My gun-toting bodyguard days.

Many years ago, the early nineteen eighties to be precise, I was a young garda stationed in Blackrock in Dublin and back then Dublin was a different place to what it is now. The equipment and even the clothing we had in those days was nothing like what is available to the guys today.

We had overcoats, greatcoats they were called, made from bulls’ wool. They weighed a ton when they were dry and could bring you to your knees when they were wet.  It felt as if you were carrying a large dead hairy animal around on your shoulders. The trousers were made from the same material and comfort was never a consideration for the manufacturers.

The rain coats we had were very flimsy and uncomfortable, and they did everything except keep out the rain. The hand- held radios we used were very basic with a little dial on the front that allowed you to switch to channel one or channel two. They were in short supply and there never seemed to be enough of them.

We always had a briefing from the sergeant at the start of a tour of duty and I remember during one of those briefings I had been detailed to carry out a foot patrol in the area of the Stillorgan Shopping Centre.

I discovered to my horror that there was no radio left for me. I explained my predicament to the sergeant expecting him to be sympathetic and to somehow use his experience and wisdom to produce a fresh radio for me. He used to smoke a pipe and he looked at me over the top of the pipe while he puffed away; “Stick close to a phone box,” he said.

For some of my time there, I performed duty in plain clothes because I carried a firearm. This was for the protection of the Turkish Ambassador who lived in the penthouse suite in a block of apartments in Mount Merrion Avenue in Blackrock. I had very little service at that stage so I was fairly green.

The gun was a Smith and Wesson 38 revolver and my job was to protect the Ambassador once he arrived home in the evening. Turkish officials were considered a high risk target in those days due to the fact that there was an aggressive campaign being raged by the Armenians. I had to make sure that the building was secure for him when he came home from work and make sure that he was not assassinated while he was in the building.

There was a table and chair on the landing at the top of the stairs outside his front door and that was where I would make camp.

The Ambassador himself was a lovely man who lived on his own. He was a friendly type of character who would regularly appear on the landing at some point during the night with a half finished crossword that he wanted a hand with. He would often bring me a plate of toast, syrup and olives. He never seemed to sleep too much and I often wondered what it was that kept him awake.

His staff lived on the floor below and consisted of a chef, two bodyguards, a cleaner, a waiter and a secretary. There were all nice people and I developed a relationship with them over the year I was performing that duty.

One of the body guards was a big guy with a square bald head, a big moustache and a body that made Arnold Scwartznegger look anorexic. His arms were like tree trunks.  The guy was huge. He didn’t have a word of English but had a big smile and could make himself understood with gestures. His party piece was lifting the chef up in the air with one hand, much to the annoyance of the chef.

One night, actually it was in the early hours of the morning, I was sitting in my perch minding my own business when, unknown to me, the big body guard was sneaking up the stairs beneath me. He had a brown paper bag which he had inflated. He crept to a spot where he was only a couple of feet away from me and then burst the bag by clapping his hands together. At that hour of the night and in a confined space, the noise was enormous. He collapsed in laughter.

I half fell and half jumped out of the chair with fright and had absolutely no idea what my next move was going to be. If I had been a Clint Eastwood character from the film ‘In the Line of Fire’ I probably would have shot him between the eyes or if I had been a highly trained secret service agent I might have kicked the bag out of his hand and disabled him with a strategic chop to the neck.

As it happened I was neither so he was perfectly safe. The reality was that by the time I would have wrestled my gun from its holster, loaded it with bullets (I generally kept it unloaded) and pointed it in the right direction, the would be assassin would have fled the scene and the victim would have been on a plane to Turkey for a state funeral.

And it was then that it dawned on me. The Ambassador knew all the time. He knew who he was dealing with. Somebody must have told him.  Or maybe he just figured it out for himself but, in any event, he knew that he was not in safe hands. That’s why he didn’t sleep. That’s why I got crosswords and toast – he was AFRAID!

To be perfectly honest if I had been protecting myself in those days I probably wouldn’t have slept much either.