Fishers of Men - The Gripping True Story of a British Undercover Agent in Northern Ireland. Rob Lewis
call signs be aware that Bravo Sierra [Sands] has left this location for higher echelons. Over.’ All the observation post radio operators acknowledged the transmission; it was now time to watch our fronts.
The rain had subsided and there was a definite chill in the air. The clouds had parted and I could make out the stars beginning to peek through. It was extremely quiet and cold. Bang! There was a huge explosion somewhere to our south, possibly about ten kilometres away; it was definitely in the Republic. One of the call signs at the most southern part of the physical feature we were covering sent a ‘contact’ report. This consisted of an appraisal of where they thought the explosion was, and after the operator had finished speaking the operations room asked all the various posts for their estimations on the same explosion. In turn each call sign came up on the radio and gave its appraisal. One call sign had not answered, and for a full ten minutes the operations officer was calling them for a reply. Eventually a sleepy, muffled, murmuring Liverpudlian accent answered one of the checks. The operations officer asked for a contact report on the explosion. After about two minutes’ deathly silence the same Scouse accent came back with the response, ‘Er, wor explosion’s that, like? Over.’ From that day forward the person concerned was known as ‘Tommy’, as in the deaf, dumb and blind kid.
Carrickmore always appeared to be quiet. Only once in a while would we come under pressure on patrol, usually from kids leaving school in the afternoon. They would hurl abuse at us as we walked down the road, and if we were feeling in the mood we would bait them – it was always good fun. After the various insults had been exchanged and maybe the odd brick thrown, everybody would lose interest and stroll away, the kids to their homes and us back to the police station. For a notorious village like this, with its alleged support for the republican cause, it was almost subdued most of the time. That was until Easter arrived, when the republican emotions of the local population took priority over normal life. Carrickmore came into its own at Easter, as I was to see for myself. I was part of a patrol tasked to stay a few hundred yards away from the martyrs’ remembrance garden just on the outskirts of the village. I honestly expected to see a few hundred people attend the rally at the most. At about half past three that afternoon we heard the sound of drums coming from the centre of the village as a procession made its way towards the site. At the head of the parade were fourteen men dressed in camouflage jackets, green trousers, black berets and masks. The front few marchers carried a selection of flags, including the starry plough, the Fianna flag and the inevitable Tricolour. The procession gathered at the remembrance garden. By now the crowd had swelled to about three thousand, quite a sight for this place. A speech was given by James Gibney, a high-ranking Sinn Féin official who was instrumental in making Bobby Sands the parliamentary candidate and eventual member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone. Then, towards the end of the rally, a masked person from the colour party moved forward to the rostrum and made a statement on behalf of the Provisional Army Council. He was flanked on either side by other masked men; they both held handguns but fired no shots. The information from our observation point was transmitted to our operations room, and they confirmed that we were to stand off and observe only; there was to be no attempt to recover the weapons. No fun and games that afternoon.
The parade dispersed, and after helping the RUC to get the traffic moving away from the area as quickly as possible we returned to the police station, which had by now become our second home. As we made our way to the canteen we were informed of another task we were to carry out later that afternoon. Two members of our close-observation troop (COT) had been in cover extremely close to the procession and would need to tag on to the end of one of our patrols to return to the police station undetected. They had been in a few feet away from the edge of the crowd and had taken some photographs of the gun-bearers, which were required for scrutiny by Special Branch on their return. Later that week two men from the local area were arrested and two handguns were recovered. A good result from our regiment’s covert activities. What I did discover during this period was the presence of a few specialised covert units operating in the Province. I had obviously heard of the Special Air Service (SAS) – their historic embassy siege at Princes Gate had taken place in May 1980 and had blown the anonymity they had managed to retain for many years. I had just walked back to my room in Hohne at about 7:30 p.m. from a late tea after rugby training to see the now famous balcony scenes transmitted live from Kensington. These men became the instant heroes of virtually every soldier in the British Army, myself included.
I knew the SAS was in the Province, but what they did and where they were located was only to become fully apparent some years later. My first and only contact with them during my two years in Omagh came about one evening while my troop was on QRF in camp. Billy, our troop sergeant, had been called over to the operations room for a briefing, and as he left we all kitted up ready for a potential crash-out. There was a call on the tannoy in the QRF room for us all to go across to the regimental intelligence cell. As our section entered the room I noticed a guy in lightweight combats, wearing an open baggy combat smock. At his side lay a rucksack with a large ‘Westminster’ radio inside. He had an earpiece running to the Bergen and he was speaking in whispered tones into the small microphone unit. His hair was slightly longer than a normal soldier’s, and leaning against his Bergen (backpack) was a foreign rifle, a Heckler & Koch HK53. As he leant forward to stand up I also noticed a holster containing what appeared to be a Browning pistol inside his smock. Fucking hell, he was one of them, and we were actually going to chat to him!
The briefing he gave was very short and basically consisted of him telling us that if an operation taking place in our immediate area was in need of a cordon, we were it. The cordon supplied by our men would give the required protection for his team to be extracted from the area code covertly, and would stop any civilians going into the incident area before the police were called in. We would get any further instructions should we be deployed. We were not informed of what kind of operation they were carrying out, or where it was being instigated. About twenty minutes later he whispered something into the small microphone, then stood up and said, ‘Thanks very much, gents, that’s it. Sorry to have interrupted your evening,’ and then left the room. Those twenty minutes had intrigued me. I had just turned twenty-one and had not even considered my future outside the turret of an armoured vehicle. That evening planted the seed for the future. Although I had no plans to join the SAS, it did occur to me that there might be close alternatives whose roles I was not fully aware of.
Many of my own regiment’s COT were always making noises about the unit that they referred to as ‘Fourteen’, and had been involved in carrying out tasks for the Tasking Co-ordination Group (TCG). I knew this particular set-up controlled the various covert operations within the Province, and also deployed the COTs for long-term surveillance tasks. Our COT lads had made various drawn-out references to how they had done this job for ‘Fourteen’ and that job for ‘Fourteen’. Once again, as with the SAS, this mystical bunch of people intrigued me, and I had the vague notion that it might be something I would like to find out more about.
I had walked into the ‘choggie’ shop in the camp one evening to grab a burger. This shop was like a greasy-spoon café run by Asian people whose families had served in the British Army for years. In the old days they did it as servants; these days they did it for vast profits and most drove around in top-of-the-range Mercedes and BMWs. In front of me was a familiar face. I knew he was another soldier, only he had long hair and was wearing scruffy civilian clothes. I recalled that he was a lad who had been a few years senior to me at the Apprentice College at Chepstow. We had played rugby together. He recognised me straight away, and we shook hands and sat down for a brew and a chat. I asked him what he was up to and what he was doing here dressed like that. He evaded the questions with a hint of embarrassment, but the more he evaded the more I persisted. I ask him directly whether he was involved with this ‘Fourteen’ bunch, and at this he appeared to get a little shirty and asked me what I knew about them. I innocently replied that I did not really know that much, but I was all ears if he had anything to tell me. He made a pretty feeble excuse for leaving after about ten minutes, but he told me that if I was really interested to keep an eye on normal regimental routine orders for a reference to ‘Special Duties’.
After two years our tour in Omagh eventually came to an end and we prepared to move to England after handing over to the incoming regiment. We were lucky enough to leave the Province without any loss of life; others