the rescue mission itself, which lasted less than thirty minutes, the official death toll for the rebels was twenty-eight killed and eighteen captured, including the leader, Foday Kallay. The assault force lost one man and had eleven others injured. However, the actual fighting continued long after the hostages had been freed, and according to the Paras and Special Forces we met after the attack, it was closer to 200 rebel forces killed and 150 captured. Clearly a message was being sent to other rebel groups that this was the British army in the field, not some rabble afraid to come after them. The message got through alright and it wasn’t long after Operation Barras that the RUF signed up to a peace accord.
On my return from Sierra Leone, and now a corporal, I had, thankfully, to wait only a few months before I was deployed again, this time to Oman on Operation Saif Sareea II, the largest deployment of British forces since the Falklands War. The entire regiment was there, with only a skeleton staff being left behind at Brawdy. I went as part of the jammer force and looked forward to another adventure in a place that was totally new to me.
We weren’t long in Oman when the attack on the Twin Towers in New York changed the security picture of the entire world. While it didn’t alter the training exercise that we were part of, it did put the wheels in motion for units of our regiment to deploy to Afghanistan. I wanted to be part of that and knew the LEWT was gearing up to be on the first assault. I headed to the tent that acted as 14th Signal’s HQ in the southern desert in Oman. I had only just entered when my squadron OC (Officer Commanding) spotted me.
‘Forget it, Hartnett, you’re not going. You’re needed here to look after the jammer vehicles. End of story.’
That was that. I would spend the next three months in Oman thinking mostly about my next posting and where I might go.
5 NORN IRON
We turned a corner and were suddenly met by an IRA checkpoint: four armed and masked men manning a makeshift barricade. Everything we had been taught said that I should reverse at speed while my passenger laid down covering fire.
I was having none of that. Instead, I approached the roadblock very confidently and lowered my window.
‘How a’ you?’ I enquired in my strongest Cork accent.
‘Where the fuck are you going?’ came the reply.
‘Just heading for Derry. Working on the Limavady by-pass,’ I replied very casually. The poor fella had no idea how to react and simply looked over at the instructor for directions. The instructor made his way to the checkpoint.
‘What are you playing at, Seán?’ he yelled, ‘that’s not how we practised it. You’d be dead by now.’ My reply was calm and measured.
‘I don’t think so. I have the right accent and a plausible story; much better than trying to reverse out of here or get involved in a firefight. I can talk the talk about anything they can bring up and get away with it.’ He stared at me for a couple of seconds, growled ‘Your funeral’, and walked off.
*
I was due a new posting that November and on my return from Oman I decided I’d like to go to Northern Ireland. It wasn’t that I’d had enough of overseas deployments and wanted to go home for good. Far from it. But I had just bought my first home in Norfolk and the extra money and additional leave would be welcome for the next few years. I also felt it was time to play my part in the situation ‘at home’.
Two of my fellow techs had already been posted to a unit called JCU-NI. Although at that point I hadn’t heard of JCUNI, I was familiar with names like FRU (Force Research Unit), 14 Intelligence Company and even The Det, from the many books I had read about collusion, death squads and covert operations in Northern Ireland. These somewhat shadowy bodies even made the headlines from time to time in the Irish media, mixed with the stories of British army units butchering IRA active service units and vice versa that we all heard from relatives up North. JCU-NI sounded interesting, and at least there would be a few friendly faces there to show me the ropes. The only thing I had heard from my mates that were already there was that it involved no uniform or rank to speak of, and there was additional pay, which all sounded good to me.
I approached the foreman of signals (FoS) about the plan.
‘Are you joking, Hartnett? With your background? Whatever about one of the other Northern Ireland units, you haven’t a chance in hell of being posted to JCU-NI, so put the idea out of your head!’ The reaction and answer pissed me off. I was never one to be told I couldn’t do something, so I decided to go over his head to the squadron OC, a major from Northern Ireland who I had served with in Sierra Leone. I chose the high-stakes approach and gave him an ultimatum: JCU-NI or I leave.
He nearly let me leave, I sensed, but at the time the army was in desperate need of experienced technicians, so after some heated discussion, he caved. ‘All right, JCU-NI it is. They are going to have fucking kittens when you rock up, Hartnett.’
There was still no guarantee that I would get JCU-NI. That would be down to some clerk at manning and records in Glasgow. But sure enough, they came up trumps, and I was off.
I landed in Belfast City Airport on 16 November 2001, a fully trained, experienced and decorated British soldier since the last time I was there. I was headed for Thiepval Barracks, the HQ of JCU-NI in Lisburn, Co. Antrim. There I would hook up with two other Royal Signals technicians for initial training
I was met by Dave, my old mate from 14th Signal Regiment. He was leaning against his car and had a big cheesy grin on his face. I struggled a little to open the car door because of the weight of it and threw Dave a questioning glance. He didn’t seem to notice. As we drove off, he took a pistol from his waistband and placed it in the pocket of the driver’s door, as if for easier access.
‘So, what’s the story with this place, Dave? No one is telling me anything, other than it’s a great posting.’
He laughed: ‘You’ll find out soon enough, mate.’ The only thing I got from him was that once initial training was completed, we were each to be sent to a different section – Cameras, Radios or something called ‘North Det’. The decision on where we would end up was yet to be made, or so we were told.
As we made our way from the airport to the barracks, he pointed out various sites where JCU-NI had ‘assets’ located; places like New Lodge, the Divis Flats, the Royal Victoria Hospital, Castlereagh police station, and Dunmurry. I actually had no idea what ‘assets’ he was talking about but nodded away just the same. We arrived at Thiepval where he drove me round to a series of Portakabins located at the far side of the base, well away from all the other accommodation blocks. Finally, he pointed to one in particular: ‘This one’s yours, mate. But don’t get too comfortable. You might not be staying long!’
After I got cleaned up, we took a walk over to the tech workshops, located in a secure compound surrounded by razor-topped fences and high gates. The reinforced door had an electronic keypad and was monitored, like the rest of the compound, by CCTV cameras. Once inside, Dave showed me into an office where he introduced me to Bob, the FoS, and Andy from workshops. Bob FoS was first to speak: ‘Seán, good to meet you.’ I instantly recognised his particular Belfast accent and my first thought was, oh fuck, this could be a problem! However, despite Bob’s staunch Loyalist upbringing, he wasn’t the bigot in the room. Andy Workshops was all smiles and full of good-humoured banter, but there was something I didn’t trust about him and I soon learned that he had more faces than Big Ben.
It was
