiers got into the habit of picking the things up and bringing them back to us. The IRA soon learned of this through its network of spotters – the man on the street corner, the woman at the window, even the child leaning against a bicycle. So they took to leaving seemingly unlit nail bombs in places where soldiers would be likely to pick them up. A mercury tilt switch could be added to the device to ensure that it exploded as soon as it was moved. After the first death, the first maiming, all failed nail bombs were left where they were, to be dealt with by the EOD operators.

  It was to just such an apparently harmless device that I
was summoned one grey October afternoon. The drizzle had finally stopped and the slate roofs of red-brick terraces gleamed metallically under a low leaden sky. The terraced houses ran tight in against the boundary of an inner urban semi-industrial area; the bomb was in a comer formed by two brick walls at the edge of a match factory.

  A crowd had gathered. You could tell by the looks on the faces and the taunts and the insults that you’d been deliberately drawn to a Republican area where too many reserved their sympathy for the terrorist and too few for the terrorized.

  When I’d first arrived in Belfast I’d felt sorry for the Catholics, for people who had clearly been an oppressed minority, discriminated against by a Protestant élite which though it pledged allegiance to the British Crown was rather more loyal to its own self-interest. Like the newly arrived soldiers on their first street patrols, I’d thought these people might understand the simple facts of life. That we weren’t the ones who were destroying their city. Blowing up their places of employment. Denying them a future.

  Women would thrust their faces at a soldier’s and scream and spit at point-blank range. Men with vacant expressions would look on, take another pull on a cigarette, then smile. As for the children, I’d already learnt what childhood means in some parts of Belfast: within a few days of arriving, I’d just finished dealing with a suspect device when a member of the crowd detached himself from the others and came towards me. He got to within two or three paces of me and then made to throw a large stone. But the stone didn’t fly because the stone-thrower was only two years old, dressed in a romper suit and barely able to walk. He tottered on his little legs, almost fell with the effort of hefting the stone. One of the troops picked him up by his braces and carried him back to the crowd. They screamed at the soldier and fussed over the toddler.