Alan Judd - A Breed of Heroes

Five minutes later he went to the ops room and found Edward, panic-stricken, shouting on the radio to battalion HQ. ‘Alpha Zero, this is Alpha Three. I say again we are being attacked. We are under siege. Over.’

Back over the radio mush came Anthony Hamilton-Smith’s measured tones. ‘Zero roger, could you tell us a little more? Over.’

‘Alpha Three, wait out.’ Edward turned to Charles. ‘Give me details quickly. How many of them? What’s happening? What weapons have they got?’

‘Well, there were about forty and the sergeant major counterattacked, capturing seven. They were armed with bricks.’

‘Bricks?’

‘And they were aged nought to fourteen.’

‘Children!’ Edward passed his hand slowly over his eyes. ‘Hallo, Alpha Zero. This is Alpha Three. Reference my last — er — The attack has been repulsed and we no longer require assistance. Over.’

Anthony Hamilton-Smith was not a man to give way to strong feelings, nor did he try to impress upon others his state of mind, but on this occasion even his voice sounded faintly puzzled. ‘Zero congratulations — very quick work. What about casualties and prisoners? Over.’

‘Alpha Three, no casualties, but seven prisoners. Over.’

‘Alpha Zero — very impressive — three and a half brace — send them to my location. Over.’

‘Alpha Three — er — we’d rather thought of letting them go. Over.’

‘Alpha Zero — I don’t understand — why did you take them? Over.’

Edward pulled a face. ‘Alpha Three — they’ll be with you in figures one-five minutes. Over.’

‘Alpha Zero — thank you. Out.’

Edward turned beseechingly to Charles. ‘What’s the CO going to say when I send him seven kids? He’ll go spare. You know what he’s like, he’ll be expecting ringleaders at least. Where are they now?’

‘In the showers being tortured.’

‘Tortured!’

‘I was joking. The sergeant major’s put them in there because it’s the only empty room.’

‘Don’t joke, Charles, it’s bad taste. Take me to them, would you?’

Edward put on his beret and Charles went with him to the shower-room — so called because of three rusty and feeble sprinklers that projected from one wall. The seven victims were now standing more or less at attention, eyed almost affectionately by the CSM. Their bravado was gone and they looked very young and very frightened. Edward strode in purposefully. ‘Well done, Sergeant Major.’

The CSM grinned. ‘Sorry there wasn’t more of ’em, sir, but there will be if they try it again tomorrow. I was just telling ’em about the water-torture but I ’adn’t made up me mind who was goin’ to be first.’

‘Don’t joke, please, Sergeant Major, I’m in no mood for it. They’re to go down to battalion HQ immediately. Send them in one of the duty platoon’s Pigs.’

Contrary to expectations, the CO was delighted by the capture. He felt it had got the battalion off on the right foot and would set the tone for future operations. Anyone who made trouble would be sat on: that was the policy. The sooner it was understood around the neighbourhood, the better. All arrested people were to be sent to battalion HQ, where the RUC or, if necessary, the RMP, would deal with them. This included children. Although stoning was too common an occurrence to merit a summons, the children would be held there until their parents came to collect them. That would be an inconvenience that might lead to greater parental control. Furthermore, it had come to his notice that there were rumours of ‘no go’ areas in the city — no doubt press exaggerations — but they had to be taken seriously. He wanted to make it crystal clear that there would be no ‘no go’ areas in his parish. His soldiers would not even understand the meaning of the term, let alone acknowledge the thing if they saw it.

There were foot and vehicle patrols throughout the area, day and night. In the worst part of C company’s area — the modern estate — the soldiers patrolled at night with blackened faces through the gardens and alleyways, avoiding the streets as much as possible. Meeting the soldiers unexpectedly outside their back doors brought forth some good and holy Catholic oaths from the wives of the estate. It made it difficult for them to signal the approach of patrols by banging dustbins, which was the way the Army was normally heralded. It also made the soldiers a more difficult target for snipers. It was the CO’s idea, and although the Republican press criticised it as being both unreasonably military and deliberately sinister it soon reduced the random violence in the area. Unknown civilian cars were no longer stoned on sight, and even the Army Land-Rovers attracted only the occasional brick from over the rooftops.

The CO had promised that he would visit every company location every night, and this he did. He clearly thought that his appearance was good for morale, as well as contributing to military effectiveness. In fact, his visits were looked forward to with all the enthusiasm normally reserved for headmasters, and their effect was to deny any hope of autonomy to any commander with whom he came into contact. Edward, in particular, was hardly the man to stand up to the CO, but fortunately his company ran itself without either his assistance, or knowledge; and the CO, once he had issued his general directives, was often unaware of how they were interpreted in practice.

However, no one in the company could keep from Edward the knowledge that ultimately he would be held responsible for everything that happened. He lived in a fever of anxiety which he passed on to his subordinates in a stream of contradictory and mistaken instructions. What saved him from having to live with the results of his decisions was his failure to notice that they were generally ignored. The process by which this happened was a kind of unspoken conspiracy, tacitly acknowledged throughout the company, which actually did more for company morale than anything else.

Unfortunately, though, the CO’s concern for his soldiers did not stop at tactics and morale: he also regarded himself as the guardian of the battalion’s moral well-being, with the padre as an uneasy second-in-command. It was an incident in C company that caused him to launch a moral crusade within a few days of their arrival.

Charles was with Chatsworth in the ops room. They were each trying to drink an acrid liquid that the Army called coffee. Apart from its bitter taste at the time, it left the drinker feeling for an hour or so afterwards that he had consumed bile. All that could be said in its favour was that it was wet and warm and, sadly, this was sometimes reason enough for drinking it. Chatsworth poured his into the paper sack marked ‘Confidential Waste’. ‘There’s going to be some more gate-thrusting tonight,’ he remarked quietly.

‘What’s that?’

‘Haven’t you heard about it? It’s having it off, you know, through the main gate. The sentries do it.’

‘Through the gate?’

‘Through the bars.’

‘Who with?’

‘The local birds, of course. Who d’you think?’

‘But they all look about fourteen.’

‘Nice, isn’t it? Though I’m told there are older ones if you prefer them, unless they’ve been spoilt by having it off in bed.’

Girls turned out to be a problem throughout the battalion’s tour. From the CO’s point of view they were a menace to his young soldiers, whom he liked to regard as virgin. From the soldiers’ point of view they were a forbidden paradise which it was almost impossible to enter but which was sufficiently close to make trying worthwhile. There was also a security risk: three Scottish soldiers had once been murdered after being lured away by girls, and even now the fat, prematurely old women of the new estate occasionally jeered ‘Scots porridge’ at passing soldiers. There seemed to be a great many young girls in the area, many of whom were prepared to risk tarring and feathering, or worse, to secure a soldier-lover who would marry them and take them away. As it turned out, few achieved marriage. Not many were even touched by No. 1 AAC(A), since during their tour the soldiers had no social life and no time off in which to have it. No one set foot inside a pub, no one went to dances, no one went shopping.