Larry Power was going to great lengths to thank me for not
giving his name to the Station Warrant Officer.
Had I snitched on him, then Larry would have lost an awful lot more than
I ever could, his bean stealing status could have been revoked and that would
have been a huge financial blow to take.
Larry came up with a fantastic idea to say thank you. A bank holiday was approaching so he proposed
that I travel with him to Dublin and he would run me up to Warrenpoint on the
Friday and collect me again on the Monday.
I hadn’t been home for some time and the thought of not
having to fight my way across the Irish Sea, while being serenaded by vocally
challenged knuckle draggers, was quite appealing, so I accepted his offer. It was quite a standard crossing, couple of
beers, a bit of craic and then the Dublin to Newry road. It’s a road that many people travel and I
wonder if like me there are certain cottages, or signs, you use as markers as
your journey progress.
For me, the most memorable is the tiniest of signposts on the
North side of Dundalk. The Republic is
famous for its signposts. They used to
be black and white, as if someone had stood five pints of Guinness on top of
each other. It was even greater craic,
when they switched from miles to kilometres.
The new signs were put up, but
the old ones were not taken away.
Tourists would be stood standing there wondering if it was twenty five
miles to Dublin or forty? We would
always advise them to take the lesser figure, for sure, wouldn’t it be that
much closer.
The signpost I refer to was a tiny little thing pointing to
the back lane into Mount Oliver, Franciscan Convent. It where the aunts used to come, when they
would travel back from the missions, and a favourite place for me to visit. However I doubt if Larry would have wanted to
call in and have a cup of tea with a few hundred nuns. We travelled on up the road and the landscape
began to change, as did Larry.
Your perception of the place would change as you came to the
site of the old customs house, which had been blown up so many times, they gave
up rebuilding it. However, despite their
attempts to clean the area up, you were still aware that you were entering a
war zone, as bomb craters and the odd burned out vehicle would be lying about. You couldn’t help but feel the agony of the innocent
victims that had been slaughtered. I was
quite aware of my surroundings and thought Larry would be too. We were in a queue waiting to pass through the
main British army checkpoint when Larry yelped.
“Look!” he said, at me, in an excited whisper.
“What?” I asked, looking around.
“That bush is moving!” he cried, indicating with a nod of his head
the direction I should be looking in.
I followed his direction and saw the heavily camouflaged
solder crawling along a gully.
“Haven’t you seen the machine gun above?” I asked, at which
Larry froze.
“Jasus!” he cried. “There’s thousands of them!”
This of course was an exaggeration, but I was quiet surprised
at his reaction and hoped he would calm down, for although he was allowed to be
in the republic I wasn’t. I wasn’t even
supposed to be in the North of Ireland without express permission from the MOD. The last thing we needed was to be questioned
and searched by the British army.
“Get a grip Larry,” I suggested, as it was quite clear he was
about to enter panic mode. “They’re only
pongos.”
Pongo is a term we use for army bods, the reason being,
anywhere the army goes, the pong goes.
We managed to pass through undetected, however from the border to the
outskirts of Newry; I could tell that Larry was shocked at the massive presence
of heavily armed troops.
We made it to Warrenpoint and I brought Larry into to our wee
house for a cup of tea. I couldn’t
believe that he was visibly shaken by the experience and as he was leaving, to
get back down to Dublin and his family, he told me that he didn’t think he
would be able to make it back up on Monday, so could I make my own way to
Dublin and meet him there.
I told him that it
would be no problem, and it wasn’t. I
had a great weekend letting my hair down with Phelim and Peter. Jiving to my heart’s content and yelling “Yee
ha!” without a care in the world. I
walked across Dundalk, as there was another bomb on the train line and the
direct service to Dublin was affected, praying that none of the IRA men would
spot me. I wasn’t worried that I might
get into a bit of trouble; I was worried that I would get into a drinking
session with them and miss the fecking boat back to Wales.
Larry felt that he had fulfilled his duty and reverted to
being a Corporal. I was out hammering
snow flags in. It was a lovely job, all
on my own, wandering along taxiways and runways, beating little painted sticks into
the ground with a two pound lump hammer.
If an aircraft was passing I would bare my legs, I know, the loveliest
legs in Ireland, and thumb a lift, I even had a sign at one stage with the word
“Warrington” printed on it, but I never got a lift although I could tell the
aircrew were so jealous. I always thought
snow flagging was such a waste of time, for when it started snowing they stopped
flying. I often wondered if it was a ‘make
work’ scheme, but I suppose I’ll never know.
This day, I was out snow flagging to my heart’s content, in an appalling
North Welsh gale.
I was very close to the runway caravan, which was an old
truck where an air traffic corporal would sit and watch aircraft. He would act as a final safety check as they
prepared for take-off, making sure that safety pins had been removed from ejector
seats and the like. They would act as a
final check on landing aircraft making sure that all the wheels on an aircraft
were down and locked. Larry was runway
controller this day, which is the term given to the man in the van, and I climbed
in for a bit of a warm and a brew.
I can’t remember who was in charge of air traffic that day,
but Larry wanted to know my impression of the person who would send me out on
such a foul day to put snow flags in. I
of course didn’t hold back, and gave my frank and honest opinion of the person
in charge, which I may say contained one or two expletives.
I was surprised later to be ordered back to the tower. I went in, leaving a trail of water behind me
and made my way, as I had been told, to the radar room. As the weather was horrendous and no aircraft
flying, I found that all of the controllers were relaxing and, in their own way,
having a bit of craic.
“Ah!” says the man in charge.
“ I understand that you are having doubts about my parentage, Paddy?”
The gathered officers guffawed at the hilarity of their
brother officer’s hysterical repartee. I
detected a certain emphasis on the word, Paddy.
“Me sir?” I asked, feeling myself morph into something close
to McGintys fecking goat.
“Yes, my dear chap. I
believe you’re questioning the moral legality of the superior blood line that
could produce such a fine specimen as I?”
“Me sir?” I asked again, realising that I was now sounding
like a Dublin taxi driver, but knowing I was dancing about the ring looking for
a weak spot.
“Yes you, Paddy. I’ve
been told that you think I’m a bit of a bastard?”
His fellow officers couldn’t contain themselves for they
thought the situation to be so funny; it was like Harry Flashman addressing a
fag at Rugby. What they didn’t
understand was that I was aware that handball, our sport at Violent Hell was
very similar to Rugby Fives, except we were not girlie enough to wear leather
gloves to protect our hands. It allowed
me to feel a certain superiority to the standard English toff.
“Me sir?” I asked.
“I would never call you a bastard sir.
I was brought up as a good Catholic boy.
God forgive me, I would never use such a profanity to describe such a
wonderful upstanding gentleman as yourself…”
I don’t know where the words were coming from but I could see that my
quarry was taken aback. As an officer he
was of course naturally superior to me, more intelligent and well damn it, a
much better fellow altogether. The words
kept spilling from my mouth, and from his body language I could tell he was
dying for me to stop. His fellow officers
were waiting for his comeback, which I could see wasn’t going to happen. As we were being gentlemen, well one of us
was, and as I felt we were very much in Harry Flashman territory, I withdrew my
rapier and prepared for the final blow.
I could hear myself talking; I was not just wondering where
the words were coming from, but where on earth was the accent coming from? I opened the door to the radar room and began
to back out, bowing submissively as I left.
“Me sir?” I could hear myself asking. “I would never call you a bastard sir. Sure wouldn’t I have to spend the next five Saturdays
in confession if I said, or thought, such a thing about such a fine gentlemen
as yourself?”
I paused, as they say, for comedic effect.
He nodded at me, I knew he would not say anymore, the
encounter was over and he wished he had never started it. It may have been over for him but it certainly
wasn’t over for me.
I checked his brother officers who appeared to be let down by
this fine fellows failings.
I continued to mumble in my finest Irish warble, as I backed
out the door.
“I would never call you a bastard sir, no sir, not me, I
called you a fecking arsehole!”
My timing was perfect.
I could hear everyone in the radar room fall about apoplectic with laughter,
apart from one fine fellow. I expected
him to come after me and start screaming.
He didn’t. In fact he gave me a
bit of a wide berth after that.
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