Thomas approached me one evening, as I was reading in one of the quieter spots near the Watchtower. He had a hesitant look on his face that I'd never seen before. He was an army veteran, and nothing seemed to phase him. He took every setback, every shock, in his stride, even when the rest of us were utterly shaken. But this evening was different.
"What's up, Thomas?" I asked. "You look like a ghost just jumped out from behind a bush wearing your grandma's favourite cardigan!"
He was oblivious to my good humour. "See, thing is..." he started, swallowing his sentence. "I need to..."
"What's wrong, Thomas?" I asked, suddenly concerned. This was not a man who struggles for words, or for anything really.
"I need to confess something," he finally managed to say.
"I'm not a priest Thomas," I said, with a smile on my face. "Come on, spit it out. What's on your mind?"
"I was in the army, back in the '70s," he told me.
"I know. We've all heard the stories," I said.
"Smartarse." That was more like Thomas. "Not this one, you haven't.
"In the '70s, Northern Ireland was a dark place to be. The Troubles were as close to a civil war as you can get without actually being in a civil war. The British Army was fighting against, well, terrorists, really. But they had the support of half of the country, so we were often the enemy, even when we were defending our own country from paramilitaries."
"I've heard about it, but I was born 20 years after all that," I said. "I had no idea. I've heard that it was a tough time, but I’ve always seen it as something that's history now."
"We don't teach people enough real history in this country. Not what matters to the people who still live here. It's all 'how many wives did this old king have', not 'why do these people still hate these people after decades.' It was horrific. And I only know my part of it. There are thousands of other stories all as rough as mine."
He paused here. I could tell he'd gone off on a tangent, he'd been more of his old self for a moment. His face dropped again.
"But my story is why I wanted to talk to you tonight.
"I was 22. I'd been there for a couple of weeks, that's all. It was my first time there, although I'd have a few more visits afterwards. None harder than that one though.
"I was with the British Army. We were fighting against the IRA in Belfast. And we'd caught a good few of them in a raid one morning. Brought them back to our base.
"Some of them were proper bruisers. Built like tanks, sweary fuckers like me, could throw a proper punch and could take as good as they could give. We were lucky we were armed and outnumbered them.
"But some others were just kids. Maybe 16 years old and dragged into their parents' and grandparents' fight. They should have been in school. They should have been sneaking out at night, drinking, getting off with girls, learning what not to do.
"But instead they died in a shitty little garage in some manky corner of Belfast."
Silence followed, for a few moments. There was the generic background noise of the river, and the hum of the living quarters, and that was all.
Eventually, I had to ask: "what happened to them?" This seemed to be what Thomas had been both waiting for, and dreading.
"The fuck do you think happened to them? They all just had spontaneous heart attacks? We killed them. We slaughtered them. Every last one of them lost their lives. Ten men and boys, killed because of their politics. Killed because we were scared of what they might possibly do if we didn't kill them. Killed because it was easier than keeping them prisoner. Killed for revenge for our lost brothers. But worst of all, killed because they were unarmed and it was easy."
He paused. He'd let some of the emotion out that he'd clearly been holding in while we spoke earlier, and he seemed to be catching his breath again.
"Most of us didn't want to do it. But that's how the army works, you do what you're told. The Troubles were hard, and they made monsters out of some people who'd been there too long. My Sergeant was one of them. He'd lost too many good men, he told us. We had a great opportunity to finally clean up a part of Belfast, and we shouldn't let it go to waste. I don't remember him ever telling us that he'd had authority from anyone above him to kill unarmed, untried prisoners, and they certainly acted shocked enough when they found out. But nothing ever came of it, ultimately.
"I don't know why I'm telling you this. I'm getting old, and I can't live with it on my conscience, I suppose. Especially in times like these. We've all done bad things, but it feels like there's a reset coming and I want to be cleaner when it comes.
"But I suppose there's also a lesson I want to share. The world is changing. There's a lot of one-dimensional thinking. Peace is disappearing, there's a lot of fear. I see a lot of what I saw in Belfast in the '70s. Everyone was scared then, not knowing where the next attack could come from, never feeling safe. To my Sergeant, the IRA were the enemy, and it was as simple as that. So many people thought like that, on both sides. Without thinking of people as complex humans first and foremost, we reduce them to just one aspect of themselves. We dehumanise them, turning them into a thing instead of a person; something to fear, something to hate. Always remember that people are people. Don't make my mistake. It's haunted me ever since."
The hesitant look was back on Thomas's face. "There's something else too. I need to tell you about ‒"
There was a loud bang, and Thomas hit the ground, the shadow of the Watchtower not entirely hiding his shocked and bloody face.
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