Looking Up: Army dreamers

The ups, downs, challenges and triumphs of a prison leaver’s journey

Stan ‘Dandy Liver’ McComb lifted two prison bags into his old van, the large HMP logo barely concealing the stack of ancient legal documents inside. Still security tagged, the bags bulged like dismembered bodies, off to a shallow grave. Jason, Overcourt Probation Hostel’s gardener and former resident, helped with a trolley.

‘So… going home at last, Stan.’

‘Aye… Irish passport all sorted, taking the overnight Stranraer ferry to Belfast.’

‘Owens will be glad.’

‘Ah… he’s not so bad. He took our April Fool’s joke pretty well, for an ex-prison governor!’ Stan laughed, his horsey “haw haw haw!” reminding Jason of when he’d first encountered Stan, in Whitemoor block years before.

Jason grinned. Their joke had made it onto Channel Four News, with the fake Imam ‘Mr. Miswak’ an instant celebrity, sheepishly explaining the mock Iranian ‘terror recruitment camp’ was all his own idea, so nobody at the hostel would get into trouble. The meticulous scheming it had actually taken Stan to accomplish put the real Gulf War planning to shame.

‘It won’t be the same without you here, Stan.’

‘You can always contact me through Big Mick, come and visit any time, once I’m settled.’

Jason lifted a bag through the van’s side door, a wave of floral fragrance flooding out. A large wreath of roses, lilies and poppies sat on the passenger seat, bizarrely out of place, kept in place by the seat belt. Clearly a funeral wreath, Jason decided not to enquire further.

‘Well, Stan… good luck.’

Stan nodded, waved from the cab, his eyes already on the long road home.

Forty miles up the M6, Stan turned right, heading east, diverting from the ferry route, heading inland. Heavy traffic gave way to tractors, cyclists, then army lorries, as he approached Catterick Barracks and its associated weapons stores, bunker-like anonymous encampments, surrounded by razor wire and cameras, not unlike prisons. After more tortuous miles, he reached the site of his botched arms theft, sixteen years before.

There was no memorial, no flowers, no reminder at all of the carnage Stan had been party to. 

There’d been three of them- Stan, Liam and ‘Dingus’, the two young ‘recruits’ eager to do their bit for the Irish cause, instructed by their IRA commanders to hijack an Army van known to be transporting military hardware, and smuggle the weapons back to Northern Ireland for their own splinter-group. Stan, older and more experienced with technical provisions, had kitted out a white BMW with fake police badges and lights, Liam and Dingus dressed in identical fake police tactical uniforms, though their guns were very real.

The hijacking was remarkably easy, Liam waving down the van at an improvised ‘road block’ at an isolated crossroads, the two squaddies giving up without a fight, left zip-tied at the roadside as Liam and Dingus raced away in the army van, Stan close behind in the BMW. The same road Stan now drove down, hands shaking, sweat pooling down his back. They’d raced north along a pre-set route, their swap-vehicles several miles away, until they reached the A66, where Liam had flown round the bend at breakneck speed into an oncoming minibus. The van’s stock of mines had, in spite of supposedly having no detonators, exploded on impact, tearing both vehicles and occupants to pieces, a Citroën Hatchback ploughing into the wreckage, a flaming ball of tangled metal.

Stan, thirty yards behind, missed the initial blast, screeching to a halt, leaping into the fireball, dragging out injured car passengers as further explosions went off around him, shrapnel gouging holes in his legs and back. He’d been arrested in hospital the next day, still dressed in his fake police uniform, when his real identity was discovered. At the inquest, the government denied they knew about the hijack in advance, and had booby-trapped the army van, hoping only to kill the terrorists, but the way the Soldiers had just given up at the roadblock had made Stan wonder ever since. Conspiracy, cock-up, or both, he would never know. 

Stan pulled up near a small Caravan Park, almost exactly where he’d been that terrible day. He took his wreath, walking awkwardly to the junction ahead, looking left, to where a large circle of tarmac marred the straight road, the only remaining sign of the crater torn in the earth. There was no memorial, no flowers, no reminder at all of the carnage Stan had been party to. Scattered in the surrounding fields, perhaps, lay tarnished fragments of metal, glass, bone, uncollected by forensics, dumb witnesses to death.

Stan laid the wreath against a small hawthorn tree, just coming into blossom, bowing his head, tears rolling down his face, oblivious to the traffic rushing past him. At last, he turned away, returning to his van, recovering his path west, homeward bound.