One of the senior instructors was a tough, unsmiling, heartless SAS sergeant named Longshank. He only had one eye and one hand, lost years earlier when he tried to beat the record for getting the greatest number of two-inch mortars in the air at one time before the first hit the ground and exploded. In his eagerness he had double-fed the mortar pipe, shoving a shell in before the previous one had left the pipe, and they exploded in his face. Fortunately they were not high explosive, which would have killed him.
Longshank was playing the role of lead IRA terrorist. In the final days our operation went slightly awry while Longshank was driving to make a vital meeting we had to cover. The team, in their cars, stopped following him when he reportedly carried out anti-surveillance drills. While driving at speed with the team in tow, he began swerving violently from one side of the road to the other. The general rule is, if the enemy shows any signs of suspecting they are being followed, the team is to pull off. It turned out that Longshank had been using his good hand to operate a radio when his ball-and-socket jointed hand fell off the steering wheel and he lost control of the vehicle, almost crashing it.
To enable us to finish the operation we received a ‘hot tip’ that Longshank was going to make his contact in a pub late that evening. It had been a long, tiring week for the operatives and, being a considerate operations officer, I decided to give them a break and cover the meeting myself. I would need one other operative, and as it was a pub meet, naturally one of the girls would be ideal. It was the most effective way to cover the meet and a proper use of my resources. The plan was to sit and chat like a normal couple while I photographed the meeting using hidden devices. I chose Janet, not necessarily because she was the prettiest and sexiest girl on the course, but I wanted to make it look convincing (yeah, right). As we sat in the moderately crowded country pub I did all I could to charm her, while at the same time covering the meeting. It was not too difficult, as she was in as much need of being charmed as I was of charming her. When Longshank and his contact finally left, I told her I wanted to check if the film had rolled on in the camera properly. I explained I was concerned that if we went outside to do it in the car we might be seen and therefore suggested that the most convenient place, indeed the only place, would be the toilets. She didn’t argue that there was no point in checking the camera as the targets had gone anyway. She wasn’t stupid and as it turned out she was just as frustrated as I was. We didn’t get as far as checking the film and were at each other, kissing and pulling each other’s pants down before I had locked the door. I’d never done it in a toilet cubicle before and nor have I since, but due to the unusual situation, the risk of discovery and the intense release of passion after months of temptation, it remains a memorable experience. In the debrief Longshank noted, with a suspicious eye, how realistically the couple in the pub had acted.
Driving was the most hair-raising part of the course. Everyone’s driving ability had to be improved by the time we went over the water, which is why several weeks were dedicated purely to this end. Army rally-driving instructors were brought in for a few days to give a little advice, but for the most part we were simply encouraged to drive as fast as we dared. This phase was also used to practise map-reading under pressure. Course members would usually go out in pairs and take turns navigating and at the wheel. One would drive as fast as he could along the narrow country lanes and through the villages – and I mean as fast as he could – while the other did his best to map-read at speed, which meant knowing exactly where one was at all times, down to a few metres, so as to warn of direction changes, bends in the roads, humpback bridges, etc., and in enough time for the driver to prepare. My very first partner put us in a hedge the first week of the course because he could not hear my instructions. It turned out he was deaf in his left ear. I have no idea how he ever got on the course to start with.
It was all quite insane really, the driving phase, highly dangerous for both us and the locals. But this was war, and in wartime safety margins during training are stretched to their limits. The person I felt most sorry for was the DS member who had to sit in the back behind each pair throughout this entire phase. Getting into a powerful car behind two complete novices who had everything to prove – one driving beyond his abilities and the other stressed to the limit keeping track of where they were – was a nerve-racking job. As the phase progressed, the navigator not only had to keep track of his location but also report it to the control room, in code, over the radio.
The same DS member remained with each pair throughout this fast-driving phase so he could advise and assess improvement. We had a short, dark, soft-spoken intellectual type named Joe who had recently returned from a tour of duty in Northern Ireland to take up his first stint as an instructor. I think he was ex-Int Corps.
Joe began the first day as we set off, seated back in a corner with his legs crossed offering snippets of advice. Within a few miles, he was perched on the edge of the back seat with both legs and arms stretched out, his palms pressed firmly against the door-frames for stability, while frantically screaming warnings of obstacles up ahead that we were already well aware of. Towards the end of the day, when we took it a little easier on the return home, he sat back and chain-smoked mostly in silence. As a back-seat driver he actually became a pain in the arse, since we did not feel as out of control all of the time as he obviously thought we were.
At the end of each day he left us without much of a word. We decided he went directly to either a church or a pub.
The evening meals during that phase were often entertaining as everyone shared the day’s events. Arthur, who was a natural driver and drove faster than all of us, had a partner, a young officer named Brien, who wore thick glasses due to poor eyesight and was undoubtedbly the worst map-reader on the course. This was not a healthy combination for all concerned, and one that the DS kept complaining about to his superiors. But it was standard practice to pair up the worst in a subject with the best in the hope that the slower person might catch up.
It’s a sound practice normally, but in this case the wisdom of it was questionable. Arthur’s car did not arrive back at camp on time one evening, and when it eventually did, it was lying in the back of a flatbed truck with its front end destroyed and its wheels buckled, a couple of which were rammed up into the body. The occupants were shaken up but no one was badly injured. Brien had apparently made a small but vital error while map-reading, thinking they were a hundred yards further along a winding road than they actually were.
Arthur had been driving at his usual lunatic speed while Brien, bouncing around in the seat next to him and holding on to his map book, navigated them through a village and then along a winding, hilly, country road. After taking a gentle right-hand bend at about 60 mph Brien confidently announced, ‘It’s clear and straight for a mile.’
Arthur took his cue and accelerated to top speed while climbing a gentle slope. As they made the crest doing almost 100 mph, a hedgerow with a gate in it appeared, running directly across their path.
‘Which way?’ shouted Arthur who was not known for losing his cool in any situation, but he had to make himself heard above the scream from the DS in the back who, along with Brien, was staring ahead with eyes like carrots. Further information had ceased to come from Brien, so Arthur simply aimed for the point of least resistance, which in this case was the gate, and went right through and into a ploughed field past a farmer in his tractor.
Another pair had taken out two signposts in the same day, with no idea what the signs had warned of until they walked back to pick them up and stick them back into the ground, notably shorter than their original height. On approaching one of the signs at breakneck speed, the driver yelled the phrase that became most feared by the DS in the back – ‘WHICH WAY?’ The driver had suddenly been confronted with what he thought was a ‘Y’ junction, but none was indicated on the map. It was actually a dual carriageway divider that at speed looked like a ‘Y’. When no answer came from the frantically confused navigator the driver took neither of the tarmacked options and hit the central grass divider, flattening the sign in the process. It turned out to be a large arrow stating, ‘Keep Left’.
The same day that same pair were driving down a narrow country lane bordered on both sides by such high hedgerows it was like driving in a tight gully. But they could see it was straight and clear for a mile and so the driver accelerated to top speed. Suddenly, just up ahead, a farmer in his car slowly pulled out of his, until then, invisible driveway. He turned his head and instantly freaked as he saw the car screaming towards him. The expressions on the faces of the two operatives and the DS could not have been any different. A collision, and a serious one, appeared unavoidable. The farmer, obviously a swift-thinking man, did the only thing he could. He floored the accelerator and punched his car right through the opposite hedge and then nosed down into a ditch as the operatives’ car rocketed past his rear. After that incident, the DS member, ashen by then, insisted they drive no faster than 20 mph until they got back to camp.
Several of us were stopped by the police more than once for reckless driving, but we had a secret codeword to use in such cases. When the constable, upon our insistence, radioed the codeword to his desk, much to his consternation he was told to let us go. This codeword was also used if one of the recruits inadvertently exposed his gun in public and the police were alerted.
Although the driving phase was great fun most of the time, we never lost sight of the seriousness of it all. Trainees had died in car accidents in the past. We got off lightly on my course, the worst injury being a broken arm. Janet held the record for the number of times a driver was towed home in a wrecked vehicle – four. One more and she would have been RTUed, but she pulled it together in the last few weeks.
It’s amazing that only a handful of operatives have been killed or seriously wounded throughout the history of 14 Int training. And only about half a dozen have been killed in the last twenty years in road accidents while on operation in Northern Ireland. One of them was the first female operative, who died in a motorbike crash there recently. During my first two years as an undercover operator in Northern Ireland I rolled two cars completely, both ending up on their roofs on the side of the road, both during high-speed chases along the border. One was pilot error and the second was mechanical failure. Each time I crawled out without a scratch.
On the first occasion I was trying to ‘back’ (support) the lead car that ‘had’ (could see) the target while the rest of the team were stretched out behind me having been held up by an Army vehicle checkpoint (VCP). It was a good country road along this part of the southern border and it had just started to rain. I lost control on a sharp left-hand bend, fish-tailed around the corner, went up the right-hand verge, hit an oak tree that had been there several hundred years and was not about to give an inch, bounced off it and proceeded to roll along the wide, grassy verge side over side about four times. When the car finally came to a stop on its roof I lay there for a moment checking my body for broken bones. To my surprise, I was in one piece. We did not wear safety-belts as the practice was tactically unsound – you wanted to get out of a car quickly if you came under attack.
I then saw a pair of upside-down feet running towards me along the verge and quickly grabbed my maps and SMG and stuffed them into my bag. As I crawled out of the passenger window ready to pull my holstered gun if needed, I saw that the feet belonged to an old farmer who had seen the crash from his field. I got to my feet as he came up to me and he looked relieved to see I was OK. Steam issued from the engine and the wheels were still slowly turning. He asked me if I was all right. I brushed myself down as I told him I was fine. He didn’t seem to be fazed when I answered him in my English accent.
‘Shall I phone for help?’ he asked.
My car radio still worked and I still had my hidden ear-piece jammed into my ear. I could hear the chase in progress and knew my oppos behind me would be along shortly.
‘Thanks, but that’s OK. A friend of mine is not far behind.’
It was a quiet road and no one else was on it but us. A few seconds later, the next Det car in line came around the corner at high speed and almost lost control too. It straightened up after a little fish-tail and accelerated towards us – we were standing about eighty yards from the bend.
The operative saw me beside my upside-down car and could see I was fine. I heard him report over the radio that I was ‘out of it’ but OK. He was naturally intent on trying to ‘back’ the lead car since I couldn’t, and he gave me a quick thumbs-up as he sped by. I waved back slightly.
The farmer, standing at my side, watched him disappear then gave me a glance.
‘Your friend, was it?’ he asked.
I felt a bit stupid, but explained I had another friend behind that one.
Sure enough, a few seconds later the next operative came screaming around the corner like a bat out of hell and then headed towards us. He’d received the message about me and was also anxious to back the leader, and so he too waved as he sped past and out of sight. The farmer gave me another look. There’s really nothing one can say in a situation like that.
By the time the fourth and final car zoomed by with a wave I was beginning to feel pretty foolish, standing between my upside-down wrecked car and the farmer, waving to my friends as they drove by at top speed like everything was normal.
Fortunately the last car stopped up the road after it passed and reversed back to pick me up. The operative opened the door in a hurry, I jumped in, and we sped off. I waved goodbye to the farmer, who just stared at me.
The ballet of the second crash, only six weeks after, was almost identical to the first, except it was down the left verge, this time after a tyre had blown on a tight corner, to hit an ancient oak-tree stump then spin side over side about four times and end up on the roof again. It was a Ford Capri that time and I had a passenger, another bootneck operative who’d been in the Det a good year longer than I. As we lay there upside-down he started banging his passenger window repeatedly with his elbow. I stopped him and said, ‘Been there, done that, try this,’ and coolly wound down the window – the experienced hand that I was.