大象传媒

This story was given to Conor Garrett and transcribed by volunteer Mairead Gilheany

I came from the Shankill Road area and when war broke out, I was only 17 years old. Me and my friend Tom Boomer thought we should do something and joined the ARP as volunteer stretcher bearers. We were stationed at Casualty Clearing Station at Speers Place on the Shankill Road, during all the air raids in Belfast and worked very hard. It was dreadful 鈥� very hard work. We were on duty all night when there was an air raid. There were so many casualties that we were carrying stretchers - the living and the dead - all night. The station would get so full that we would have to take the dead bodies outside to get the living ones in.

It upset us so much that the Germans had done this, that a few months later we went down to Clifton Street and volunteered for the army, both of us joining the Royal Ulster Rifles, and were sent to Ballymena for initial training. 鈥淲e had the most amazing reception,鈥� said Alex. After being shown all the equipment we would use, the Sergeant gave us a rude awakening by reminding us that we were not heroes but men paid to murder others for the sum of 17 shillings and 6 a week.

It got worse 鈥� a couple of days later we had a medical where we got all sorts of inoculations and the doctor told us that some of the injections were quite severe and we would have to go back to the barrack room to rest. We went back to the barrack room and were sitting fiddling with our new kit when the sergeant appeared and bellowed at the top of his voice to 鈥済et up, get up, I want to see your full kit packed鈥� This meant uniforms, heavy gear, water bottles full of water, full equipment packed ready to carry with them. He made us go out onto the square. We had to run around and around the square until we collapsed. I saw two army captains come into the square and rush over, ordering the activity to stop. We were then told to go to their barrack room and rest. The sergeant was frogmarched off. We never saw him again. When I asked the new Sergeant what happened to him, I was told that he had been sent for a medical after the incident in the square, was declared insane and was now in an asylum.

The rest of army life was fairly good. We were delivered to the 70th Battalion of the Royal Ulster Rifles and were stationed at various places around Northern Ireland. There was a new rule came out in the army at that time, everybody had to sit a special test. It was an intelligence test, and I found the maths very easy. A few months later the Company Commander sent for me and said 鈥淚 have very good news for you, you did very well in the test and in fact got the second highest marks in the Battalion. The Colonel wants to see you about it.鈥� The Colonel did send for me and told me that despite having left school at 14, I got much higher marks than all his Officers. He then offered me a commission. I was actually worried about this as I thought that the Officers would have to pay for their uniforms and equipment out of their own money and I could never afford it, coming from a working class background. I tried to refuse the commission repeatedly. After a few months, the Colonel sent me to do another test which I passed. I was offered the Corps of Signals Unit and again tried to refuse.

Eventually I went off and did a training course and became an infantry signals instructor. I wasn鈥檛 aware where this all was leading. After two years during which I kept refusing, I was transferred to a regiment in Deal on the South Coast of England. I was put into an ordinary infantry platoon on coast defence. I was sent to meet a Colonel at a place of tight security. After a long chat, I was assured that if I took the Commission in the Royal Corps of Signals, I would be posted overseas and would see action immediately. At this, I jumped up and agreed to take the Commission. After a while I realised that the officer that I had met was Colonel Montgomery, the head of British Intelligence. After a while I began to get lectures from civilians. The first of these described how we were to behave when we were dropped behind enemy lines in Burma to recruit local spies. We were exhorted that we would have to agree to take a cyanide pill if we were in danger of being captured as we were under no account to be taken prisoner by the Japanese, because of the valuable information that we had which would be extracted from us.

I received very poor medical treatment when I needed a cartilage operation after an accident. An untrained medical student attempted to manipulate my leg over a two-month period and left me on crutches with an unfit for service category ranking called B5. Previously I had been in A category. This meant that I could not be sent to the Corps of Signals Unit. I had only two choices for a commission with this category and chose to take the Pioneer Corps where I would be working with the Royal Engineers building bridges and clearing minefields. The war was over and I was sent to Egypt and Palestine where there was civil unrest in both countries.

I wished I had stayed in the army for when I was due for release, I was asked to stay on. I came back to Belfast and got a job earning 拢200 a year 鈥� I would have been a lot better off staying in the army especially as I had enjoyed it so much

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