Dead Heroes

De: Ray Drayton

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

"I stood there listening to the threats and moans coming out of his broken mouth. Suddenly I felt immensely proud. I had bagged my first British soldier, and I was only twelve years old…" The streets in the slums of Belfast, where young adolescents learn when to fight, when to run and when to do both…Their very survival depends on it. To many of the inhabitants death is an every day companion and tomorrow may never arrive. Amidst the housing estates of this tortured city, life is not a precious commodity. It is cheap and expendable and only the strong survive to fight another day. Whichever side the young extremists find themselves on, the ideal is to fight for 'the cause' and probably to die for 'the cause.' This is a story no British or Irish Publisher dared to print during the troubles in Ulster. Why??? Because many of the events in this book ACTUALLY HAPPENED… The night is cold and pitch black. A dog can be heard barking in a back yard. A door opens and then slams shut. The barking stops. It isn't the mind numbing cold, it is sounds and smells of coal fires that strike terror and loathing into the heart of the young officer. A cold wet fog hovers low over them like a shroud. The continuing dampness eats away at any exposed skin, chilling them to the core. The lonely wail of a siren reaches a crescendo before fading into the murk. 'What the hell went wrong? Where is the rest of our patrol?' A jumble of questions scream in Lieutenant Anthony Hawley's head. The nineteen year old angrily tries to control savage tremors shaking his body. It is all he can do to stop himself from getting up and running away as fear threatens to give way to madness. The gut wrenching fear tells him the enemy is close by in the dark, waiting for him to make a move - waiting to kill both of them. The body tremors continue relentlessly. He feels cramp knotting his calf muscle as he tries to shift a fraction. The Lieutenant keeps applying pressure to a field dressing against the corporal's neck. The sniper bullet furrowed across the NCO's neck, rupturing an artery. 'The bastards must have night sights.' Anthony thinks to himself, fighting despair. The patrol had been on a routine recce from their base at Sion Mills, a small town south of Strabane, on the Ulster border. The Lieutenant is on his first three month tour of duty in Northern Ireland. The soldier's skin under his fingers is now wet and clammy in spite of the marauding cold, telling him time is running out. The fog is too low for a helicopter extraction, leaving an APC vehicle as the only choice to get them out alive. The Lieutenant is under no illusion of the outcome should an extraction not happen - or should the IRA gunmen find them first. The cold muddy ditch they are desperately hiding in will become their grave... It is little wonder many British soldiers after their experience in Ulster, tried for selection to join the Special Air Service regiment. The SAS were one enemy loathed and feared by the IRA and for good reason. The SAS played by the same rules the IRA did - No Rules...