A Moral Vendetta

By John McCrudden

Violence and cold revenge, gruesome deaths and betrayals. The dark message is clear: there are no heroes. A true story of a young catholic growing up in Belfast in the dark troubled days of the most violent times in Northern Ireland. John is abducted and beaten by the IRA so begins his solitary secret war against republican terrorists until he finds an alley in Captain Evan Kilbride of British Intelligence. John journeys into the dark and perfidious world of the British Agent in the IRA controlled West Belfast. On his road to bitter sweet revenge he joins the Belfast Battalion of 10 UDR a nonsectarian protestant paramilitary force riddled with Protestant militants that belong to both the UDR and the UVF, and UFF murder squads of the Shankill. John finds his battle to be accepted by the protestant militants only successful when he joins the intelligence gathering efforts of the of the British Agents hired to infiltrate the UDA and manipulate their activities from the highest levels of the British Goverment.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Aug 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781329479005

Book preview

A Moral Vendetta

A MORAL VENDETTA

John McCrudden

Copyright John McCrudden 2012

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be produced, or stored in a retrieval system, or in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the author, nor otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

ISBN 978-1-329-47900-5

Dedications

Dedicated to those that have fallen and paid the ultimate price.  We who have served will always remember them.

And to my wife without whom there would be no point.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them, nor do the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

But let us forget the living

For what have they given?

Let them hobble without succor

To gather at their Cenotaph

And remember their glorious dead

To remember that old call.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori

Our glorious comrades dead,

We gave our lives and lived

For this, there is no rebate,

For this, there is no prize.

Age shall weary us, the years we live condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

Will you remember us?

FORWARD

I began to write this book in 1986 as a form of therapy for my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  I soon came to understand that for many reasons my story was one that I needed to share.  My early attempts in the 80’s and 90’s were constructed around fictional characters and threaded together outside chronological order to make an easy to follow story and one that would accommodate the restrictive demands of the British governments Official Secrets Act.  I knew that I either tell the story or comply with those demands.  For many years, I felt that I should comply rather than stand in defiance of my British masters.  Time and bitter experience has led me to the point of realisation that needed to tell my story and be damned of the consequences.  I came to a point where I knew the changing of the facts and my hesitation of falling foul of the Official Secrets Act left me in a position where the story was so obtuse and outside what actually happened that it lost its meaning and message.  For many years, I was captive in my own struggle with this dilemma.  The most important point of publishing this book is for my family.  I need to leave them an explanation and an account of my life so that even those yet unborn have that account and can damn me a traitor or hail me a hero, either way I live on in the minds of my progeny.

To accomplish the completion of this book I have restricted true names to those I can confirm are dead and I have changed the names of the living to protect the security, identity and privacy of those involved in my story.  The book is about my journey through my turbulent life, my personal vendetta with the IRA and my experiences with PTSD.  I do not write an exposé of British Intelligence or criticise any regiment of the regular British army, the UDR as a regiment stands and falls by itself and is dammed by its own sectarian ignorance while the men and women within its ranks I would applaud as heroes everyone.  The names of all UDR and regular Army soldiers I have changed in this book.  I needed to account for the reasons and occurrences in my live that led me to Intelligence gathering, informing and finally facing the IRA in the streets of Belfast in the Uniform of the Loyalist paramilitary Ulster Defence Regiment.  Many UDR men paid the ultimate price for their service and I salute them.  I salute those in the UDR that accepted me even though they knew my catholic background.  The bigots may have outnumbered them but the decent ones were many.

One of the main obstacles to the production of this book was the insistence of my parents to remain in the Republican ghetto of the Clonard.  I kept this book from the public domain primarily to prevent reprisals against my parents.  Now that both have passed on, I am free of the obligation of love for my parents to withhold this book for their continued safety.  My RUC brother Jim, by deceit and guile prevented me from attending their funerals and I grieve for them even to this day.  I have no closure with my parents and this book goes a long way to accomplish that.  If there is a library in heaven, my mum will be demanding a free ticket.

Now in the autumn of my life, I will do what is right and let the consequence follow.

Prologue  

South Armagh 1980’s

For the first time that spring, a young family of rabbits gathered at the top of the rolling hill.  The night’s darkness gradually gave way to the light of early morning.  The rising sun battled to push its dawn rays of pinks and reds through the darker shades of the night sky.  A march of dark and heavy clouds laboured across the tapestry of brightening colours.  The persistent night’s rain dropped from the trees and bushes and glistened on the narrow asphalt road that meandered through the rolling hills and meadows.

As one, the rabbit family pricked up their ears, all alert to the alien rumbling that came from beyond the brow of the gentle rise.  Their heads moved in unison to follow the British Army Land Rovers that trundled over the hill and along the road.

The morning rain became lighter yet it hung in the air, a cold and miserable rain that penetrates to the bone.  I know of no other device ever developed to clear the streets as effectively as constant Irish rain, and for this UDR anti-terrorist unit on patrol in the bandit country of South Armagh it proved to be the best of friends.  Inside the vehicles, we sat without speaking, weary from our constant ever-strained vigilance, peering through the dark waiting for the bullet, the bomb, or the rocket attack.

This was IRA controlled countryside, here they had the audacity and confidence to be seen in their own uniformed patrols, performing vehicle checkpoints and wielding their Libyan provided weapons.  In Bandit Country, we were ever vigilant against the constant terrorist threat from the IRA, we patrolled with every sense strained and attuned to the promise of a sudden and brutal attack.  Should they attack in strength and overwhelm us there would be no prisoners, no quarter given, no Geneva Convention.  The IRA were not interested in any name, rank or serial number, they wanted no information.  We could only look forward to a slow prolonged torture, after which, the only prospect was to be trussed up in barbed wire followed by a bullet in the back of the head, for which you would be grateful.  The broken and tortured corpse tossed into a lonely ditch with an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) strapped to the battered and broken body, left there for the discovery by Crown security force colleagues.  In any such attack, it would be a fierce and violent fight to the death. 

No one spoke, the talking far spent in the small hours of the morning.  Only the Clansman radio broke the silence, as it played its military duet with the rumbling engine.  Disembodied voices crept through the hiss and crackle from the radio mike as other patrols made their periodic check or Zero relayed a dispatch.  In the twilight zone between night and day, the world paused and all our mundane problems seemed so distant, so small.  Those still small hours belonged to both the living of the new day and the dead of the night gone past.  We travelled there, somewhere between the living and the dead.  Banded together, brothers in our war against terror we debated out our own personal problems in those wee quiet hours of the morning.  The patrol rumbled on.  We were only fifteen minutes from Drumadd barracks and the promise of a hot cooked breakfast in the mess. 

The vehicles moved into the narrow backcountry lane as the rabbits cautiously watched our progress, other malevolent eyes watched the lumbering advance of our UDR patrol.  The first Land Rover mounted the forge over the culvert at the end of the field.  A roar from the gates of hell and the beast was amongst us, a blinding flash, a roar of raw destruction; the vehicle leapt into the air and a demon of fire and thunder crushed it into a twisted hunk of burning flesh and metal.  No shouts of fear, no screams of pain heard, in that instant six friends died. 

The rain stopped for a bare moment before the blast punched in the windscreens of the second Land Rover in which I sat.  Pieces of glass shot inward to embed into the eyes and faces of the driver and patrol commander.  The force stopped our wagon dead in its tracks.  Blinded by glass and blood the Defence Regiment soldiers in the front scrambled to open their doors.  Armoured piercing bullets from a heavy M60 machinegun hammered into the side of the vehicle as it jerked its deadly dance against the force of the onslaught.  The armoured piercing rounds cut through the vehicle’s Makrolon armour like screaming demons through rice paper.  We scrambled to get out the back of the wagon.  Colin and Dave fell back into a sitting position a look of shocked surprise on their lifeless faces.  The stench of piss and shit from the defecation of my brothers in arms mixed with that of burning oil and human flesh.  On my way out, I glanced back to see their dark blood painting the insides of the Rover.  Paul and I sprinted for the ditch and cover of the dry-stone walls that ran along the side of the road. 

The unrelenting spray of death followed our desperate scramble for safety.  Paul jerked upright as the first bullet smashed into his back, the second lifted him off his feet and a third spun him like a rag doll, he danced a crazy dance with death as the bullets tore through him, his body armour provided him no protection from those hardened tungsten rounds.  Paul’s lifeless body dropped to the ground, a bloody rag doll.  I ran a few steps before a bullet caught my thigh.  The force carried me forward; careering over the low dry-stone wall, I somersaulted and landed on my back staring up at the patchwork quilt of the sky.  I could feel the burning pain in my leg.  I could smell the blood.  I looked down to see a bloody mess of flesh and bone.

I could hear the unrelenting mechanical bur of the heavy assault rifle and the spinning hiss of the rounds streaking through the rain just above my head.

Shit, it’s not supposed to hurt like this.  I’m supposed to be in shock.  Shit this bloody hurts. I whispered through clenched teeth.  My chest hurt, the wind knocked from my lungs.  I struggled for breath I could not breathe in. I gasped for air, my throat constricted and I could not fill my lungs.  I felt as if the sudden brutal attack had torn the very atmosphere away. 

My brick had survived five previous attacks but this time Charlie 43 Bravo had lucked out.  I knew that I was the only one alive.  The air above me filled with bullets whistling their death song through the morning air.

‘I’m alone’ I thought, panic washing over me. ‘They are not taking me alive.’ I promised myself.  I committed to throw at them everything I had, everything but the last bullet.  That, I would choose for myself above the hospitality offered by the republican terrorists.

I grabbed the cocking handle of my SLR and pulled back, I released my fingers to send the working parts shooting forward to push a round up the spout, the internal hammer cocked back ready for the trigger pull.  My thumb flipped off the safety.  The pain in my leg shot through my body like ice and fire.   I knew that I had to twist on my good leg to be able to fire back over the dry-stone wall and I knew that it was going to hurt like hell.

The field in which I lay sloped up the gentle hill to a family of rabbits.  At the top, I saw my wife Linda walking between them and towards me from the brow of the hill, she strolled through the long sodden grass a gentle smile on her face and oblivious to the carnage around me.  She pulled her shopping trolley behind her. 

‘Linda?  You should be in Belfast fifty miles from here.’ I thought.  A spray of bullets smashed into her chest.  She stood there smiling at me her breasts a bloody mess against her white blouse.  Seven bloodstains oozed over that pristine white blouse to join into one bloody stain of gore.  Seven bullets for the seven dead men for which God would hold me to account, for the sins of my revenge, the screaming demons of death came to take my love.

No!  No!  Christ No … Linda!  I screamed.  I tried to move but a gentle, firm embrace held me down.

***

New Mossley November 1992

John…  John, wake up darling.

The field dissolved into my bed and I was in Linda’s arms, the sheets tangled about my legs.  Linda was sitting up holding my head to her bosom, smiling into my face. 

It’s okay John.  It’s okay, you’ve been dreaming.  You couldn’t breathe again.

My body, tense in my night terror, relaxed and I took a deep breath, the air came easily into my lungs.  I reached my hand up and cupped Linda’s chin in relief.

John?

I’m…  I’m okay love.  I said still unsure of my reality.

The bedroom door swung slowly open, I caught the movement with the side of my eye, and someone was there, a shadow of a man skulking in the dark hallway.   I felt the imminent panic of overwhelming danger.  Fear washed over me like a torrent of ice water shivering me from head to toe.  In one fluid movement, I was out of bed scooping up the .38 snub nose revolver from the bedside table.

Linda sat upright, her hand outstretched. 

No-No… take it easy.  She cautioned her voice in forced calm.

The hammer cocked, my finger squeezed taking up the pressure on the trigger, a fraction more and the weapon would fire.  In that last second before I fired, my military training forced my mind to the target.  I needed to make well-aimed shots to the centre of the body.  Where was the shadow, the assailant?  It was too small.  I focused down the barrel of my gun and past the foresight to see my young son John standing in the doorway frozen with fear watching his father point his gun at his own son’s head. 

Mum… Dad? he questioned.

It’s all right darling.  Mum’s coming.  Linda replied as she slipped out of bed.  In her panic, she forced her soft mother’s voice to calm her son and ease my own confused state of fear.  No sudden noises no panicked moves, her son was a hair’s breadth from death.

I slowly lowered the weapon.  My senses screamed for my conditioning to finish the job.  My mind fought to gain control of my reactions against the fear and the hazy blanket of tiredness that smothered my mind and itched at my eyes.  Linda knew that I was still not fully awake.  As she moved towards John, she eased me back into a sitting position on the bed, her eyes wide with terror she moved between the pistol in my hand and her son frozen by the doorway.  I eased the hammer forward.

What’s the matter Darling?  She asked as she turned to her son and took him to her arms, keeping one worried eye on me.

I don’t know…  I had a bad dream.  There was a big dog.  John explained his eyes riveted on the lowered pistol.

Come on back to bed.  It’s OK darling, Dad had a bad dream too. She led John out of the room.  As she passed through the doorway, Linda glanced back at me. 

The look of fear and horror in her eyes, I had seen many times before.  I had seen it in the eyes of victims of terror, in the eyes of cornered terrorists as we bore down on them, nowhere to run, no way out.  Never had I seen it in the eyes of my own wife in the privacy of our bedroom, nowhere to run, no way out.  I watched Linda lead my son by the hand along the hall and into his bedroom where she eased him back into bed.  John snuggled down under the duvet.  Linda tucked him in and kissed his forehead.

Night night Mum.  Is Dad OK? John whispered, but fell back to sleep before Linda could finish her reply.

Linda moved quietly back into our own bedroom and closed the door behind her.  I was sitting on the side of the bed my feet on the floor, my revolver still in my hand.  You were having that nightmare again.  Linda reassured me as she tried to ease the weapon from me.  I moved the pistol away from her shaking hands; my eyes wide I was fully awake now.  I would never, I could never, give up my gun, not even to my own wife.  Linda gently stroked my hair as she bravely pushed through her own fear to calm me.

Did you see what I almost done? I spoke more to myself than to Linda.

Nothing happened darling.  Everything is alright She spoke softly, comforting me with her warm feminine embrace.  I knew she lied, I could feel her shaking as she comforted me, her heart beating fast and strong within her breast.

What time is it?  I asked.

Linda glanced at the bedside clock.  3:45 She replied.  I flipped out the cylinder of the revolver to check the rounds.  Four rounds in a five round cylinder.  I eased it back into place, the empty chamber under the hammer.  Four rounds in a PPW (Personal Protection Weapon) are enough.  I always knew if I had to fire more than four rounds in a fire fight with terrorists, I would be in deeper shit than that from which a machine gun and a thousand rounds of ammo could ever extract me.  That empty chamber was my safety catch.  In the street, I placed the empty chamber one before the hammer.  Should an attacker ever grab the weapon and pull the trigger, nothing would happen, a moment of confusion I might need to save myself.  I always carried a German military boot knife strapped to my ankle.  I would have it drawn and in up under his sternum before he figured out why the gun did not go off.  Knowing about the empty chamber, and should I need to fire the pistol, I only needed to pull the trigger twice.  At home, I kept the empty chamber under the hammer in case it fell and went off. 

I weighed the comforting solidness of my only, ever faithful, friend in the palm of my hand before I placed it back on the bedside table.  I felt the heavy tiredness of early morning in my bones.  I lay back down on the bed while Linda tucked my legs under the covers.  I groaned and turned on to my side away from her. 

In a moment, all was quiet.  I felt Linda slip back under the covers and spoon into my back.  Her heart still thumped in her chest and I could feel it pounding where she pressed herself into my back.  I pretended to be asleep, and her trembling hand went down to my heavily scarred thigh.  She lay awake for a few minutes a silent prayer of thanks, she later told me, that I had not fired that shot.  She lay there and worried about me before sleep took her away into the relief of oblivion.  I lay staring into darkness; a cold sweat beaded my brow. 

I felt frightened, helpless, the shadows had returned to fill my mind again.  I lay in the warm comfort of my wife’s embrace, yet I felt alone.  I felt as if I was the only one in the world in this desperate state.  I needed to get some help, but from whom, from where?

I came back to this from England.  I had a normal life there, an anonymous IT administrator in a small northern footwear factory, living a normal uneventful life.  A happy little English home in a sleepy suburbia.  The only danger to me was the odd football that came over the fence to threaten my greenhouse, how I hated it and oh God, how I yearned for it now.  Yes, Linda agreed to come back with me but I volunteered for this assignment.  I needed the danger to colour my life.

I had not been in this terrible place for many years and I thought the phantoms gone for good.  When the phantoms come, a man like me, a man that would shoot another man dead without as much as a flicker of emotion in my face, would instantly transform into a quivering, fearful, defenceless child.  This fear has a vice like grip that surrounds my chest and squeezes my lungs and soul like an ever-tightening steel band, I could breathe out easily but when I try to draw breath the steel band that constricts with my expelled breath tightens and prevents me from gaining that precious air.  My throat constricts and seals the passage to my lungs.  To get the air in, I have to force myself to inhale, there is a rasp of effort and the air slowly inches through the blockage as I push against the pressure in my throat and chest.  These phantoms bring my fear, bands around my chest, claws around my throat; they squeeze the life from my body and the hope from my soul. 

There is a legend that says; when a man dies, his soul leaves his body through his mouth.  I imagine the phantoms know this.  They know that they can steal my soul by seizing my throat and trap it inside my body as I die.  When the sun rises, the shadows are gone and I rebuke myself for my foolishness.  Yet, still through the daylight hours, the fear lurks near, invisible yet present.  I feel it when I see that man in the street that looks at me longer than is comfortable, or a parked car that somehow just does not look right, or maybe it contains men sitting there with no obvious purpose.  I know there are eyes watching me all the time, if not the terrorists then the shadow men of the security forces.  The former I fight, the latter entice me into this hell of a nightmare with promises of valour and presents of fear.

The night comes and I die a little death every time I go to that place where I should find peace.  In that time, I am alone with myself, with my phantoms, the only eyes that watch me here are those of my own demons, they are the most intense.  Paralyzed by fear, I watch their dreadful play.  Like the carnage of a bloody car crash, I do not want to look, I know I will be sickened and disgusted by the sight yet I look anyway, I want to look away but I cannot help it. 

I try to force myself to think happy thoughts of better times, to banish these dark players to the side wings of the stage of my mind.  I know however that they are still there waiting.  Waiting for an empty stage, to slip back on and once again act out their terrible plays.  How long could I banish them this time?  They are always there, lurking in the shadows, slinking between the curtains of my mind.  They are without form or substance; unlike me, they never grow weary.  They wait ever ready to fill a moment’s pause with their everlasting terror.

I cannot force happy thoughts forever.  I am no Peter Pan and they would be back.  A moment’s lapse of concentration, a minute of maudlin reflection and I would again be cast into the terrifying violence and painful turmoil these dark players stir up in my mind.  I lay there in the timeless void of the grey emptiness between awake and asleep, dying my little death, watching my demons play, a moment, and an eternity.  I do not know.

My mind wandered to the letter upon my kitchen table.  It was from a computer company in England, a job offer as a senior network engineer in Manchester Airport.  My specialist skills were in stronger demand than ever.  The salary was more than three times that which I earned, even with the payments from my security handlers.   

I knew what Linda would think.  We could move back to the area we had come from.  Pick up our friends again and resume a life of normality once more.  The kids could go to a school that did not care what religion their parents were, they would not know the violence of our sectarian childhoods. 

Moreover, the one thing that Linda said that kept echoing in my mind was  

The sins of their fathers would not be visited upon their heads.

It was a chance to live a normal life.  Yes a life in exile, a life without a country, without a people.  I knew it was time to run, to run for my life, for my children’s lives.

The grey turned to black, the dark players were there as always, ever ready to keep my company with their own unrelenting, never-ending torture, and I slept the unquiet sleep of a tormented soul.

Chapter 1   The Trouble with Protestants.

Belfast 1969

The 15th of August 1969 was a night of wild excitement and living terror.  Tension had built to a level of almost physical tangibility.  There had been previous skirmishes and constant reports on the news.  Rumours abounded of armed Protestants drunk on beer and shooting Catholics in broad daylight.  Ordinary families burnt out of their houses, first on the protestant side then quickly followed by catholic reprisals.  Baton wielding police attacked a catholic march.

No words could describe the hatred that flared up between lifelong friends.  Words like ethnic and cleansing had not yet been put together to describe this mindless barbarism but there it was in living flames and shouts and screams from the mobs.  In my childish eyes, it was exciting to see a house go up in flames, the families beaten as they pushed down the street, in prams or wheelbarrows, what few possessions they could salvage.  People we had lived alongside for years were now the feared and hated enemy. 

The thing that puzzled me the most was, once we identified them as ‘the Protestants’, they did not grow an extra eye or an extra head or anything like that.  They did not do magic spells or call up the devil to protect them.  No one came to protect them.  They talked the same, they looked the same, and they were the same, but now everybody hated them and they would all go and burn in hell for they were the enemy.  So swift and vicious were the attacks that they had no time to sew yellow stars on their clothes like the Jews in Germany. 

These people were now the Protestants.  I could not see what the Protestants were protesting about, from the TV reports and the mobs of Catholics roaming the streets; it looked to me like the Catholics were ‘the Protestants’.

Men beaten, sometimes to death women were beaten and children abused.  I saw a woman spit into the face of a protestant baby, a big green dirty glob of a spit.  A few days before, I saw that same woman nurse that very same baby.  That baby must have done something powerfully wrong to receive wrath from the good God-fearing catholic woman.

I knew we were Catholics because we went to the Mass in the chapel and the priest would come and visit us.  I was eight and I could eat Jesus at the Mass like my big brothers.  The Protestants could not eat Jesus at the Mass on Sunday.  That is why they would burn in hell or wander all about that purgatory place.  Martin, my brother died as a baby so he did not do his first holy communion, which meant as the priests taught us that he would be there in purgatory with my protestant Grandfather.  In my infant mind, I knew that is why we burnt them out of their homes. 

Granddad John McCrudden, I was named after him, had been brought up as a protestant.  His first wife and her children were Protestants.  His second wife was a Catholic.  To satisfy the Catholic Church he had to promise that the children of the second marriage would be catholic.  They were, and my father was one of them.  My Grandfather fought in the First World War and survived the Battle of the Somme as well as his ship going down after a torpedo attack; he spent 12 hours in the sea that time.  He lost one of his lungs to the mustard gas of the trenches and died in the UVF hospital in Belfast when Dad was only 14 years old. 

GrandMumAndDadMcCrudden GrandDadMcCrudden

My grandparents; and my grandfather later convalescing in the UVF hospital near Belfast.

I was however concerned that the people would find out that my granddad McCrudden; long dead now, had been a protestant.  People said that I was the spit of my granddad.

You could tell a protestant a mile away, from his eyes and the way he said H.  How H could come up in a conversation I could never fathom but I looked like my granddad and we had protestant aunts and uncles. 

I often thought about the black babies in Africa that the missionaries baptised.  Did their eyes change and did they say H differently after they had the holy water poured over their heads?  I had a fear that perhaps we were really Protestants and that Dad and Mum were keeping it a secret.  I hoped that they did not choose to make this time the time they told everyone.

The mob gathered around one house where an elderly protestant man lived.  My brother Frank and I used to go visit him to play chess.  They shouted, jeered, and broke all of his windows; he did not come out.  They kicked his door in, still he did not come out.  One of our brave defenders of the district lit a petrol bomb and threw it through the front window of this 80-year-old man’s home, smoke billowed from the broken windows, then fire in the front room, and he did not come out.  The fire spread, I suppose like fire, through the house, he did not come out.  When the house had burned to a blackened shell, the fire fighters came and took the old man out on a stretcher, in a body bag with a zip up the front.  They gave him to the ambulance men who were crying, they took him away.

As the night drew in on the 15th of August, no one went to bed.  Crowds of people milled around the streets.  The rumours came thick and fast.  The Protestants had guns and rockets.  Some said that they even had a tank or two.  The most worrying rumour was that the RUC police and the B Specials were with the invading protestant mobs.  Who would stop them? Who could stop them?

In the night, they attacked.  We could see Bombay Street go up in flames, the amber glow lit up the sky over the terraced rooftops.  We were huddled in the living room; Dad and Frank were going in and out of the front door.  There were three loud bangs from a firearm close by.  Dad and Frank scrambled in and shut the front door. 

Dad ordered us into the back room, which was previously the kitchen before someone had built an extension into the yard.  We all sat on the floor.  The only window in the room was between the room and the back kitchen.  Men passed the door of the room with handguns.  I had never seen a real handgun in the hands of any other man than a policeman in uniform.  I believed that everyone that night was running around with handguns like the cowboy films.  The truth was to prove so very different.  Those that defended the Clonard that night had very little in the way of guns and ammunition.  

One of the passing men stopped and looked in on us.

Don’t worry now.  Ye’ll be as safe as a row of houses in there.  He said with an easy smile.

I believed him, he was a grown up with a big gun in his hand.  I knew he, Dad, and Frank would protect us.  There were more bangs and shouting and Tony began to cry.  Another man appeared at the door.

Get out!  Get out!  They’re comin’ down the fucking street.

We scrambled to our feet.

Out the back way!  The IRA man ordered. 

We rushed through the kitchen and into the back yard.  Out through the back yard door we joined the stream of terrified people in the alleyway, as panic swept over our heads.   The panicked crowd washed us down the alleyway and out into the bottom of Benares Street.  We ran with the crowd.  Mum struggled with Tony; we all tried to stay close.  Shots rang aloud in the night air; this time there were many bangs.  The ferocious exchange of gunfire I only ever heard in the war films.  Now I was in a war film but I was not one of the brave soldiers that I always wanted to be, I was one of them civilians that always ran away and got in the way of the action and the brave actors.  The problem that troubled young mind was that I could not see those brave soldiers anywhere.

I did see many brave men in the crowd turn to protect the women and children.  They turned to fight the machine-gunning Protestants, the police and the B specials with bare hands, hurling sticks and hatchets.  Some of the women with hatchets in hand turned to fight as well.  A woman in front of us in the crowd turned a look of terrified rage on her face.  She threw her hatchet over our heads like a wild Indian.  She must have watched those Cowboy films.  There was a scream and she jumped up and down shouting.  Jesus, Mary and Joseph.  I’ve got one, I’ve got one!

I hoped it was a machine-gunning protestant.  We ran with the flow of the crowd. 

Someone shouted.  They are murdering all the Catholics in the Ardoyne.  They can’t get out.

We were heading down the Springfield Road.  Dad turned to Mum and said.  Nan, get the children to safety.  I’m off to Ardoyne to get them out.  He turned to Frank.  Son, do what you can here and for Jesus sake be careful.

Frank nodded and disappeared towards the vicious hand-to-hand combat from which we were fleeing.  Roy wanted to go and fight with Frank.  Mum slapped him across the head and told him to look after the wee ones, Jim and me. 

We ran on with the crowd through the streets, the noise of the fighting fell behind us; Frank was there in that fighting and he was going to die.  Dad was gone, I do not know where and I thought he was going to die too.

We crossed the Springfield Road, one man pointed to the doors of a big, green Ulsterbus parked across Springfield Avenue.  We piled in, and halfway down the bus Mum took a seat.

We’re away from those black-hearted protestant Bastards now!  She cried.

More of the other people took the other seats, and they cheered.

For Jesus sake woman, the bus has no fucking wheels!  The IRA man shouted from the front.

Get out the back door, this is a fucking barricade!

Mum threw her hands up in a panic again.

Oh Fuck, God pardon me!  She gathered Tony into her arms and hustled us through the bus.

On the other side of the barricades, we swarmed into a larger crowd of Catholics.  These people were not frightened.  They had the look of fighting people about them.  We slowed to a fast walk.  As we passed through the crowd, they parted a human avenue for us.

Come on, now, get through there!

Yer safe now, missus.

Calm yourselves down now.  And, Yer in safe streets now.  The friendly mob called to comfort and reassure us.  We were over on the other side of the Springfield Road and heading for the community centre there.  The people that lined the avenue had sticks and bricks and a few hand guns.

I pushed my lungs for breath and we followed the crowd deeper into safety.  We ended up in the main hall of St Peters Church community centre.  There were mattresses and blankets and we were bedded down beside an old man, it did not take us long to discover he had fleas.  We had hot, sweet tea and a sandwich, and we wrapped ourselves up in our blankets.  It was a summer night so we were warm very quickly.  When the sun rose, Dad and Frank appeared.

Frank did not say anything, he just sat and thought and drank his tea.  Frank was not dead but something inside of him died.

Dad told us not to disturb him and he gave us an account of his adventure.

He went to the IRA, for a gun, but there were no guns left.  He told them he was going to help the people of the Ardoyne.  They told him, ‘Good Luck, and all the best.’  However, they still did not have any guns to spare.

Dad, however, got a lift to the bus station.  He had been a bus driver and then a bus inspector for years, he knew everyone there.  He pleaded with the men at the station to give him a bus so that he could get the people out.  They refused, so Dad took one anyway, he drove the double-decker red bus out from the Falls Road Station.  Men stood in his way to prevent him from leaving.  Dad drove on and they jumped for their lives, the big red bus bearing down on them with a very determined Bobby McCrudden behind the wheel.

He made four runs and got the people out, before the Protestants burnt his bus.  Now, I only know the story, not the details.  I believe he actually was ferrying the people from the trouble spots on the periphery of Ardoyne into the safety of the centre of the Catholic enclave.  Once safely delivered into the heart of the Ardoyne, dad said, they immediately set about burning the Protestants out, so dad began to ferry Protestants from the trouble spots of the Ardoyne to the safety of the surrounding protestant areas.

The next morning, Dad secured a small car, and bundled us all into it.  Packed in like clowns in a circus clown car we drove out of the front lines of the Clonard.  We stayed with relatives deep in the heart of the republican west Belfast.  I think it was Ballymurphy, we divided into two houses to sleep, but we lived in one house.  Jim slept in the other house, and one night they fed him coffee cake, he promptly spewed it up all over the carpet.  I never saw Jim take any coffee flavoured food or beverage ever again; he even found and joined a religion that banned the use of coffee.

On the last day before going home, we had breakfast together.  Jim was very fond of bananas, which he sliced or mashed, and ate with toast.  I got Rice Krispies and milk.  I wanted Bananas and toast.  Mum told me to eat my breakfast and stop whingeing.  Jim laughed.  The next moment Jim was wearing my Rice Krispies bowl on his head, the milk pouring down his face and over his shoulders.  I grabbed the toasted banana sandwich which mum had made him and scrambled to the corner of the kitchen to eat it like a wild thing.

Jim cried, Ma, Ma, John’s gone mad!

Tony screamed and threw his Rice Krispies at Jim.  Mum and Dad were in the kitchen in a moment.  Mum looked at me and said, Jesus, Mary and Joseph!  It’s the Devil himself possessing him!

Calm yerself down now Nan.  Dad said.  It’s only the shock of the last few days.  Ye’ll just have to let it settle.  I’ve seen this type of thing in the Army in Aden.

They both looked at Rice Krispie Jim and burst out into peals of laughter.  Dad had a big loud laugh that always filled the house.

Have ye all gone mad in here?  Mum’s sister declared as she came into the kitchen to investigate the commotion.  One look at Rice Krispie Jim with the bowl on the head and the milk all about him and she joined the laughter.  I cannot ever remember Jim eating Rice Krispies after that.  One thing was sure though, I finished that banana sandwich.

We all travelled back home in that little car again.  We drove into the Kashmir Road.  There were no paving stones on the footpaths.  The Clonard defenders lifted them all, and neatly piled them at the end of the roads to form barricades.  At one end of Kashmir Road at the junction with the Springfield Road, there was a big lorry with no wheels, making the right hand side of the barricade; the flagstones neatly piled all around making the rest of the barricade.  For a while, that lorry became our favourite climbing frame.  Over those few nights, the Clonard had changed forever. 

We found our home as we left it; we were luckier than some further up the street nearer the fighting.  Our door was wide open but nothing was touched.  The IRA had made a decree that any reported looting Would be severely dealt with the IRA would say it was all they needed to say.

It was a bright summers day when we arrived back home.  In the house, we had hot sweet tea, bread, and jam.  As soon as we were done we were in the streets, out from under our parents feet, we went to discover the new and exciting world of the war torn Clonard.

Boyinwire

Playing at the junction of the Kashmir Road and Clonard Gardens.

The wire beside the laundrette.

I look towards the remnants of Bombay Street

We met up with our friends and exchanged the exciting stories of shooting and fighting and fleas and the protestant police that our parents said stood by and did nothing.  I had not seen a policeman that whole night, I supposed it was their night off or they were somewhere else.

I later found out that they were there.  Yes, some stood by and did nothing some did not.  Some were shot or beaten protecting us.  Most of them stood by and did nothing;