Crossmaglen 1995
Prison Service where I was for five years working at the Maze Prison in Lisburn in the compound side, mostly with the search teams, then in the H blocks during the dirty protests and hunger strikes. I then became a Constable in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) on 1st January 1983 and retired from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) on 1st January 2005, having competed 22 years’ service. While serving on secondment to Criminal Investigation Department (CID) in Woodbourne RUC station in West Belfast around 1986, the Household Cavalry Musical Ride came to the Balmoral Show at the Royal Ulster Agricultural Show,Belfast. I was able to procure on loan from the RUC country club pumps for draught beer and then went to the local Cash and Carry for a spirits and soft drink order. The bar was very popular with the exhibiters and invited guest as well as the local dignitaries. I served as a police officer in Andersonstown, SJI HMSU in Mahon Road, Portadown, Newry, Crossmaglen, and Mountpottinger in Belfast eventually moving to Special Branch as a Detective Constable where I was later promoted to Detective Sergeant. During my police career I worked very closely with the military and in particular Queens Company, Grenadier Guards with whom I have retained a close relationship. During this time, I met, fell in love with and married my soul mate Heather. She is the love of my life and remains so to this day. Tragically, Heather died suddenly in our home on 31st October 2003 aged just 38 years old. I struggled on for a further 14 months in the police prior to retirement but my heart was lost and just not with this life any more.
Within three months of retiring from the police service I found myself in Iraq working for Armour Group on a Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) Policing contract as an International Police Advisor (IPA). I flew into Basra with other IPAs from Brize Norton and then moved swiftly up to Camp Abu Naji at Al Amarah in Maysan Province. The Battle Group in residence at this time was the Welsh Guards. I soon became part of the Country Management team and the manager in Maysan Province. The fact that a majority of police advisors were retired RUC made relationships easy to form due to the Northern Ireland connection. I was later sent to Camp Smitty, a joint Australian and British base at Samawah in Al Muthanna Province to head up a training program to train 2500 Iraq Police recruits within a six months’ time period. At the successful completion of this program the base closed and we were dispersed to the Shat al Arab Hotel in Basra with some of my team and I became the manager of the teams for OP Salamanca/Sinbad
training the Afghanistan Intelligence Police under the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). I was based at Camp Dubs in south Kabul with two other colleagues and we looked after the south side of Kabul. With the closing of Camp Dubs our team moved up to Camp Phoenix where we travelled daily down to the south side on our mentoring programs using B6 armoured Toyota Land Cruisers. I then moved across to head up the mentoring and training of the analytical department at the National Targeting and Exploitation Centre (NTEC) in the middle of Kabul. I later moved up to Asadabad in Kunar Province on the Pakistan border close to the Khyber Pass to complete the program at FOB Fiaz prior to the base being closed and US troops being withdrawn from the Province. Following that I went to FOB Ghazni, a joint Polish and US base, in Ghazni Province where I remained until the drawdown of US troop levels in July of 2014.
During my time in Iraq and Afghanistan The IPA contract eventually finished we did not remain on the bases but in around July 2007 with all British engaged with our mentees at their personnel slowly beginning the process local police station or Headquarters of withdrawing from Iraq. I was with British and US troops acting as invited to interview for a new company our Force Protection. The bases were recruiting retired RUC Special Branch constantly under IDF attack and I was officers to work on an intelligence involved in three complex attacks on capacity building program for the three separate bases in Afghanistan. United States Department of Defence. I The first attack was on Green Village, soon found myself along with some of a civilian base in Kabul, which was my former RUCSB colleagues deployed attacked at 0545hrs with two suicide car in Ambar Province in Iraq on a 12 month bombs at the front gate and followed up pilot program imbedded with the United with Taliban wearing suicide vests and States Marine Corps. Although we were carrying RPGs and AK rifles. The attack all civilian contractors and did not have lasted for 7 hours, with one ex Gurkha any military rank, our civilian grade security guard losing his life. was GS14 which is equivalent to a US Lt Colonel. I was initially deployed to the The second at FOB Fiaz, a small base City of Ramadi then later up to Al Qiem, of 40 personnel including civilian a strategic border town with Syria. The contractors, was hit when the Taliban program was so successful that the US tried to shoot down a helicopter that Commander General Petraeus ordered was coming in to land. Fortunately, the the program to be rolled out in MND-N. helicopter was not disabled and was I, along with another colleague was able to exit the kill zone and a 5 hour tasked to complete the pre-deployment fire fight ensued. It is an awesome and site survey (PDSS) for the four northern provinces of Iraq for the US Army. Following an intensive PDSS and a spot of leave I was based at FOB Speicher in Tikrit in Salah AdDin Province. Eventually the program came to an end with the US drawdown and we relocated to Afghanistan on the same capacity building program Samawah Police Academy 2006
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