Anyway we were married on the 14th of August 1971 after a whirlwind courtship.
Back then life was simpler; though we didn't realise it at that time. It was in the days when the microprocessor was a fantasy and a big mac was a very large Scotsman and hand held calculators were the must have item of the day as decimalisation came in to confuse us all here in the UK. Oh, and there was a little domestic war here that was to engulf the world. The Irish question reared it's ugly head years before our marriage but I found myself, a nineteen year old, in the thick of it only three weeks into my marriage.
From boyhood to manhood
When I got to Northern Ireland I was stationed at the mill, a then defunct factory, that housed the Scots Guards for their tour of duty. As army accommodation go it was sparse, to say the least. We were well fed though, given the situation we found ourselves in, but the comforts of a wife and children back home was just a reality us soldiers kept in our minds to keep us sane. When we walked outside of our 'comfort zone' at the mill it was then that reality hit us as sure as any bullet.
When I first went on patrol the first thing that sticks in my mind, apart from the sentry on duty that first day was... speed bumps! I'd never seen them before but by god I've seen them since, they are everywhere now! Apart from the speed bumps another thing that struck me, being a Glasgow lad, was how I could be walking down Buchanan Street on any given night, the only difference being was that I was dressed up like action man and told to keep watching the windows above in the tenements we were passing as snipers could have your name on a bullet for you. Buchanan Street it was not, that was for sure, scary times indeed.
So there was I, on my very first patrol, walking down the Falls Road with my SLR rifle attached to one arm by a sling in case anyone took my SLR from me and turned it round to shoot me in the face, (the sling was short enough to prevent this).
That first patrol went smoothly but I cant say that for the rest of my 'tour' as I escaped a bombing and my mate was killed just a few yards from me.
The dutiful wife was making plans.
Back home in Blighty Beryl was beavering away at the GEC (General Electric Company, which has long since gone) and saving up for our chance to get us onto the property ladder and was amassing a deposit for a home. She had it all worked out till I later threw a spanner in the works. Little did I know it but I was putting pressure on her finances as I asked for a ten bob here, five shillings there and any other little treats she could throw my way as that's what all the other wives of soldiers in NI were doing...I was being totally selfish but didn't know it at the time.
One particular day I received a ten bob note and a transistor radio from Beryl and I was elated beyond belief, it didn't half lift my spirits.
Before lunch I took the radio down to my mate who was a cook where we were billeted.
Our main home from home, if you like, was the Mill but the MOD had acquired a house on the corner of of the Falls Road and some other street that I can't remember. This house was for the sole purpose of watching the Falls Road and any miscreant that may travel upon it, whether it be a joyrider or a full blown IRA cell, this house was a strategic advantage point for the MOD. The windows of the house were bricked up with breeze block barring two for sentries to poke their SLR's out of, ready to shoot anyone that threatened the post.
While I was in 'the house' I never saw a rifle being fired in anger at any person or vehicle that used the Falls Road but did see some very funny sights that you could see on any British road on a Saturday night. Did I mention the ordinariness of the situation? Well that ordinariness was to be shattered one night, the night I saw my first dead body, and that dead body happened to by my friend who I lent my transistor radio to for a day.
The 'house' was spartan but functional, there was two floors, the bottom floor was intended for recreation and the top floor was for sleeping in so there were many bunk beds to house weary soldiers after a 'shift' patrolling the streets of Belfast.
The MOD decided that they would buy the house next door from a man that was in hospital and wanted a quick sale, so it was bought by the MOD. The house being bought by them had now to be renovated to suit soldiers needs so a hole, big enough for a man to walk through, was made, with stairs, into the next house.
I came off of patrol that night and it was late, very late and so, after a late diner, I was ready for my bed. I climbed onto the top bunk and fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
The Big Bang.
It was about five or six in the morning when I felt a tug at my right shoulder that wakened my up. When I opened my eyes all I could see was dust everywhere, there was no escaping it. The dust was in your ears, eyes, nose and throat and you could not breath. I was guided down the stairs out into the bright Autumn sunshine where I coughed my lungs out for five minutes as military efficiency took over and did a roll call, it was then that I realised that my friend was missing.
The structure of the house was still standing and as to how safe it now was I can not say but two of us decided to go looking for our friend, the cook. We precariously walked through the rubble, making our way to the kitchen.
The kitchen was strewn with bricks and a large hole could be seen through into the next house that was bought by the MOD. We walked precariously through the kitchen into the back garden but saw nothing before making our way back outside to the front of the house. As we tentatively walked back through the kitchen area I saw the radio that Beryl had sent me all smashed up sitting on top of a pile of decimated bricks. It caught my attention amongst the debris and as my eye surveyed it I noticed a bloated hand in the mess that was once the proud domain of my friend. We had found him under that rubble and took him into the front garden area where his bloated corpse awaited, for an interminably long time, an ambulance to take him away.
I went to pieces that day, not the first time on my tour of duty, and started slagging off passers by just because they were Irish, which was rich, when I think about it as I have an Irish mother. But grief took hold and I did not know what I was saying, so much so that I was taken to hospital as a casualty of the 'Irish question' and that little known, then, affliction called stress. God knows what stress Beryl was going through as the news filtered through but, in hindsight, it was to cause her many problems with her own mental health.
How did they do it?
Readers may ask how the bomb was set in a situation that was an army base? Well it was to do with the house next door.
It was being renovated by local companies and each night, and every hour through the night, a sentry would walk through the 'hole in the wall' from our house to the next and check everything was ok. One of his duties was to look at the materials that were being stored there. He would rake his hands through bags of cement to see if anything was burried within them and this night he found nothing. He went back up the stairs and was about to return through the 'hole in the wall' when the bomb went off.
What he could not have known was that the bomb was put into hollowed out breeze blocks, blocks that were stacked up against the wall that was adjacent to the kitchen in the next house... my friend, the cook had no chance. The sentry survived but had mental health problems arising from that day. And as I have hinted above it does not just involve those on the 'front line'.
To be continued...
