HERO’S LETTER TO THE PM

When I served in the Brigade of Guards from 1968 to 1973, I saw terrible atrocities during my four tours in Northern Ireland on Operation Banner.

I witnessed the aftermath of IRA executions, tarring and feathering and knee-cappings.

I spent months patrolling bandit areas not knowing what was waiting for me. I witnessed men, women and children being blown to pieces just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time – or considered by the IRA an enemy of “the cause” or of Ireland.

I’ve been shot at, blown up, spat at, bricks thrown at me, petrol bombed and I also lost goods friends.

In 1972 I was at the Oxford Street Bus Depot when a bomb exploded. But for a heavy brick wall, I wouldn’t be here today. Not one minute before the explosion I was standing right next to the car bomb.

I had to pick up the remains of two really good friends who were blown to smithereens by the IRA on that “Bloody Friday”. The only way I could recognise one of them was from his radio, as it was only he and I who carried radios and I could see the wires sticking out of his chest.

His face was devoid of all recognition as a human being, let alone a friend.

I, with others, put him on a stretcher and his innards fell out of his back.

I was a young, 23-year-old man. The other friend killed in the same bomb was our young driver who had his head blown off. It was his 19th birthday the following day.

Believe me, these nightmares do not leave you – ever.

My last act in the province was also in 1972, when I was wounded while on patrol in the Markets area of Belfast.

One day it was a Friday, the next it was

Sunday and I was in the

Military Wing of

Musgrave Park

Hospital,

Belfast.

Remember

Musgrave Hospital? The very IRA you pardoned bombed it in 1991, killing two soldiers.

They bombed a hospital. For God’s sake, what sort of people have you pardoned? Even the Nazis didn’t deliberately bomb hospitals in WWII.

I, with thousands of others you sent to the “war” went through hell at times.

My trauma counselling has always consisted of, “Are you okay mate?” Like all the others who suffered, I just picked myself up and got on with it, because that’s what we did back then.

I was lucky but, 50 years on, I still suffer nightmares.

As my generation does, we just get on with it, with no help I might add, from you, my duly elected, caring Government.

I served and suffered for my Queen and Country, but I was proud to do so and I still am. For my Queen and my Country anyway, not my Government.

We could have won that “war” if you had let us, but you tied our hands behind our backs because you, as politicians, were frightened of criticism. That’s all you had to face, not bullets.

All British governments refused to call it a war because that held different political and legal implications.

Because of this failure we, the British soldier, had to play by different rules to those we were trained for in total warfare. Even if fired upon first, we first had to shout a warning to the aggressor before returning fire.

But now we have YOUR legal teams and prosecutors investigating old

soldiers in their 70s for such things as: “Did you shout a warning before you opened fire?”

The IRA did not apply this same rule when opening fire. They were lawless. If a member of the IRA was arrested they had to be treated as if they were just shoplifters – free lawyers, legal advice, privileges etc.

The IRA on the other hand, when they kidnapped a British soldier… well, they were ALL brutally executed after being tortured and violently beaten.

The IRA did not take prisoners. If you had classed it as a war, some IRA

members could have been tried under the Geneva Convention for being war criminals and executed. Remember that.

What makes this harder to deal with now, in 2018, is that we have a spineless Government who not only gave these murdering IRA terrorist thugs a pardon, but we are also unable to prosecute them because they got a “letter of pardon” signed by you, OUR Government.

So no matter what evidence is turned up, now or in the future, they can never be prosecuted for their “war crimes”.

But you now deem it necessary to start investigations into soldiers for “war

crimes” against the very IRA murderers and their supporters that you pardoned.

You’re doing this because they want “justice”. What do the IRA know about justice?

You should hang your heads in shame. It is time for the Prime Minister to put an end to this witch-hunt and pardon all British soldiers from any prosecution – just like was done for the IRA.

The consequences of failing to do so will be dire. I, and the thousands of other British veterans who served in Operation Banner, also want OUR letter of pardon.

‘I’ve been shot at, blown up, spat at and lost good friends’