Hi, my name's Kevin Hicks, welcome to my Youtube channel the History Squad. Today’s video is
Belfast 1979 stories from the troubles. You see I've been asked by a few of my
subscribers if I could relate to you some of my war stories, well I've got a couple here
right from the heart of the troubles of Northern Ireland when I was just a young soldier.
So perhaps I want to explain, before I get into my stories, the troubles, the division of Ireland
yeah? The north from the south. It's an incredible story, it's very complicated but we ended up with
the six counties of ulster being separated from the free state of Ireland yeah? As far as I'm
concerned should have been left as one but hey that's just Kevin. But what it meant was
you had such a division in the north of Ireland, Catholics, Protestants or Protestants, Catholics.
The majority of people got on fine but there were terrorist organizations, there were mistakes made
by the local government, by the government of Britain, by everybody and it led to what we call
the troubles, which was almost open warfare on the streets of Northern Ireland. People being burned
out of their houses, gunned down, bombed, blown to pieces, it was just hellish. And the British army
was put in right in the middle to keep them apart and sometimes I felt that everybody hated us,
everybody wanted to kill us and then you'd have some sweet old lady who would want to give you
a cup of tea, a slice of apple pie. I often say, when people say to me you know what was Northern
Ireland like? I say it left a stain on my soul because you can't get your head around it. Lovely
lovely Irish people bent on killing each other and we were there to try and stop it.
So Belfast 1979, it should be Belfast 1979 stroke 1980 because I was there for the two years. No
names, no pack drills, I'll just tell you what happened. I used to volunteer sometimes for extra
jobs because one of the problems of patrolling the streets of Belfast or any other part of the
province of Northern Ireland back in the troubles was boredom, complacency, and I used to get bored.
So I would volunteer. So I volunteered to go on a bit of an intelligence gathering mission.
We got to look at a certain address and make note of who was coming or going. We were in,
shall we say, enemy territory so it was quite dangerous but there was a lot of us soldiers
and we've taken up position would you believe in a cemetery, a graveyard. Typical isn't it,
so we're all camouflaged up and we've got our war paint on and goodness knows what and we
infiltrate and we'll go to ground and then we set up our covert operation shall we say.
It was nice the evening, really wasn't that cold and everybody was relaxed except for the
fact of course we were in enemy territory and I've been told you can go and take a
break just go into the cemetery a little bit deeper have a lie down. So we couldn't smoke,
we couldn't drink or anything like that, we were totally covert and I lay back on a grave
which just so happened to have an open book for the headstone. So I rested my head on there,
muttering an apology to the people who were in the grave you know,
and I'm right next to the one side of the cemetery and all of a sudden a light I am totally floodlit
and I'm going uh oh dear oh dear oh dear my radio earpiece you know what's going on what's going
on and when I moved my eyes to the left I could see a lady in an apartment just overlooking the
cemetery had opened up her main curtains and the floodlight was in fact the light from her house.
So in no time at all I've got a sergeant that's come down he's sidled up next to me he's gone
okay, all right then, just keep an eye on it. So I'm keeping an eye on it when the woman
starts to dance and then I realize that the sergeant hasn't left and I'm looking up and
this woman's dancing. She's taking off her jacket she's dancing around. Now I don't know,
she may have been there to divert our attention, she perhaps didn't even know we were there,
hey yeah who would expect it? So she's dancing away and then I realized that she's dancing away
getting ready for bed because her clothes are coming off and before I know it the sergeant he's
there, so is the staff sergeant, so is the other corporal, so is the lance corporal and uh she's
really having a great time this woman. And I give her my thanks because when she'd finally finished,
she's dancing around she then closed the curtains, darkness and in that darkness
I think there were about 18 soldiers all around. We'd left just two guys to look
at the address we were supposed to be watching and uh we filtered out got back to base and we're all
kind of giggling you know because hey wow that was fun wasn't it. And we get back to our intelligence
people and we say you know we were there and they went, oh sorry we sent you to the wrong address.
So this is my second little kind of funny story I suppose. We say funny but it was actually deadly.
We had been put into an area to um possibly engage the enemy should we say yeah?My job was to be in
a certain location, which we'd already done a recce on, a reconnaissance, and I'm in a bush.
Um there's plenty of room under this bush and I'm crouching down and my rifle is resting looking at
a particular area. It's very tense because a lot of soldiers had been killed recently in my tour
and also a lot of civilians had lost their lives with various murders and whatnot so it was very,
very serious. And of course we're in the heart of an area that hated the British yeah in Belfast.
And I've settled down and I'm quite comfortable, but I'm camouflaged up yeah and all of a sudden
I hear voices coming and I'm thinking oh what am I going to do? Now my rifle was
pointing that way, so I drew my pistol yeah they were all loaded ready to go
so I just basically froze. They couldn't see me from the outside I was well covered up
but I can see out of the bush and it's a young couple by the lamp light of the
street I can see this young courting couple, probably mid to late teens bless them, and
they come towards my bush and I'm thinking why they coming towards my bush? Then they get in my
bush. Never occurred to me that wasn't my bush, it was their bush and they'd probably been coming to
their bush for a long time because they were very comfortable in their bush until he laid the young
lady's head down and it just caught the top of my boot. As she put her head down she didn't notice
I'm there with a pistol and a rifle and a face that's all camouflaged up.
They're kissing and cuddling, they're getting down to what young courting couples do
if you follow my drift and I'm thinking how am I going to get out of this because there's going
to be screaming there's going to be this, and as I look down the young lady's eyes met mine.
She must have been terrified. I was terrified, she was terrified,
he was oblivious as to what's going on. She could see I had a pistol, she could see I had a rifle
so what I did with my little finger I went…
and I simply ran.
I've often wondered did they carry on did they stop
was she made pregnant we'll never know the truth. Just one more of the stories of Kevin
so I hope you've enjoyed our little film well if you liked it thumbs up please
those of you who are already a subscriber hey thanks a bunch. If you're not a subscriber,
hey ding the bell, join in and have some fun with history. Bye for now.