“Nobody got help for things like that back then; everyone would have been back to work the next day.”

Where were you born?

Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK.

What did your parents/siblings think about you joining the service?

My mum wasn’t too happy. My dad said, “Go ahead.” My brother was in the army reserves. At the time, lots of things were happening, so it was hard for my mum, especially after the explosion. She heard about it and knew I was out. I think she would have been happier if I wasn’t in the army.

What kind of job did you hold before entering the military?

Carpet Fitter. My uncle was in the business, and he brought me in. It was nice to work with someone that you know, and I am proud of it.

Can you tell us when you went to the military? Did you volunteer?

In 1977. I volunteered; it was my decision. Where I lived, across the road, there was a girl and her family who owned a hotel. It got blown up, 15 people were killed, and I knew at least three of them: shock, anger, no warning, this fucked me up inside. I felt like “I’ve got to do something here” – not like going out to shoot everybody, but I have to do my best. Then I decided to tell my uncle how I felt, and he said “Mike, it’s up to you”.

What and who did you leave behind?

The UDR was different from the army in England, Scotland and Wales. The UDR was part-time, so when you finished your “shift”, you went home. You were constantly looking over your shoulder, thinking every day that they were watching you. You were constantly on edge, some people.

Witness question: So you were living in the community?

Yes, You had to be two people at once; it was hard.

What type of training or schooling did you have?

I left school at 15. I had the opportunity to play professional football, but I was not physically ready.

What was the most vivid memory of your service and your worst?

My best memory was getting promoted to corporal. My worst was the bomb I was in. It did not deter me; you had never heard about PTSD then. When I think back now, we did not come out of it, and we clammed up, and nobody spoke about it. You had friends, but you didn’t talk about it. After that, the young fellas on the streets calling us names, throwing stones at us… changed my way of thinking. Before, we just brushed it off; we were young ones. I’m not saying I was right to do what I did, but I can understand why. I’m glad I didn’t go in too heavily, but there were times when I would say, “Don’t talk to me like that, and don’t you dare disrespect me.”

What was your first assignment after your training?

Oh gosh! I’ll tell you my first assignment was – do you know Newcastle? Just before you get to Dundrum, there is a side road; this road takes you to Castlewellan. This was our main area. In Castlewellan, we spent every night watching for people against us. On my first day in Castlewellan, we had to lie in the grass all night, keeping eyes in case somebody acted stupid. This was my first assignment; I will never forget it.

What was the hardest part of the military lifestyle for you to adopt, and why do you think it was?

I can’t say that I didn’t like the lifestyle. I felt proud. I got a reward for how I dressed, which made me feel accomplished. That was why, not long after, I received my strip. They were all pleased with the way I dressed and operated. I did not have fear.

Witness question: Did you get enough sleep?

Sleep was hard…we were, sometimes, three days in a row, you didn’t take the uniform off. You have to go to bed with the uniform on, so if something happens at night, you grab your rifle and are out in three or four minutes; that was hard! The youngest ones found this hard to adapt to; you know, why do you wake me up at this time?? I can understand that, it was normal, some couldn’t handle it, and some ran away. You have to be on your toes…you have to protect your people, and it was not easy.

What was the easiest part of the military lifestyle? 

Friendship. We were like a football team, we were stuck together. We tried to pass it on to the younger ones, but from my point of view, some of the youngest went out on duty too quickly; they weren’t ready for it. When we were sent out to Newry, one of them jumped over the hedge, and one tried to run away. You have to take them aside, be tough on them, and say, “Look, you are my back, and I have to be able to depend on you”. You have to go through it with them, some took it on board, others did not. It was a mixture of things; you had to be strong and show them what to be like; it was not like an ordinary job, quite different, and it was not easy.

Where did you serve?

Mostly in Castlewellan, so mostly in County Down. What happened was that there were seven or eight battalions, and we were all split over two areas, so we didn’t encroach. There was a line on the map, and when you reached that, you had to return. Everybody thought Newcastle was a lovely place…scenery, beaches, beautiful golf course, lovely hotels, caravan park, very scenic…but it was like: bad boys, policemen killed, we were brought there to lay the law down. Some of them would look at you and signal that they recognized you, and if they saw you without the uniform, they would remember who you were. 

How did your combat/wartime change you? 

I think I became…I changed from being a person who got on well with everyone, but that changed because the people I was dealing with were spitting in my face or calling me names: ”I’ll get you”, or “I know who you are”. You were dealing with that fear, and you have to keep it down. It was not easy. We rarely talked about it; we knew it was there, but we did not discuss it unless it was for the benefit of the younger ones. We brought them to one side and told them to stick with us; one in front, one at the back…but it’s hard to explain. It was like getting back at 11:30 at night, straight to getting drunk to deal with it. It was just mental. It was not easy.

How did you stay in contact with family and friends?

Well, I got home because we were only there during the week. If you did 48 hours on, you got 48 hours off. It never affected my dad, who wouldn’t talk to me about it. My mother was nervous, and she never discussed it with me.

Witness question: Did a lot of your friends join?

Oh aye! On our road, there were about ten of us. We were in a unit of our own in the cull de sac; we were like a band of brothers.

What was the best part of the service experience?

First of all, I enjoyed it. It came to me very easily. I did not suffer or fear; I knew that it could happen at any time, but I did not let it get hold of me. That helped me a lot. I tried most of the time not to let it get to me. When we were in the bad areas and getting pulled by guys, I would say, “What’s your problem? Why do you spit at me? Why don’t you like my uniform?”. They did not want us there, and they did not like us.

Witness Question: Do you think anything about the military brought you benefit, that it was good in some way?

Yes, I think if you’re strong enough to understand and obey the orders, you will feel proud of yourself, keep your control, walk away and go with the flow. You have got to love to teach people; you have got to learn that it is not a game…that the minute you put a uniform on, you are a target, not like the silly games when you were young and pretended to shoot someone, this is real. You have to pick it up very quickly. I would like to think that I gave my best, I tried my best for the younger ones. Now, I was only 21 or 22 years old myself, I had never expected to be doing anything like that. 

Do you recall any particular event?

In Castlewellan…they planted a bomb in the main water supply that comes from the Mourne Mountains, Slieve Donard, where the main pipe was. In the middle of the road, they dug it up, put the bomb in, and covered it all over again, and they sat on top of the hill. There was an army Land Rover in the middle of the road…the next minute, they were 30 feet in the air, and your brain’s going to ….. You could not talk; your mind could not react. Nobody got help for things like that back then; everyone would have been back to work the next day. Nobody talked about it…what would we say? We are lucky, and they weren’t? Instead, we started thinking, “We’re gonna get these people that got our friends,”, and then we started to be…not brutal but…I remember one night in the bar; we were sent in to get the names and addresses of suspicious people. I was carrying my rifle with a sling around my wrist to attach it. My sling strap fell off, so I was only holding the rifle. I said to a guy, “What’s your name?”. He looked me up and down and then laughed and grabbed the rifle. I thought, shit, and grabbed it back and slapped him in the face with it. The police were called, I was taken to the barracks, and eventually, it got sorted out; there was no charge or anything against me. I didn’t get told off, but I knew I had changed…I was not the same – if anybody said anything to me, I would react much stronger, and I started picking fights. 

Do you recall the last day of the service?

It was what we expected; we knew the UDR was changing form; you could say, in a way, we were ready for it. My mind was already thinking of moving to South Africa, what would it be like? We have relatives over there, and I didn’t think the IRA would follow me all the way to South Africa! Ha Ha. I’d enjoyed every minute, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Obviously, I didn’t enjoy my friends getting killed, and I know it changed your outlook in life; I wasn’t the same Mike. I knew what was going on in Northern Ireland and also the feeling that I didn’t want to be part of it anymore; there was no controlling it. Most of the others were in the same boat, thinking we were a happy family and then saying, “Bye-bye”. I know some who committed suicide after leaving, some others drank themselves to death, and some others are doing very well in life. I took to drinking as an escape… the guilt, like you survived and they did not. I’m not a psychologist, so I can’t explain how it works. I can only tell you what happened to me and the others. If I ever see UDR men now, you get to chatting, and it always ends with talking about the war. We bring it up over and over again…What can you do?

Did you come home?

We went to South Africa. Others from here were moving abroad because they were most fearful when wearing civilian clothes. If you got recognized as a soldier, you lived all your life thinking about that; you imagine somebody looking across the road, seeing your face, and recognizing that you were in the UDR. That’s why you had to check under your car for bombs daily. So, I just thought, I don’t want to get through life always looking over my shoulder.

Was going to South Africa an escape from what happened in Northern Ireland?

I had read about South Africa. My uncle lived out there; he kept in touch with me, and I thought this could be something really nice. But there was apartheid. We were going to a country where we had no idea what apartheid meant. They were down there, and we were up here. It took a while to get used to that. But I would say we treated them well because that’s how we were raised.

Witness question: when you saw white against black people, did it trigger any thoughts of parallels about the war in N.I.?

This is a good question; I’ve thought to myself about that…believe it or not, I did ask myself. I didn’t go out there and turn out like my boss…We had a black man working for us; I had a loaf of bread and some cheese for his birthday. My boss found out, and he went outside and threw the bread and cheese in the bin. Because I did that, a white man helped a black man. Northern Ireland is still the same, but one minute, civil war and the next minute, it’s finished. Why did we go through all that? That’s how I think, I would not let my granddaughter grow up in that environment. Thank God it’s over! No more killing and that is how I feel at the moment. My days are done, I don’t mind, I am not ashamed of it, I did not do anything, I did not set out to harm anybody. I took each crisis and dealt with it how I felt; I could not fix it for anybody else. But as much as I say to myself that I didn’t do anything, we were an army, not a bunch of toy soldiers; someone is gonna do something badly. So I don’t have regrets, and I know most of my friends feel the same; I know most of my friends speak the way I do.

How did you adjust to civilian life?

Hard because you can’t just lie in bed and relax; you get up when the siren goes, and if someone sees you’re still in bed, they shout, “Get up! Get up!”. They will give an order, and you obey. If you are out on patrol and the corporal says, “Open fire!” then you open fire; there’s no option not to shoot the gun. We were UDR first and then everything else. I feel sorry about the family because they didn’t understand what you were putting them through at the time. I put my wife through quite a lot. Everybody is different in the way they handle it. When you returned to the barracks, it was straight to the mess for a beer. As soon as the patrol was over, you put your rifle in your locker, headed towards the mess to get a couple of pints with your mates, and started coming down: I survived. Was this right? Was it wrong? I don’t know; nobody told me it was wrong…nobody told me it was right. When I think back, the drinking created harmony with your fellows. But it also… you started to be dependent on alcohol to wind down…I don’t know what to say….it was trying to make a good place in a bad place. I did not have any fear; you didn’t worry if the siren went off, but your mind did completely go back to normal…for what I did, I’ll apologize for the rest of my life.

Is it your fault?

I am not saying that… I miss my family; I know the UDR has a part to play in this, but they don’t know that, and I don’t understand it either. You know, I had many interviews talking to me about PTSD, doctors trying to get inside my mind. There are times when I don’t want them in there. I don’t want to talk about it; they are trying to remind me, trying to get deeper, saying, ‘It’s over’, but I can’t move on because it’s stuck in my head. I am 68 years old; it‘s not going away now.

Is there anything else that you would like to share about?

What I said to you today is probably the most I’ve ever told anyone. Yeah, you got the deepest out of me today. I haven’t been as open with other people: I think before I speak, there were times when I just walked away. I still think much about what I have done, especially the young lad. These are memories that will never go away. You know I pulled him out of the water; it’s a horrible thing. It’s like something you see in the movies, and I felt guilty: Did I kill him? Or did they kill him? Did I kill because I could not get him out? I don’t know; I only know that I tried to get him out. What I saw at the time I was in shock; your brain is like everything in slow motion. I think over the years, my brain has fractured, but it stays there, and I don’t think I will lose it. I have got to live with it. I don’t talk to anyone about it, apart from yourself. I don’t want to talk to people about the war. You see men with their UDR tattoos – when they start to talk, I walk off. I am not happy with the way things worked out, but I have to live with what I have got, and that’s it. 

Are you doing something so as not to think about it?

I do my exercise bike and weights: I have done 150 a day, and I want to get 250 by the end of the month. I have not got strength because I have not been out and about. Kerrie took me down to Shankill; I thought I would faint. I didn’t say anything to her, but my legs were like jelly. I have to be very careful.