A Soldier’s Song With A Difference

Although the Northern Irish conflict has been the subject of countless books, many authors have become bogged down in an attempt to explain the major issues, and have thus neglected the individual testimonies which are often more revealing. The forthcoming publication of Brits Speak Out by Guildhall Press may go some way to restoring the balance.

This collection of reminiscences by British soldiers who served in the North often makes fascinating reading. Take, for example, Bob Harker, a former rifleman with the Light Infantry Regiment. During his tour of duty, a regimental colleague and a member of the IRA’s youth wing were shot dead on the same day.

“Afterwards,” relates Harker, “our colonel paid one of his very rare visits. It’s a moment that haunts me still. He strutted into the room: ‘Well, chaps, it’s a sad thing we have lost one of our soldiers today, but we had a good kill this morning’.”

Faced with such callousness, it is no surprise that Harker soon found himself questioning his own involvement. He is now a campaigner with various human rights groups.

Virtually every soldier quoted here has come to regret certain deeds they committed, and, to their credit, are frank about admitting it. Peter, of the Cheshire Regiment, is typical: “To any Derry Catholics reading – I’m sorry for having been so ignorant, and unleashing my frustration upon you all. Someday it’s going to be different.”

On a lighter note, Brits Speak Out also exposes the amateurishness and human frailties which so often undermine grandiose military plans. Bert Henshaw served with the Royal Green Jackets in Ardoyne in 1977. Low-level intelligence “missions” included knocking on doors at random and assessing the friendliness (or otherwise) of the inhabitants. If the human residents proved inscrutable, the soldiers were informed to check for the reaction of their pets. Bert takes up the story:

“I remember sending one rather dim soldier to knock on a door. The rifleman knocked, and, on seeing a dog, asked the occupier: ‘Does your dog like soldiers?’ The man answered: ‘Aye, we feed him two a day for breakfast’ and shut the door.”

Brits Speak Out is worth buying on the strength of such anecdotes alone. Less impressive is Blood on the Streets, due for publication in early September. An eye-witness account of Bloody Sunday, written by Italian photographer Fulvio Grimaldi, it first appeared in March 1972, but only 3,000 copies were printed.

Grimaldi’s account is handicapped by his limited grasp of English, and by his zealously propagandist tone. Throughout, British soldiers are referred to as “insects”. On hearing a commercial, urging recruitment to the British Army, Grimaldi comments, “Voice from a fat belly. Fed on innocent blood. For he is a vampire and needs good, warm, strong blood to survive.”

There is little doubt that what happened on Bloody Sunday was abhorrent and unjustifiable. To compare it to the Holocaust, however, as Grimaldi does in his foreword, is more likely to obscure the truth than illuminate it.

Blood on the Streets is not without its merits, however. The transcripts of conversations with victims’ relatives in the immediate aftermath of the killings are strikingly poignant. The book also boasts a preface by Peter McMullan, surely the only person to have been both a member of the British Parachute Regiment and, later, the Provisional IRA.

Ultimately, though, this account doesn’t come close to rivalling Don Mullan’s Eyewitness: Bloody Sunday as the definitive work on these events.

• Niall Stanage