James McBryde has collected news clippings about policing down through the years, along with photographs and a collection of poems he wrote inspired by his life, work and everything around him.

Now living in Omagh, he recalls how his career started in the linen industry at the age of just 14, at Glenmore linen works outside Lisburn, where his father was an engineer.

"I told my father, this linen trade will be finished by the time I have five years finished here. He said to me, 'I have been hearing this all my life', and in five years, the writing was on the wall. I had to get his permission to join the police. He gave it all right," he said.

James joined the police force in 1932.

"I gave up £3.12 shillings a week to get £2 and 15 shillings," he said.

His collection of memorabilia and clippings includes an article he wrote for the Police Gazette in 1932, about joining the police, and over 115 items written for the Pepper column, letters, including some for the Sunday News, and his poems, many published in the Competition Journal.

A booklet is now being compiled using the material.

Mr McBryde is one of the last surviving RUC officers who trained for six months at Newtownards depot.

He recalled 13 others who trained with him in recruitment and they had three educational exams to sit before passing out, as well as being assessed on height and sight.

"During the war, they reduced the height to five feet 10 inches, but before that it was five feet 11 inches. For the RIC it was five feet nine inches," he said.

He served in Coleraine, and then went to Rosslea, Fermanagh.

"Customs had started, there was smuggling going on," he recalled.

Building up the barracks was the main priority and he recalled working with two other officers by the names of Walmsley and Donnelly.

"Instead of one sergeant and two men, there were two sergeants and eight men," he said.

Mostly they got around by bicycle, and a customs car was attached to the barracks.

He recalled once that a fellow officer was caught red-handed smuggling bags of meal for cattle, pigs and fowl, into Northern Ireland, on a horse and cart, following a tip-off about activity at the Belturbet border.

He said butter was the main thing smuggled in, as well as bacon, ham and items such as tobacco.

He remembered how two customs men at Kinawley were asked by a well-spoken young man if he could leave a bag in their building overnight to be picked up the following day. Overnight the building exploded.

The customs officers were heard to say: "And that nice young fellow's bag was blown up too.