As Tom Jones once sang, It’s good to touch the green, green,
grass of home, and it was, although I don’t think he was referring to someone
face down on the ground with a fully armed Rock Ape kneeling on his head. I have to say the Rock Apes were quite an
excitable lot; even the dog was going mental.
They ripped my wallet from my rear pocket and passed my identity card
around till they could find one of them who could read. Once it was established that I was in the air
force, I was helped to my feet and questioned.
It was the usual line of questioning, who are you, what are you doing
here, have you ever kissed a girl and if so what was it like? The one question they asked which had them stop
and think for a moment was ‘Who gave you permission to walk across my bloody
airfield?’
You know me, unable to tell a lie. I pointed to the nasty loadmaster who was
still stood standing by the nose of the Fat Albert we had just come in on. ‘Him.’ I said.
‘He gave me permission to walk across your airfield.’ I didn’t hang around to see if the loadmaster
would, like I had, be wrestled to the ground for questioning, instead I made haste to the air
operations building and stepped inside.
I simply followed my nose and made my way to the operations room. I saw my man at a desk and went over to lean
against the counter next to him and wait for him to get off the telephone. I began to look around and as everything in
the military is kept as simple as possible, it was easy to see that I was right
in the centre of air operations for Northern Ireland. The walls were covered with lots of maps,
with lots of red circles.
It was just as well that I wasn’t a terrorist because listed
before me in nice huge, easy to read, letters were all the call signs, frequencies,
code words and
squadron locations and strengths. That’s when I felt someone breathing down my
neck. I don’t mean that someone was standing
close to me, well I do, but I could
actually feel this person breath on my neck.
Probably because he was shouting at me.
I wasn’t expecting another encounter, well; not so soon after my
previous one. This fellow was a squadron
leader, I quickly checked his chest and could see no indication that he was a
fast jet pilot. I was lucky enough to be
meeting an air trafficker, who was in charge of the operations room. “What are you doing in my ops room?” he screamed. “Who gave you permission to come in to my ops
room?”
I mean, I felt like telling him if his ops room was so
important he should perhaps try locking the door but I kept silent, this was an
air trafficker, he would already know everything. He was going mental and insisted that I
follow him to his office. I did so and
he told me to stand in the doorway facing in to his office. I wasn’t to look at any of the information in
his ops room. He insisted that I gave
him my identity card and he was going to telephone command to see if I actually
had permission to be in Northern Ireland and if I didn’t, I would be placed under
arrest and held in custody until the next flight back to the UK which I would
be put on. There was a war going on,
Northern Ireland was a dangerous place. It’s
at times like this you look at people and wonder how on earth they became such
an arse. This was the sort of fellow who
would serve six months in Northern Ireland and be given a medal, which of
course he would brag about to all the pretty little things in his next
unit. What about the poor people of
Northern Ireland who lived through thirty years of shit, they never got medals.
He was quite disappointed when he found out that I had
permission to be there but insisted that I remain standing where I was, as he didn’t
want me looking at any of the sensitive information. I was certainly meeting all the important
people that day. I had met a Rock Ape
who owned the airfield and now a failed fast jet pilot who seemed to own the
operations room. Next thing you know is
that a civilian driver comes in to the operations room looking for his VIP passenger. As a bit of a giggle, my man in Aldergrove
had told MT that there was a VIP in air ops who needed driving over to the main
gate. I don’t think the idiot in charge
of ops had heard what was going on, so I explained that my transport was here
and I should be going. He waved me away
and I nodded in appreciation at my man, before meeting up with the driver and
heading outside to the car.
It was a nice big limousine and he was a very good driver. I thanked him as I got out at the main gate
and walked over to the sanger. The security
of the airfield, inside the fence was down to the Rock Apes, or as they liked
to call themselves the Royal Air Force Regiment. Outside the perimeter security was down to
the army so I now found myself standing with some army bods, or as we liked to
call them, pongo’s. Why? Because everywhere the army goes the pong
goes. As the pongo’s on guard had seen
me get out of a VIP limousine they assumed that I must have been some sort of dignitary
and reacted accordingly, saluting me and offering me a seat in their sanger. All I had wanted to do was nip home for two
days and have a quick beer with Fegan and Rogan but this journey was certainly turning
into a farce, by the way that’s an Irish farce not a French farce, no vicars losing
their trousers in this one. Well apart
from the pervert priest who was picking me up.
One of the pongos came over and asked who, or what, I was
waiting for. I said that a priest was on
his way for me and told him what sort of car I was expecting and the name of
the pervert priest. Next thing you know
is that the pongo is on the radio, blowing this information out to all the road
blocks in the local area. Thankfully five
minutes later the pervert priest arrived with a certain look of astonishment on
his face. I say thankfully, for while
sitting in the sangar I felt that I was sitting in the centre of a target and
felt quite uncomfortable. One of the pongos
went over and opened the passenger door for me.
I really did not expect him to salute me as I got into the car and wished
that I had a safe journey. As we drove
off the pervert priest looked at me and asked ‘What exactly is it that you do
in the air force?’ and I hadn’t the heart to tell him. Seems that he had joined a queue of cars at a
road block and was waiting his turn when he noticed the soldiers point at him
and run toward his car. Normally priests
were asked to give the last rights to those dying or dead and he wondered what
was going on as the pongo rapped on his window.
Once established that it was the pervert priest he was waved
forward and through the road blocks and found that he was the only car moving
on the road as all other road blocks leading to Aldergrove held their traffic
and waved him through. I was so looking
forward to having a quite beer with the boys and to try and forget the events
of the day when the pervert priest explained that I was not going to Warrenpoint. It was a little ‘lively’ there at the moment. The British had their secret services, informers and
spies collecting information and sometimes paying for it, but I had the church
and knew that after confession on a Saturday night the priests knew more about
what was going on in the North of Ireland than the whole spy network put together. If this priest, pervert or not, was saying that
Warrenpoint was a little ‘lively’ at the moment, then I could take his word as
gospel.
I was going to Lurgan where I would be staying with my cousin
Paul. My mother was already there. This was certainly going to be an interesting
day or two for Paul was a leading solicitor in Lurgan who had a reputation for
defending IRA men in the courts. On top
of that he didn’t like anyone speaking English in his house. At least I knew most of the IRA men in
Warrenpoint and felt safe enough among them, but I only knew a few of the Lurgan
guys, who I had been to school with. It
was only then I started to feel that perhaps this trip had not been a very good
idea, but it was a wee bit late to be turning back now. I sat back and enjoyed my drive through the
Irish countryside and began to recall as much of the Irish language as I could
remember.
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