and as usual he was being an ass, picking fights with anyone who would take the bait. That night it was I who bit, and out of a sense of frustration and perhaps a desire to stand up for those who couldn’t defend themselves as well, I landed a punch square on his jaw, sending him to the floor. I had been a karate student with the local club since I was eleven, training two or three times a week, and I knew how to throw a punch. It would be the first of many fights between us over the next few years, with family members often having to intervene to keep us apart. Looking back, I think it might have been an urge to right things, to intervene to try to sort things out once and for all. Most of all, though, I think I just hated bullies. It’s been almost twenty-five years since that night, and I have never spoken a word (other than in anger) to my father since. My parents separated some years later, and while the rest of the family have stayed in close contact with him, my antipathy towards him remains.
Like every other boy in our village, I was educated by the Christian Brothers both in primary and secondary school. I was a bright student and so managed to avoid the wrath of some of the sterner brothers. I loved studying history, in particular Irish history: the accounts of Michael Collins,Éamon de Valera and the Easter Rising sparked my imagination, and from there I became a prolific reader of Irish history. By that time, of course, the Troubles in Northern Ireland were at their worst, with Provisional IRA bombing campaigns spreading to the UK and Loyalist murder squads operating across the North. I became fascinated by it, and had a sense of watching history unfold before my eyes on the TV screen and in the newspapers every day.
I sat my Leaving Certificate in 1993 and got enough points to study science at UCC. In truth, I had little interest in the subject, but I jumped at the chance to get away from home, which at that point had become unbearable. I would have taken any option open to me. My first year at university went well, I enjoyed the freedom that came with living away from home for the first time and made good friends. I passed my first year exams without any problems but by the second year I was spending more time at history lectures with my friend Norah than at my own science ones. It was one day during a laboratory session towards the end of that year that I looked around and just knew that it was no longer for me. The thought of spending the rest of my life cooped up in a lab was too much to take. Breaking the news to my family was, I thought at the time, one of the hardest things I would ever have to do. But actually, there were even harder things ahead.
Looking back at the uncertainty I created in my life at that stage, I realise now how lucky I was to have got to where I am today. It could have been very, very different if I’d gone through with my first plan.
The origins of that plan probably go back to 8 May 1987, when British Special Forces killed eight PIRA (Provisional Irish Republican Army) volunteers at Loughgall, Co. Armagh. One of those killed on the day was Seamus Donnelly, aged just nineteen. He was a neighbour and first cousin of my uncle’s wife, who was from a staunchly Republican area and a staunchly Republican family. My family therefore felt close to what had happened. I could feel the anger in the room as we watched the news reports, and it created a hatred in me from an early age for ‘the Brits’. Needless to say, we only saw how these men had been butchered under an SAS shoot-to-kill policy, not how their plan to murder RUC officers had been sabotaged.
This wasn’t my family’s only link to Northern Ireland, either. Another uncle had married into a Republican family from Carrickmacross, and an aunt had married a man from Castleblaney in Co. Monaghan, near the border. Like most Irish families we were very close to our uncles, aunts and cousins, and through those connections with the North we grew up hearing many stories of British army raids on homes and of the oppression of the Catholic population in Northern Ireland.
My first plan, stemming from all this, was to join the IRA and the fight to get the British out of the North and reunite the country. I knew that was the idea, but I hadn’t actually put much thought into it. It was more that I found myself swept along by romantic notions of being a freedom fighter, fighting for justice against an evil oppressor, and this was the nearest such opportunity to home. The reality of actually blowing people up and taking someone’s life, and living with the consequences, hadn’t registered fully in my young mind.
Fortunately, on the day I was due to start the process of joining up, I bottled and didn’t go to the meeting. Luckily, too, I hadn’t told a soul what I had been planning, so I didn’t have any explaining to do.
Where did that leave me? I had left university and was working in a factory. Although the money was good and I had moved into a house with some friends, I wasn’t happy. The thoughts of settling down in a small town and spending the rest of my days in a mundane job began to frighten me. I longed for travel, adventure and a greater sense of purpose.
I decided to join the army.
2 THE QUEEN’S SHILLING
Word was out now that I was leaving home and moving to the UK. I had told everyone I had a job with British Telecom and most people took that at face value. The night before I was to take the train, there was a bit of a party in the local pub with family and friends. It was not the American wake of old, but it did involve lots of drink and generally trying to avoid sadness of all kinds.
I never liked goodbyes, myself, so the next morning I got up and left earlier than planned, slipping away quietly to start my new life.
*
Unfortunately, upon further investigation I realised that in the Irish army I would probably end up doing cash escorts, border duty or UN peacekeeping, and that was enough to put me off the idea.
Meanwhile, however, during the space of two weeks in February 1996 the IRA planted bombs at Canary Wharf, Charing Cross and Aldwych in London, killing three people, including one of their own members, and injuring countless others. Three of my sisters were now living in London, as well as many friends and relatives, and the bombing proved to be a major reality check for me. Worried for my sisters’ safety and finally realising the terrifying nature of all terrorism, the romantic idea I had of the Republican movement disintegrated.
My thoughts turned to doing something about it: to joining the British army and fighting against terrorism, the very terrorism that only a year earlier I was considering contributing to. Travel would be assured, I reasoned; adventure would be likely; and perhaps even the chance to do something good might come my way.
But how could I possibly do so, given my family background? Paradoxically, I realised that my father had actually served in the RAF for a number of years himself, and my mother had worked as a secretary for the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) before they moved back to Ireland. My grandfather, too, I’d heard, had served with the British army during World War II. Slightly ironic, I realised, but no one ever seemed to have had a problem with it, so why should they have a problem with me doing the same now?
Nonetheless, I didn’t tell anyone of my plans at first, and spent a good few months just thinking it through. Then in April of 1997 I wrote a letter to the British army careers office based in Belfast, enquiring how I should go about joining up. A month later, I received a reply. It turned out that joining up as a citizen of the Republic was going to be a slower process than I’d expected, but I sent off the application form and waited.
And waited. And waited.
About six months later, in October 1997, I got a letter instructing me to attend my first interview the following month at St Lucia Barracks in Omagh. The instructions were very precise: I was to get the bus from Dublin to Omagh, make my way to the Silverbirch Hotel, and check in under the name given to me in the letter. It all seemed a bit over the top to me, but I went along with it willingly.
The journey from Cork to Dublin and then on to Omagh was uneventful, but I did find myself suddenly more interested in the British army towers and patrols I saw as I crossed the border. I had never seen so many armed police and soldiers; the IRA must have been more active than I thought, I reasoned.
Somewhat self-consciously, I checked into the Silverbirch Hotel that evening. I was to be at the main door the following morning at 0900 hours to be picked up and taken to the interview. I was hungry, though, so I popped down to the hotel bar to grab a bite to eat. I ordered a steak and a pint