Declan Daly - Borderline - An Oral History of the Brexit Wars 2020-2022

I say that because, at some point and this is where it all gets a bit murky, a few of the more serious individuals were hived off and began doing risk assesments. By risk assesments, I mean they were told to go and plan terrorist attacks on national infrastructure, or just given a specific effect to achieve and off you go. Needless to say, when ministers or sec gens in certain departments were handed reports saying ‘you’ve fucked up and are massively exposed here and here and look at these pictures’ they’d immediately counter that these were only paper exercises and wouldn’t actually work because, you know, magic or something.

At that point, the Red Team guys were allowed bring in a small number of people to act on their behalf with the only provision being that they must use military or ex military and they couldn’t actually put bombs near civilians. They still made the bombs to prove the point that they could get what they needed to do it, but they blew them up in the Glen. When people think of the Red Team now, this is probably the core group that spawned it. By the end of 2017, they had apparently crippled the country with cyber attacks, taken out HVTs more or less at will and created terror amongst the population, all pretend of course.

When things went hot, they were looked on as a bit of a think tank with the potential to be more muscular. No one really knows from there, but what I’ve heard is that the Transport Bombings in Dublin were more or less a carbon copy of one of their plans. That was a bit of a fuck you from the Russians, which means that their planning was compromised and the Russians had something to be pissed about. Probably someone disappeared one too many Russian facilitators in the North. I mean, that’s what people say happened anyway, who knows.’

Starfort 11, March 2021

Pte Thomas McLanahan was on guard in Starfort 11. The weather wasn’t as bad as it had been all winter but that didn’t mean much. It was foggy, as usual, maybe more of a wet mist. The cold, slowly soaking you anyway kind, that left you freezing in your core and made it hurt to move if you stayed still for any length of time. Guard duty here was especially shit. On a left out patrol, even if nothing was happening, if you were still freezing, you were at least mentally occupied in your role as a human tripwire. QRF duty, there were a few of you knocking around idly shit talking, to cover for the sense of just under the surface tension of having to go out if something did go off. Guard duty though, too much time in your own head.

Each fort had a ‘guardroom’ an actual block building in some, in this case a portacabin with its back to the wall, near the forts’ entrance and with earth and sandbags piled all the rest of the way around it. He was standing on ‘the beat’; a walkway (mud actually) with sandbags piled in a wall up to about chest height and a corrugated tin roof where you would move around to actually see what was going on. Everyone took their own few hours on the beat and while they did, the rest of the guard would either be on camera watch looking at the cctv, their phones or realistically, asleep.

It had not been an easy few years for Tom McLanahan. After the reorg of 2012, his home barracks, that he had trained in and grew up near, had been shut down and he’d been moved to Athlone. This meant commuting, which ate up too much of his reduced paycheck that had never quite recovered to pre austerity levels, no matter how much politicians promised to ‘look at it’ during the next review. This in turn meant sleeping in the barracks and when the accomodation block was being renovated, sleeping in his car. Things weren’t easy at home, abscence in this case not making the heart grow fonder, or maybe it was just all the extra stress of it all, living paycheck to paycheck but things had ended badly with his then fiance. She wasn’t his biggest fan since then either. If he was honest with himself, he probably did start drinking too much at the time, skipped out on one too many runs, put on too much weight and that led to him doing in his ankles when he eventually did get onto a potential NCOs course, which as his CO said to him directly, was a bone thrown to him as a chance to straighten himself out. He lost most of the weight but never tried for another course since, figured his luck wasn’t in it.

As the lads around him moved on, got married, had kids, got promoted, he found himself increasingly alone. Still drinking a bit too much, though, and by now the oldest Pte living in in the barracks. The wasn’t strictly through, actually, it’s just that he was the oldest one that was always there – the other living in guys had hobbies, things to do that weren’t behind the bar in the mess. After a while, each new set of younger soldiers in the place got bored of being his drinking buddies of the week and did their own thing too. By this stage, he knew, he just knew, the NCO’s and the older guys were pointing him out as that guy who was a ‘nice enough lad, but don’t end up propping up the bar with him’. The guy to avoid if you can. He still got on well enough with them all during the day alright, but the nights were long and it didn’t take much temptation to drown the voices in the back of his mind telling him it should all be better than this.

That, of course, was before everything had gone to shit in the country. Covid-19 19 had shut the place down and then the border kicked off again. It wasn’t too bad at first, when they were working out of Dundalk and Finner, bit of extra cash and with everyone staying in,there was a few of the old sweats like him around. For about three weeks it was just like the old days. Then they were sent to that bastard of a place in Cavan, Starfort 4. And then the killing started. No amount of good intentions could make that place happy, but certainly a blood sacrifice hadn’t done the trick either.

It was bad enough if someone went out and didn’t come back, but the lads that died in camp… he’d held Sgt Pete Foster when he died. The usual harassing mortar fire came in and just that day Pete was slower getting into a dugout. Took a handsized fragment through the back which barely slowed for the back plate of his body armour before going through his abdomen and nearly bursting out through the front plate. Tom had run out from cover and grabbed his hand to drag him back in, but Pete had just held on to him and looked up at him. He knew himself he was done, he knew. Impending doom, the paramedics had called it after, that feeling of certainty that you were going to die. The look on his face stayed with Tom from that day on though. Fear.Pain. And stupid amounts of snot, just in case the point of stripping him of his dignity and life hadn’t already been made. No words though, he was too badly messed up inside and was, in fact, drowning in his own blood, whatever of it wasn’t running out into the mud.

The boss, Lt Quinlan told him afterwards that he was recommending him for a medal after that. He hadn’t even noticed himself that the mortars were still coming. But he’d known Pete since they were seventeen, twenty years nearly. Alright, they hadn’t hung out much recently (or longer, really) but even after things had gone off the rails for him, Pete had been around. He’d tried a couple of times to help him back on his feet. Who wants a medal for that? He was trying to help his friend. It should be a given.

It was at the funeral, he’d at least gotten away from the border for that, that things really hit him first. Pete’s family were there. His wife Marianne who, truth be told, had probably laid out for Pete exactly what to say to help him was there, but she was barely recognisable. She’d always been so bubbly, but he could tell that was gone now. There was the usual ceremony, shots over the grave etc, but he hadn’t been part of the official proceedings. He just stood towards the back of the crowd that spilled onto the street. And that was when it hit him. The crowd that turned out for Pete was huge because he was loved. Who’d be there for him if they’d swapped parts in that days drama? Who’s life would be changed for ever if he was gone? He’d left the graveyard at that point and was already several pints in when the rest arrived at the pub. But the idea stuck in his head, like a parasite burowing deeper and deeper. If he was gone, who’d even know?