There are a couple of housing estates less than 5 miles from where i live that the british army and the local police wouldn’t enter during the troubles, unless it was a planned operation and there were significant numbers of them. Proper next level shit. RPGs at police/army landrovers, multiple person machine gun attacks on same. Gun battles against the loyalists who grew up on the other side of the fence. And none of that fucking mugging shit. If you were born on the other side of the fence and were caught in a housing estate you shouldn’t be in, it never usually ended well. Thankfully that was the 90s. 99% of that shit is gone now. Belfast was a fucking insane place back then. The mad thing was everyone knew the majority of the lunatics involved in the paramilitaries, whichever side you were from, particularly from the protestant side i am from. Wouldn’t be uncommon to be sitting in a bar back then, a well known local face would walk in, then someone in your company would say, there’s such and such, he done that shooting the other night. Quite unnerving also. I have some school mates that went the wrong route and joined some of these organisations, the dickheads. I went the the drugs and music route which helped me turn out the beautiful, balanced, bastard that i am.
