Mad Dog - They Shot Me in the Head, They Gave Me Cyanide and They Stabbed Me, But I'm Still Standing. Johnny Adair
Mad Dog - They Shot Me in the Head, They Gave Me Cyanide and They Stabbed Me, But I'm Still Standing
between a Protestant and a Catholic. I knew also that it was the Catholics who had been forced out of their homes before they were torched. What I didn’t know was why.
I remember hearing people say, ‘The Taigs have been burned out,’ and I’m pretty sure that was the first time that I thought Catholics must be bad people. After that week of violence, everything changed for everyone, and soon it became the norm for us to hate them and them to hate us without question.
As I grew up, the differences between Protestants and Catholics became more extreme and increasingly violent. Our house was only a few hundred yards from the staunchly Republican Ardoyne area, on the front line, where the tension was worst and the conflict most ferocious.
Most nights, from my bed in the attic of the house, I could hear gun battles raging between the British troops and the IRA. My brother Archie and I would listen to the crack of automatic fire and try to work out what was going on. It was frightening and exciting at the same time. I would look out of the window and see the troops, crouching behind protective barriers, open fire, then take cover as their targets returned the attack. This wasn’t watching a film or playing with Action Man: it was right on your doorstep and better than any movie you were ever going to see.
When the gun battles really kicked off anyone who was outside was hauled back into the house. All the lights would be turned out and all the family would huddle together in the same room. The scream of the sirens and violent explosions meant that you did what you were told. There was always a risk that a stray bullet might get you, or that armed men might come crashing through the front door. It was so bad that we had to creep about hunched down to get from room to room. Despite the danger – which was the same for every family – you never wanted to miss out on any of the action. Whenever possible, someone would be stationed at the window and give us a running commentary.
The morning after a big battle was always something to look forward to. At first light, I would get up and scour the streets for trophies. Thousands of spent cartridges would be strewn everywhere, and the makeshift shelters that the combatants had used would be peppered with bullet holes. My pals and I would inspect the scarred stone and wonder how anyone had managed to make it through the night.
After a night’s trouble, we would also look for bullet heads that weren’t damaged, stick them in a glass of Coke to shine them up and put a hook on them so we could wear them on a chain.
The soldiers were on the streets all the time and any chance I got I would pester them. Most of the time they were happy to show you their guns, take out the magazine full of bullets and let you have a look. They were armed with SLRs loaded with huge brass 7.62mm bullets.
As well as the army, the Tartan Gangs would be roaming the streets. They were shaven-headed teenage Loyalists who hung around on street corners wearing Wrangler jackets and stonewashed jeans with tartan patches, Ulster badges or pictures of King Billy sewn on to them to make sure everyone knew what they were about. They weren’t paramilitaries, just teenagers out looking for a fight with Catholic lads. I would watch them getting ready for a fight, or winding up the opposition and think to myself, I want a bit of that action.
I was so in awe of the gangs that I would do everything I could to look the same. They were happy to get us involved at the age of ten, or sometimes even younger. At first, we did simple things, like tipping them off when a car would be coming out of a Catholic area so they could ambush it. There was no thought about who was driving the car; it had come out of a Catholic area so it was good enough to be targeted. They would lie in wait until the word was given the motor was on its way, then they would spring from their boltholes into action, peppering it with stones, bottles, anything they could get their hands on.
From there you graduated to the next level: making a petrol bomb. They taught us to get our hands on a large milk bottle, a small amount of petrol, a bit of sugar and a rag, and away we went. Whatever they wanted, sourcing missiles to be thrown or dragging petrol bombs down to the barriers, I was glad to do it. There were thousands of kids on both sides of the peace line who were delighted to get their hands dirty. It was a real buzz and we were proud to be helping the paramilitaries. Many boys want to be soldiers when they grow up. I wanted to be like the uniformed paramilitaries who roamed the streets to protect our community.
It was a war zone, a constant war zone. Almost every night the Tartan Gangs would gather at the top of our street, ready to cause mayhem. All I wanted to do was get stuck in. I was only a kid, but the feeling of running with hundreds of men spoiling for a fight was something else.
When the police or the army turned up to try to keep the sides apart we would just give them a hard time for as long as we could get away with it. Nothing beat getting close to an army vehicle, waiting until the last moment and then throwing your stone inside it as hard as you could. Hundreds of stones would be raining down on the vehicle, but, if you thought one was yours, it made your night.
It was also good to keep in with the UDA guys. As well as looking after the community, they also policed it. I remember wanting to help a guy called Kenny Slavin when I saw him tied to a lamppost. His fingers had been broken, his hands were secured behind his back and he was plastered in blue gloss paint. I used to hang about with his brother and I was about to help him but the UDA men who were standing near by growled at me that he was a housebreaker and sent me on my way.
One of the UDA guys I looked up to was Norman McGrath. I knew him because he lived on Cunningsby Street, round the corner from our house, and I would see him every now and then when I was hanging about on street corners with my friends. Norman was a teenager and the kind of bloke I respected as a role model. He was one of the guys who manned the barricades and defended us against whatever the other side were doing.
In 1971, Norman was gunned down in the street by Republicans who opened fire on him from a passing car. If he had been shot dead I doubt I would have remembered him: he would have been mentioned in passing as the latest man killed. But Norman survived, though he had to have his leg amputated. Before long he was back on the streets, and to me this made him a hero. The IRA had tried to kill him but failed. Norman, the guy who gave me a few pennies to go to the shops with, had taken a bullet for me.
On 11 June the following year, still only 18, Norman was shot dead by British soldiers on Manor Street. There was always trouble at this notorious flashpoint which had Protestants at one end and Catholics at the other. The night Norman was shot, one of the fiercest gun battles took place in Oldpark. At the time locals said he wasn’t armed when two soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Wales opened fire on him from close range. But the RUC claimed to have found seven 7.62mm bullet cases close to his body. Experts also told an inquest they couldn’t rule out that Norman had fired a gun during the rioting, because of the amount of residue on his cuffs.
What happened to Norman made no difference to our attitude. Nor did the shooting of a pal as we rioted as kids. I was hanging about on Manor Street one evening with my best friend Billy Rea, waiting for trouble to start. The two sides were locked in a face-off, waiting to see who would make the first move. There was the usual trading of insults and missiles. Then, out of nowhere, a gunman appeared. I remember him clearly because he wasn’t wearing a hood or making any effort to disguise who he was. He opened fire with a bolt-action rifle. Seeing the weapon and then hearing the bang as he let off a round scared us. Suddenly it was more than just throwing missiles. There was real danger and it was right in front of us.
We dashed for the safety of our end of the street. I was running for my life, with Billy in front of me. The next thing I knew he fell to the ground, almost in slow motion. He had been hit in the foot. My mate was screaming at me, ‘I’ve been shot! I’ve been shot!’ That was the danger of getting involved, but I still loved it. For me, the constant threat of serious consequences was far outweighed by the thrill of being out on the street seeing some action.
It was around that time that a feeling of bitterness started to grow in me. Seeing my community attacked and people getting killed made sure it kept eating away at me. There wasn’t a lot my parents could do to stop me getting involved, not least because it was right on your doorstep. It wasn’t as if I was getting on a bus and travelling miles to get involved in trouble. It was just there, all the time.
Everyone