A Breed of Heroes (10 page)

‘I haven’t done it myself,’ continued Chatsworth. ‘I don’t know what it is, but one feels somewhat inhibited in front of one’s own soldiers. I’m not
even sure how they do it, which is why I’d like to watch. They must be contortionists, though I s’pose love always finds a way. D’you fancy watching tonight? We could hide in one
of the Pigs.’

As it happened, Charles was on duty in the ops room that night and Chatsworth had to take out a patrol. However, when the CO made his nightly appearance in the ops room, accompanied by the
signals officer, the RSM, his driver and two bodyguards, it was clear that something was wrong. His lips were pressed firmly together, his expression was set hard and he stared bullishly at
Charles. ‘Where’s Edward?’ he asked.

Charles went to Edward’s partition and awoke the dozing man. ‘I was dreaming,’ said Edward. ‘I wish you hadn’t.’

‘The CO wants you. He looks angry.’

‘Oh God.’

They returned to the ops room, Edward still blinking.

‘D’you know what your soldiers have been doing?’ said the CO. ‘They’ve been screwing girls through the main gate.’

Edward’s eyes opened wide. ‘Good Lord, sir. Really? How?’

The CO exploded. ‘How? How d’you think? What a bloody stupid question, Edward. What are you going to do about it, eh? What are you going to do?’

Edward reddened. ‘I’ll punish them, sir, punish them right away.’

‘What with?’

Edward gazed helplessly at Charles, who looked away. Castration was the only answer that came readily to mind.

The CSM came to Edward’s rescue. ‘I suggest Section 69, sir,’ he whispered.

‘69? What do you mean, Sergeant Major? You’re not trying to be funny, are you?’

‘Conduct likely to be to the prejudice of military discipline. We might also throw in not being at a place at which it was their duty to be.’

The CO was slightly mollified, though clearly far from satisfied. It turned out there was only one offender, who had apparently been caught in the act, and he was marched into the ops room with
unnecessary violence by the RSM and marched out again to be charged in the company office by the CSM. The CO stared disapprovingly at him but everyone else gazed with frank curiosity.

The CO took Edward aside. ‘I’ve been worried for some time about moral standards in the battalion, Edward, and what I’ve seen tonight has absolutely sickened me. It was a
disgrace. I never thought to see the day when Assault Commandos would behave like that. I know they’re young men and have to be allowed a little licence now and again – let off steam
and that sort of thing – but to do that in public, in uniform and on duty is going about a hundred miles too far. And as for those girls, I really don’t know what to say. What sort of
future do they have, eh? What chance of living a life that’s even halfway decent if this is what they’re like now? Where do they go from here? They’re not even out of school, I
bet you a pound to a penny. My heart bleeds for them, you know, it really bleeds.’ The CO’s dark eyes shone with sincerity. Edward stood before him like a schoolboy in trouble, nodding
and staring at the table. The CO put his hand on Edward’s shoulder. ‘Not that I’m blaming you entirely, Edward, but I can’t help thinking that they take their example from
the top, so look to it. I shall send the padre round to talk to the company tomorrow.’

While dealing with the offender Edward wore his beret and assumed an expression of grave indignation. Afterwards he said to Charles: ‘The CO wanted him to go up on battalion orders and be
formally charged but I said I’d clobber him here. I fined him twenty quid for the company fund. You don’t think that was too much, do you?’

‘I don’t know. Is there a precedent?’

‘No. The sergeant major couldn’t remember one so there can’t be. Apparently they get one leg through.’

‘What?’

‘The gate, you know. They get one leg through and sort of twist their hip through the bars. I felt I should’ve been paying him twenty quid prize money instead of fining him. I
s’pose he could’ve been shot, though. The CO’s ordered us to put barbed wire on the gate now. Speak to the sergeant major about it when you see him.’

The battalion area was quiet for the first fortnight. Wherever the Assault Commandos went their reputation for aggression preceded them, and the CO’s somewhat brisk
policy did what little was needed to confirm it. Regular stoning soon stopped and the children were reduced to sporadic hit-and-run sorties, usually after dark. What might have become a serious
spate of petrol bombing was nipped in the bud when Tim’s platoon sergeant, with two men, caught three of the bombers. Mobile, as opposed to foot, patrols were the usual targets for such
attacks and the sergeant, anticipating trouble at one particular corner, sent both his vehicles ahead whilst doubling round the back of the houses on foot. The bombers threw their bombs whilst the
vehicles were still out of range and were caught as they ran away. They were teenagers and there was little fight in them. Belfast being a small city, and being divided into smaller tribal areas,
even insignificant arrests like these had a quietening effect on the area in which they occurred.

Mobile patrols normally consisted of two Land-Rovers or one Pig. Charles disliked them because he felt more vulnerable in a vehicle than on foot, but of the two he felt safer in a Pig, and
therefore nearly always found himself in a Land-Rover. One evening he was on a mobile patrol in the new estate when his corporal in the second Land-Rover recognised a car they had been told to look
out for. It was parked in a cul-de-sac on the other side of a main road that formed the boundary of the estate. There had been a shooting earlier a few streets beyond that, outside the battalion
area, in which a policeman had been wounded in the foot. This was thought to have been the getaway car. They cruised past the cul-de-sac at their usual patrolling speed, slightly faster than
walking pace, and radioed back. After a pause they were told to stay with the vehicle as it was wanted for fingerprinting but not to go near in case it was booby-trapped. ATO was called and they
were to guard it until he came. At the same time they were to look out for snipers in the area.

The car was a newish Cortina, evidently stolen for the job. Charles had the Land-Rovers parked across the road before and behind it and then dispersed his seven soldiers into the doorways and
alleyways of the cul-de-sac. Though separated only by the main road, the people there were quite different to those in the estate. Their houses were well kept and they were friendly. Within ten
minutes two had brought out trays of tea for the soldiers.

The first sign of trouble was when four women crossed the road and stood at the bottom of the cul-de-sac singing Republican songs. They were short, hard-faced, fat and ugly, either middle-aged
or coarsened before their time, a kind that flourished on the estate. After a while they sat on the kerb, passing a bottle between them and still singing in unnervingly discordant unison. They
could just be made out by the orange light of a distant and solitary street-light on the main road, but it was not possible to make out the words of their songs. Soon Charles realised that others
were joining them – squat, waddling shapes – and the volume of singing swelled. The songs were now recognisably anti-Brit, as was to be expected, and aggressively obscene, as might have
been predicted. Charles, more intent upon observing the situation than in calculating what it might mean, reflected that the image of their kind knitting at the foot of the guillotine was too
passive to do them justice.

His attention was focused more sharply upon possible consequences when the original four women left the others – and their bottle – to begin a slow perambulation around the
cul-de-sac. They walked arm-in-arm, still singing, peering into the doorways and alleyways. Even so, it was not until they were halfway round that Charles realised they were reconnoitring the
number and positions of his soldiers. He wondered what he could do about it. Presumably, they had every right to walk the streets counting soldiers and singing; at least, he was not sure that he
had any right to stop them. Nor did he know what they intended to do when they had counted. The people in the cul-de-sac had retreated behind locked doors and put out their lights when the singing
first started. The tea-trays were not returned to their owners for fear of identifying them. Their recce completed, the four women joined the by now even larger group at the bottom. The singing
stopped.

Of Charles’s seven men, five had rifles, one (his radio operator) a pistol and one a pistol and a rubber-bullet gun. This latter was a converted signals pistol which made a very loud bang
and could do a lot of damage at close range if fired directly at someone, which was forbidden. The projectile was meant to be bounced off the ground. Charles had a rifle. The simplest way to
protect the three vehicles would have been to form a line across the cul-de-sac, but that would have made an easy target for a gunman and he could imagine only too vividly the subsequent enquiry
into how he came to lose a soldier. It did not occur to him that it could have been him that was shot. He therefore kept five of his men dispersed among the alleyways with orders to look out for
snipers and placed himself, his wireless operator, and Corporal Stagg, who had the rubber-bullet gun, between the vehicles and the crowd.

This had grown swiftly so that it was now forty or fifty strong and included a number of young children. There were no men. He reported the situation over the radio and was told by Edward that
an escort vehicle had gone to meet ATO and that both would be with him as soon as possible. For a few minutes more nothing much happened; the crowd talked amongst themselves, shouted the odd slogan
or obscenity and in general seemed quite good humoured. Then a black taxi, one of the many old London cabs that had found their way to Belfast, drew up on the main road behind the crowd and four
men got out. The taxi drove away and the crowd immediately became more vociferous. It surged slowly forward towards the vehicles with the harridans shouting at the front and holding their children
before them. The four men stayed at the back, urging the others on.

As he watched the crowd advance several scenes from his Oxford life flashed through Charles’s mind, vivid and uncontrollable, and for a few seconds the scenes seemed to get between him and
what was happening, as though the two worlds were jostling for reality. The present world won when he realised that the front women were within three feet of him, jumping up and down like wizened
and frantic baboons. Though the noise was overwhelming he shouted that there was a bomb in the car. To his surprise, the crowd fell back and there was relative quiet; but still the feeling of
unreality. He looked at Corporal Stagg’s white and nervous young face and then glanced behind him at the other soldiers crouching with their rifles in the alleys. He felt that all eyes were
upon him. He grabbed the headphones from the wireless operator and called for immediate assistance but before he could get a response the crowd began to rumble forward again, only quieter this time
and more sinister. They didn’t seem to believe, any more than he did, that the car was booby-trapped.

Charles was aware that Corporal Stagg at his elbow had raised and cocked the rubber-bullet gun, but he did not give the order to fire. No one in the battalion had yet had to fire a rubber
bullet; they were accountable; there had to be definite provocation, an aggressive act. The crowd pressed closer, murmuring, the children held in front and no one so much as raising a hand or even
shouting any more.

Charles realised that he was separated from his wireless operator by the Cortina. The operator was shouting that the CO was on the air and wanted a detailed sit-rep. ‘Just tell them to get
here!’ shouted Charles. He turned round and bellowed for the other soldiers to join him. Corporal Stagg was still by his side. The front women were now within reach again, and Charles stepped
forward and pushed one firmly back. Again, to his surprise, they fell back quickly. The rest of the soldiers arrived and they were able to clear a two-yard space between the crowd and the vehicles,
but it was clear that it would not last for long. The crowd had increased again, and the same four men were busy at the back. What most inhibited him now about firing a rubber bullet was that it
would be at point-blank range. It would frighten or anger the crowd. If the latter they could well charge before the gun could be reloaded, and the only way to stop them then would be to shoot them
with real guns. As the crowd now completely surrounded the soldiers and the vehicles, shooting them would be the only way to protect their own lives and weapons. Technically, according to the
Yellow Card they all carried, Charles would be justified in opening fire, but he could imagine the resultant publicity if unarmed women and children were shot dead in the street by ‘heavily
armed’ Commandos. There would be an enquiry, if not a court case. Half hoping that they would do something to provoke retaliation, and half frightened that they might, Charles walked slowly
up and down between the crowd and the vehicles, his knees trembling and with a great emptiness in his stomach. His soldiers were watching him, and so was the mob. He walked with his hands behind
his back, trying to look as though he were deep in thought and entirely at peace. For some minutes nothing happened.

Then, with a kind of slow rush, a few of the crowd pushed past and got to the Cortina. The women started to rub it with their headscarves and cardigan sleeves – to remove fingerprints,
Charles realised suddenly. He and Corporal Stagg managed to push them back but one of them threw a burning newspaper through the open window on to the back seat. Charles got inside the car and
threw the newspaper out, but whilst he was doing so they surged forward again and pushed the car several feet back down the road into an invalid carriage. They were shouting and excited. Needlessly
jamming on the handbrake, Charles tried to get out but found several of the women were pushing on the door. Seriously alarmed, and for the first time angry, he shoved the door open with his feet
and jumped out, shouting, ‘Prepare to fire!’ Corporal Stagg, after hitting one of the women on the shoulder with the barrel of his gun, aimed it straight into the face of her neighbour,
who screamed and ducked back. The women who had been struggling with the other soldiers also fell back for a moment. Both sides waited, neither sure what to do next. It was clear that the crowd
still felt sure that the initiative was with them.