Title: Lighter Side of Patrolling

Subject: Several "Short" stories from a former UDR Soldier of a more humorous nature

Whiskey Galore – Or Not
“After some years in South Derry I was transferred to the battalion HQ at Ballykelly. It was there that I received a telephone call from the RUC Station Sergeant in Dungiven. He had just received a complaint from a local resident. It was alleged that one of our patrols had stolen a bottle of whiskey belonging to her.

Reports of alleged theft by patrols were extremely rare and I asked for more information. The story that was related to me that day was strange by any standard.

I was informed that a lady of mature years made a weekly visit to Dungiven town to acquire her groceries. Each week she also purchased a large bottle of whiskey. On this particular day there was snow on the ground and in places the snow had drifted.
Returning home with two bags of groceries and a bottle of whiskey turned out to be an arduous journey for the lady. Some distance from her home she decided to lighten her load by hiding the whiskey in a snowdrift.

After returning home and depositing her groceries the lady retraced her steps to pick up the whiskey. A UDR vehicle checkpoint was now operating near the location of the hidden whiskey. Not wishing to approach the patrol, the lady waited until the patrol moved off. She then made her way to the snowdrift but all she found was a set of army boot prints in the snow and a hole in the snow where the ‘firewater’ had been secreted. On finding that the “bird had flown” she returned to Dungiven and reported her dilemma to the police. A strange tale indeed.

The Battalion Operations Room always kept a detailed record of all our VCP locations. These revealed that there indeed had been a patrol at that location. The patrol was recalled to base and I questioned them about the whiskey. It was to their credit that they admitted to “finding” a bottle of whiskey. To them it seemed ‘A gift from the gods’ that would be reserved for the platoon party. In that respect they were to be disappointed. The bottle was returned to the lady in question with the suggestion that in future the finder might not be honest enough to own up and recovery would be unlikely”

Hi-jacked Chickens
“During my time as Ops Officer in Magherafelt I had many experiences and encounters with the RUC. As the Operations Officer I was there to support the RUC in whatever they wanted done. I received a very interesting phone call from the Assistant Divisional Commander in Coleraine.

He said to me, ‘We would like your help’. I said, ‘Well I will do whatever I can to help you.’ He then said, ‘There has been a lorry load of chickens hi-jacked in Swatragh. We would like you to send some of your boys down there and try to recover them’. In my ignorance I thought this was Moy Park frozen chickens on their way to hotels in Portrush and Portstewart. So I said to him, ‘I’m afraid every deep freezer within three square miles of the incident will be full of frozen chicken at this time’.

There was a short pause and then he said, ‘I rather doubt it. For these birds are still on the hoof’. As I later discovered they were perched on the headstones of Granaghan Chapel graveyard.

I said to him, ‘I’m sorry. Chicken roundups are rather out of the question’. But we still remained good friends”

Scary Moments
“I was once out on cordon duties with a bodybuilder. He was built like a tree trunk with massive arms. There had been a shooting incident in the area and we were part of the cordon. It was a rainy day so for the first shift I took shelter in a doorway of a derelict house to cover the man on the road.

We changed over our positions and he then took up his position in the shelter of the doorway. It was hardly a minute later that he came thundering out of the doorway and said that he was OK and didn’t need a break. He never looked for a break that night and kept looking back at the derelict house to where I had been standing.

We were then posted to another part of the cordon and I said to him, ‘I’m glad to be away from that derelict house, it was spooky’. ‘You better believe it’, he replied, ‘Did you see the size of them spiders in there?’”

The Things you find
“One night on the Letterkenny Road in Londonderry we stopped a vehicle and the occupant was reluctant to open the boot, he did eventually open it but then refused to open a suitcase in the boot. He was informed that if he didn’t open the suitcase, we would send for the RUC. When he reluctantly opened it, we found it to be full of ladies underwear, which he had been stealing from clotheslines!

One other incident that comes to mind was when we were manning the civilian search barriers in the city centre in Londonderry. I was frisking a man and I felt something solid in one of his legs so I thought I had found something significant but the poor man was wearing a caliper!”