You got to have rules

There were rules. One of them was that before you kicked someone’s door down you had to knock and say “It’s the British army, we’ve come to search your house.” We had to do that three times before we kicked the door in.

We rolled up outside, as quietly as we could, tapped as lightly as is possible on his door, whispered “Its  the British army, we’ve come to search your house.” as softly as you can imagine. Three times. We had to stifle our giggles. We took the door off its hinges with a baton round and stormed up the stairs.

He slept with a nine millimetre Browning under his pillow, his finger on the trigger. We startled him so much that his finger slipped and he shot his wife in the face. She made this horrendous gurgling sound and I was almost sick. I couldn’t believe that anyone could be alive with that much of their head missing. He was in shock and Cuddles had to bash him round the head with his rifle butt to get him to listen to us. We tried to get him to open the safe but he was too shaken, we had to take it back to the barracks and blow it open. It was full of drugs and explosives and detonators and money. He got 25 years. His wife died before we could get her to hospital. Her name was Caroline. I don’t remember what his name was.