Just the Tip of a Story.
About twenty years ago, when I was a mere foundling in the pub and hotel trade, I came across a man who it has taken me the intervening two decades to understand.
'Mac' was a concrete engineer staying as a long-term resident at the hotel in which I had started working as a young barman. He was a truly enigmatic man whose physical stature was only equalled by the magnificence of his 'Charles Bronson' moustache. I never knew his surname then, but neither did I know the surname of any of his colleagues as their company was paying the bill. Mac and I chatted a lot because he didn't spend that much time with the other guys - this was not through any problems with the other men, Mac was just a more quietly lifestyled man, and also he was the only Scotsman within an otherwise Irish group. We chatted through many a quiet evening whilst the other crew members were either pissed and in bed or carousing about town.
Mac taught me a lot of things, the first being an idiosyncratic method of lacing my Doc Martens to allow more ankle movement and simplify boot removal in case of injury. I still lace my boots in that pattern to this day. He also told me that he had been a military man, starting as an Engineer and then being seconded to the Royal Marines. He had wonderful stories of both triumph and disaster that made me as an eighteen-year-old become almost 'a moth to the flame' in curiosity. One of the finest of his many stories was how he came to lose his two front teeth (he wore false ones attached to a dental plate).
As I remember regarding the dental story, Mac said: "We were going for a long range night drop. "It was jumping from about five thousand feet with 'chutes that would glide us for about four miles. "Y'know it still works the same as WWII - you drop your pack on a line and, once it lands, it retards your descent. "Sadly, my pack and line got stuck under a farm gate." - That more than explains the lack of front teeth. There are so many other recounted stories than I could not possibly have time to go into here, they are inspiring and, at the same time, almost unbelievable.
Mac and the rest of the concrete team eventually finished their works and left the hotel, but for years I had nagging doubts about what he had described - it was too extreme, too fanciful.
Twenty Years Later:
I was idly watching Channel Five (or the like) and came across a documentary about the Iranian Embassy siege in London during May of 1980. I was confronted on screen by an instantly recognisable moustachioed Scot named 'Mac' who had broken silence after twenty-five years. The documentary was short but I saw the longer version later in the week. It became clear that not only was he involved, he was a team leader, and he was 'that man' that blew open the doors on the first floor balcony of the Iranian Embassy live on TV.
I realised that I had been serving one of history's most visually iconic British servicemen pints of Tennent's Extra for nine months and didn't even recognise him without the balaclava, assault suit, and full face respirator... I'll give up my dreams of becoming a detective.
Having come to know the facts, I decided to look up the name I now knew: John McAleese. I was too late to try to catch up. He died of a heart attack in 2011 some short months after his son was killed in Afghanistan.
Although I'm not well informed as to the intricacies of military and governmental policy I'll unlace my boots with both fond and fine memories of a damned good man.
(Staff Sgt. John McAleese, MM. 1949 - 2011)
'Mac' was a concrete engineer staying as a long-term resident at the hotel in which I had started working as a young barman. He was a truly enigmatic man whose physical stature was only equalled by the magnificence of his 'Charles Bronson' moustache. I never knew his surname then, but neither did I know the surname of any of his colleagues as their company was paying the bill. Mac and I chatted a lot because he didn't spend that much time with the other guys - this was not through any problems with the other men, Mac was just a more quietly lifestyled man, and also he was the only Scotsman within an otherwise Irish group. We chatted through many a quiet evening whilst the other crew members were either pissed and in bed or carousing about town.
Mac taught me a lot of things, the first being an idiosyncratic method of lacing my Doc Martens to allow more ankle movement and simplify boot removal in case of injury. I still lace my boots in that pattern to this day. He also told me that he had been a military man, starting as an Engineer and then being seconded to the Royal Marines. He had wonderful stories of both triumph and disaster that made me as an eighteen-year-old become almost 'a moth to the flame' in curiosity. One of the finest of his many stories was how he came to lose his two front teeth (he wore false ones attached to a dental plate).
As I remember regarding the dental story, Mac said: "We were going for a long range night drop. "It was jumping from about five thousand feet with 'chutes that would glide us for about four miles. "Y'know it still works the same as WWII - you drop your pack on a line and, once it lands, it retards your descent. "Sadly, my pack and line got stuck under a farm gate." - That more than explains the lack of front teeth. There are so many other recounted stories than I could not possibly have time to go into here, they are inspiring and, at the same time, almost unbelievable.
Mac and the rest of the concrete team eventually finished their works and left the hotel, but for years I had nagging doubts about what he had described - it was too extreme, too fanciful.
Twenty Years Later:
I was idly watching Channel Five (or the like) and came across a documentary about the Iranian Embassy siege in London during May of 1980. I was confronted on screen by an instantly recognisable moustachioed Scot named 'Mac' who had broken silence after twenty-five years. The documentary was short but I saw the longer version later in the week. It became clear that not only was he involved, he was a team leader, and he was 'that man' that blew open the doors on the first floor balcony of the Iranian Embassy live on TV.
I realised that I had been serving one of history's most visually iconic British servicemen pints of Tennent's Extra for nine months and didn't even recognise him without the balaclava, assault suit, and full face respirator... I'll give up my dreams of becoming a detective.
Having come to know the facts, I decided to look up the name I now knew: John McAleese. I was too late to try to catch up. He died of a heart attack in 2011 some short months after his son was killed in Afghanistan.
Although I'm not well informed as to the intricacies of military and governmental policy I'll unlace my boots with both fond and fine memories of a damned good man.
(Staff Sgt. John McAleese, MM. 1949 - 2011)
posted by fwyalchen at 8:29 PM
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