RUC man uncovers a history of life on the beat
A 99-YEAR-OLD retired RUC officer has been looking back on a lifetime of memorabilia collected during his decades on duty in the border country of Co Fermanagh in the last century.
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. Not a pick of it anywhere,” he said.
During his service at Rosslea he developed a keen interest in learning the meaning of townland names.
“I spent five years in Rosslea and loved the mountain district and the people,” he said.
He recalled how, during 1933, two crannogs appeared in Killyfole Lough near Rosslea, after water levels were lowered, and disappeared when water levels rose again.
After that he worked in Derrylin, Kesh and then Lack, Ballinamallard and Belleek.
During the war years Kesh was busy with the allied forces men stationed at the flying boats based on Lough Erne and at Castle Archdale.
With his late wife Ethel and two young children living on the main street in Kesh at the time, he was glad to get away from the cars that were flying about at the time to Lack village, which was safer.
In the big snow in the winter of 1947, he recalled his late father suffered a stroke and he went to visit him in Lisburn.
On his return to Omagh train station the snow was 18 inches deep and he had to cycle back to Lack, where the snow had drifted off the hills, making it difficult to find the road.
“I just had to pound down into it, the snow was very powdery and dry and freezing.
“I was glad to feel the road. A whole lot of children were building a snowman. In June there were still traces of it there,” he said.
Promotion in the police was hard to get unless you had “someone speaking for you” in Stormont, he said.
He retired in 1967, after 35 years in the police.
Because of the Troubles, he said he felt thankful that his sons were living in Australia and London, however, his daughter Breda Larsen was injured in the 1998 Omagh bomb, and recovered.
“When I thought about her being blown up, I thought it was terrible. I had been congratulating myself that my boys were in Australia and London,” he said.
During his career, he did not think of it as dangerous.
He recalled the Army had said Lack police station may be attacked as it was close to the border.
“I stood many a night with my machine gun with me.
“Thank goodness I never needed it,” he said.
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Monday 28 May 2012
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