BACK in September 2010 I leafed through a new book called Constabulary Heroes.
The front and back covers depicted an awesome pink-red cloudy sky - a sunset, or a sunrise - with a black sombre lining on the clouds that seemed to warn of an oncoming storm, or of turbulence awaiting over the horizon. Poignantly, a cloudy pink-red sky can mean several contrasting forecasts - shepherds welcome it as hope for tomorrow, or it’s a shepherd’s warning. And blackness in the sky means night, yet it’s always darkest before the dawn - the end of today or the beginning of tomorrow - and often storm precedes calm.
A stark notice hung in the sky below the book’s main title: “Let those who come after see to it that their names be not forgotten.”
Each and every one of the 500 pages between its bindings mirrored the dramatic image on the cover - the end, yet the beginning; tempest before calm. Constabulary Heroes written by Sam Trotter B.E.M., who served for over 40 years in the RUC GC, has recently been republished in a second edition. It’s a profound, deeply meaningful, tragic and heroic Christmas compilation - a comprehensive listing of all of the members of the constabulary “unlawfully killed” over a period of 185 years between 1826 and 2011 in the territorial area that is now Northern Ireland.
In the author’s introduction he refers to the homily of Pope John Paul II in Ireland in 1979: “Nobody may ever call murder by any other name than murder” and the author observes: “Unfortunately the late Pontiff’s message did not get through to the terrorists in this country.”
Almost hidden amongst the tragic tally of over 500 cruel deaths is a hugely significant line on one of the final pages, on which the six female RUC officers killed in Northern Ireland between 1976 and 1992 are named - “All gave some…some gave all.” The alphabetical index of members killed - five pages of closely typed names at the back of the book, each page with two unforgivably long columns - reveals, one by one, a tragic record described by HRH The Prince of Wales in his commendation as meaning “a great deal personally to the members of the extended policing family, particularly the relatives and friends of those named therein.”
On a Christmas morning in the mid 1960s I watched my little school chum Raymond sliding around on the ice on his brand new bicycle. I dared not tread, even softly, on the icy road! Raymond was fearless, gleefully performing death-defying wheelies and hand-brake-turns on the ice, an early sign of his future as a keen and successful rally driver. In January 1972, two years after joining the RUC, Raymond was shot in the back of the head from close range by an IRA man.
He was bent under the bonnet of his beloved rally car, preparing it for a competition, and its well-tuned engine was the last thing he ever saw. His tragic epitaph in the book, like so many others, states “the gunman then jumped into the getaway car and the driver sped off…the Constable’s injuries were fatal”.
Raymond’s wife of nine months, his mother and his two RUC brothers and Police Sergeant father, weren’t able to travel from tragedy with such ease. My friend Raymond is buried just yards away from his family home, truly a ‘copper’s cottage’, very close to the icy road where he defied gravity and fear all those Christmases ago. The child was born, and will never be forgotten. Constabulary Heroes (second edition) by Sam Trotter BEM at £25, is available in bookshops or from the publisher, Impact Printing, 59 Leyland Road, Ballycastle BT54 6EZ.