I am going to try to do a review of sorts of John Chambers’ A Belfast Child. Most likely, I will muck it up as I did my attempted “review of Sergeant Harry Tangye’s Firearms and Fatals, because, in a manner like my reading of Firearms and Fatals, I could not read A Belfast Child without immediately also thinking about all kinds of other things I have read about Ulster. Furthermore, there are certain similarities I have with Mr. Chambers, as well as major differences in background, the latter being also something I have with Sergeant Tangye. I will, unfortunately for all concerned, write a lot about myself to explain why I was drawn to Mr. Chambers’ A Belfast Child in the first place. I do not like writing about myself because I am an asshole who failed his mother, who, despite having a greater than average knowledge about the health care sector, was too fucking stupid to organise and deploy all that knowledge in time to preserve my mother’s quality of life, and thus her life. However, I have to talk about my asshole self here to explain why I was drawn to A Belfast Child.
On a related note, Mr. Chambers reports how, when he was living on the Mainland, some arrogant Scot asshole ran his hole at Mr. Chambers thinking he knew all about Ulster because he read a couple of books. This Scot asshole resembles the drunk college students who ran their holes at Sergeant Tangye because they read about the law in some books. Mr. Chambers dismissed this Scot asshole because of his experiential ignorance. Through my mother, I am distantly related to one of the signers of the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant. But, I have never been to Ulster or Glasgow, and, now that we have the pandemic, it looks like I will never go there. The only difference between me and the asshole Scot who ran his hole to Mr. Chambers based on books he read on Ulster is that I am an asshole COLONIAL to boot. You see, a Scot is still a Briton. A Catholic Nationalist in Parkhead or Ulster is still a Briton. I am Canadian-American. The American part of me is valid, but, as a Canadian, I am what is called (behind closed doors, of course) in Britain a “damned Colonial.” In Wilbur Smith’s Ballantyne series, one the Ballantynes, Morris “Zouga” tells a British official in Africa “Yes, I am colonial-born, but do not hold that against me.” Smith then goes on to point out how Colonials are less than native Britons. This is reinforced by the filim Breaker Morant, wherein the British officers say “Colonials” with a tone of voice that suggests that they are choking on shit as they say the word (An aside, to correct one of the misperceptions of that filim, we Colonials do actually get lost.)
Here, I will refer to books about Ulster. But that is the totality of my experience of Ulster, from books. If you have any questions about Ulster, I would refer you to people who live or who have lived there, including
- John Chambers
- Royal Irish Regiment Captain Doug Beattie, MC
- Ann Travers
- Mairia Cahill
- Jill McCauley
- Kate Evans
- MarleyMo
- E.S. Haggan
- George From The Shankill
If there is any conflict between what I am about to crap out about Ulster from books and what any of the aforementioned people have to say on the subject, either in detail or in general, listen to them and not to me.
That being said, (while also being in the interests of disclosure), as with Sergeant Tangye, I have interacted with Mr. Chambers on social media. He, like Sergeant Tangye, and like all the other Britons I have interacted with on social media, has always been kind, courteous and respectful towards me, knowing full well that I am a damned Colonial. None of the Britons I have interacted with on social media have ever held my Colonial birth against me, which indicates that I was lucky enough to converse with some of the kindest Britons on social media.
So, why do I feel an affinity with Mr. Chambers? There are certain aspects of our backgrounds that are similar, while, as a whole, our backgrounds are fundamentally different. Mr. Chambers grew up in extreme poverty and was orphaned at a young age. Romantic and literary idiots would call his childhood “Dickensian.” This is revolting since there is nothing at all romantic about Mr. Chambers’ upbringing, which far more closely resembles that of the besprizorni, the orphan-waifs of the USSR described by Anne Applebaum, and depicted in the horror movie Italienetz. By contrast, I was a spoiled brat. My parents were not rich, but my mother valued education above all else, most particularly over fancy clothes, fancy vacations and other frivolities. Mr. Chambers and Sergeant Tangye both speak of having to deal with “hardmen” in order to survive at school. Because my mother emphasised schooling, I was fortunate enough to attend private schools. Were there “hardmen” at my private schools? Yes. They were called TEACHERS. That is why I was never subject to any physical violence at the hands of my fellow students (although there were indeed problems with them, which I will get back to because it forms the core of why I feel an affinity with Mr. Chambers.) The closest thing I ever had to a hard time in life was when my family was destroyed in a car accident which killed my brother and severely injured my parents, which happened when I was in my twenties, and when I lost my mother, which happened when I was already an old man.
Mr. Chambers also had a problem with the bones of his leg which required lengthy hospital stays when he was a child. I was born with severe physical defects, which meant that I also had lengthy hospital visits as a child. My defects will also be material below since they tie in to my discussion of religion. However, in contrast to what I said about my so-called “hard times” in the previous paragraph, my defects were not difficult since I never knew a life without them.
But first, let me get back to something else Mr. Chambers and I have in common with each other and with Sergeant Harry McCallion. By admitting this, I realise that I may lose a lot of followers. I am sad this has to be, and I will never bear any ill will to those who now feel obliged to disavow me but I would rather be honest at this point.
John Chambers, Sergeant McCallion and I, were all born and baptised as Catholics. My mother, like Mr. Chambers’ mother, was Catholic. The difference is, and this explains why I am more sympathetic to someone of Mr. Chambers’ side (he is openly and proudly Loyalist, unlike that little pussy bitch actor David Tennant who looked like he was going to shit his pants when relatives gave him an ancestor’s Sash), that neither my mother nor I nor my brother were IRISH Catholic. Here is another place where Mr. Chambers’ and my experiences diverge.
After Mr. Chambers’ mother was forced out of his life, Mr. Chambers had little contact with IRISH Catholics until he became a Mod, at which point, he found out that the Irish Catholics he knew were not the devils he had been told they were. My experience was closer to that of George Best and Sergeant McCallion in that I had first hand contact with Irish Catholics which formed my opinion of and dispositions toward them.
The majority of the student bodies of the private schools I attended were Irish Catholic Americans. My experience of Irish Catholic Americans is that they are the most racist people on the planet. They made slurs against me because I was of majority French descent...just like they did to their Italian and Polish classmates, the latter three of us groups being of the same religion as the Irish Catholics. Nor was this unique to my schooling. In 1863, Irish Catholics in New York lynched Blacks. In the same century, Irish Catholics in California attacked Chinese. When I was in school in New York, Irish Catholics in Boston rioted at the prospect of having to share buses with Blacks. What is more, the late Jack Holland—who, like Mr. Chambers, was the product of a mixed Catholic-Protestant marriage—who was an SDLP supporter hostile to Loyalism reported in Hope Against History that SFIRA had a massive, uncritical following among American Irish Catholics. It still does today. New York Congressman Peter King is an open SFIRA supporter. Yet, although President Bush Deuce outlawed SFIRA in America in 2001, King was never arrested and sent to Guantanamo.
When I was old enough to read the news, the Troubles in Ulster had started. American media at the time (and still today) uncritically reprinted everything SFIRA sent them. The gist of SFIRA’s messages to American media was “The Brits refuse to give us civil rights.” My reaction to that was, and was until I came across Ann Travers, the late Lyra McKee and Mairia Cahill on social media, “Why should anyone give Irish Catholics in Ulster the exact same civil rights they deny to Blacks and Chinese in America?” As I said, American media of the time regurgitated verbatim what SFIRA fed them. Since it did not fit SFIRA’s narrative that the majority in Ulster were Protestants who wanted to remain British, American media made no mention of the UDA. If they had, you would have seen a long line of Italian-Americans, Polish-Americans and Hispanics lining outside the British Consulate in New York asking to sign up, and I would have most likely been one of the first in the line. Mr. Chambers was forced to join the UDA for his own protection. Had I known about the UDA in my youth, I would have run across the ocean to join them. Since I did not know of the existence of the UDA or the UVF until much later on when I read of them in anOsprey Book on The Paras, the only thing I could do was what Sergeant McCallion did as a Para when he was repulsed by SFIRA atrocities, and stop attending Catholic Church and start attending whatever Protestant Church I could find (Reformed, mostly, the Reformed Church being essentially Presbyterian Churches originally founded by non-English speakers such as the French and the Dutch.) I initially got on well with the Protestant dominees. However, I was booted in my twenties when I became a problem drinker.
That being said, now that I have met and interacted with Ann Travers, Mairia Cahill and the late Lyra McKee, I feel deeply remorseful for my thoughts and feelings towards Irish Catholics up to that point. I never knew any Irish Catholics like these ladies in America. I regard it as the worst injustice to deny good people like these three ladies anything short of full civil rights, on the basis of what the Bible says about the one good man in Sodom.
Now, let me explain where I stand now as regards religion per se, since this will be related to my analysis of religion as depicted in A Belfast Child. I believe in God, I believe in Jesus. I use the Bible in the same way that the NYPD use the Patrol Guide. I still believe what I was taught as a child that “A vote for a [US political party] Democrat is a vote for the Devil.” On the Eleventh Commandment common, unwittingly, to both Catholicism and Free Presbyterianism, “Thou shalt not look at Penthouse magazine/Grindhouse cinema!”, I slam my heels together and bellow out “SIR, AYE-AYE, SIR!”, then go along and do what I was originally going to do anyways. As regards other people’s religion or lack thereof, I maintain the attitude I was taught as a child in America, which is “As long as you are a good American the other six days a week, I do not give a damn where you hang your hat on Sunday.”
There is another layer to it. I get as much of my ideas of religion from Hammer Horror and from Dan Curtis’ Dark Shadows as I do from the Bible. In this sense, my ideas about religion are more seventeenth century New England than even twentieth century Ulster. As I said, I was born with several physical defects. If I had been born in seventeenth century New England, I would have been destroyed on the spot, and rightfully so. Because I survived my birth and a month in intensive care thereafter, and because I survived an operation when I was seventeen when I came damn close to dying from exsanguinations, I have the unshakeable feeling that forces of evil are keeping me alive. In that regard, I have long felt an affinity with Dark Shadows’ “Barnabas Collins,” a man turned into a vampire against his will who curses himself for his bloodlust and who is doomed to see everyone he loves die. I have also long felt an affinity to Barry Sadler’s“Casca Ruffio Longinus/Carl Langer/Casey Romain,” a Roman Centurion cursed to live eternally until the Second Coming. My relationship with Christianity deviates from that of most in that I accept that I must serve a sentence of life alone on earth for the crime of surviving when my brother and my mother did not, and that I seek at the end of that life, not Salvation, but complete obliteration of the entirety of my existence from God. God knows me well, and I think He will do that when it is convenient for Him.
I think that I am evil, not because of any deliberate thoughts or deliberate actions, but because I am an entirely unnatural creature. I also believe in science and evolution. I do not see a conflict between that and my belief in religion for the reason that I see the two as similar to the following. When I am about the house, I just wear my worn-out trackies, but when I have to go out, I put on my Sunday best (i.e. Rangers Jersey and Scarf.) I compartmentalise.
My belief in science reinforces my unshakeable belief that I am an evil being because I am unnatural. Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau keep saying that they believe in science. This is, at best, half true. If they believed in science, they would send a four-person team to me to put several silver bullets in my heart, then separate my head from my body and burn both separately. My unnatural existence, you see, means that every breath I take is a violation of Darwin’s Law of Natural Selection. The Churches, both Protestant (even Free Presbyterians) and Catholics, had long abandoned this line that those born so manifestly evil should be destroyed on the spot by the time I was born. Those who advocate science over religion, on the other hand, unerringly champion Darwin. The problem is that they lack the conviction of their cause enough to see that Darwin’s Law of Natural Selection becomes the law of the land, becomes part of the penal code. In that regard, they are allowing their emotions get in the way of science, which means that they are only facultatively scientific in the sense that facultative anaerobes can choose to live off and to not live off oxygen at will.
Also related to my understanding of science is equilibrium. Balance, in other words. Because a monstrosity like me was allowed to live, nature had to balance things out. Nature did that by killing two perfectly normal, perfectly good people, my brother, then my mother.
So, that is my view on religion and science. Let me get to what I picked up from A Belfast Child on how “Protestantism” is practiced in Glencairn. The main point is that Protestantism is not a united, monolithic entity.
There are several points in A Belfast Child that lead me to conclude that Mr. Chambers and his father’s family are/were what in America is called Episcopal, what in England is called Anglican and what in Ulster is called Church of Ireland. That right there proves a point made by Urban when writing of the Teutonic Knights versus the pagan REAL Prussians (who were Balts and not Germans), by Peter Wilson when writing of the Thirty Years War, by Lesley Branch when writing about Imam Shamyl, and by Michael Reynolds when writing about the 1908-1918 covert than overt war between the Muslim Ottomans and the Orthodox Russians. Whenever there is a war that is ostensibly about religion, there are invariably other equally key factors at play. Episcopalianism/Anglicanism, you see, is very close to Roman Catholicism, the major difference being that the former have the British Monarch instead of the Pope as their Commander-in-Chief. This did nothing to stop Mr. Chambers’ Anglican family (if I interpreted the clues correctly and they are indeed Anglican/Church of Ireland) from having severe problems with Catholics. This is not unusual. The most extreme form of Islam on earth is the American-based Nation of Islam, which regards all white people as the Devil. ISIS and Al Qaeda are extremists, but they do accept white recruits. Another, and even more significant, difference between the NOI on the one hand and ISIS/Al Qaeda on the other is that the latter have mastered infrastructure and logistics while the former have not.
The Protestantism of Mr. Chambers’ family differs enormously from that of Ian Paisley’s Free Presbyterian Church. Mr. Chambers’ father was a member of the Loyal Orange Institution, yet he was allowed to like and emulate Elvis. In America, Elvis was—until he met Richard Nixon, who made him an honourary member of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (the forerunner of today’s Drug Enforcement Administration)—regarded by many Protestants as Satan since his dance moves corrupted young girls. Mr. Chambers speaks of widespread drinking in Glencairn, organised by the UDA. Ian Paisley is reported to have demanded to smell journalists’ breath to see if they had imbibed “the Devil’s brew.” Mr. Chambers, as a teen, became a Mod, something encouraged by the UDA. Ian Paisley, and many of his counterparts in America, would regard this as Satanism.
Despite all of this, Mr. Chambers reports that Ian Paisley was still held in high regard in Glencairn at the time of the Anglo-Irish Diktat. This belies something Mr. Chambers may not have been aware of.
There is a Mainland journalist named Peter Taylor who wrote a book Loyalists. Taylor is widely regarded as an unreliable source and an outsider with an agenda in Ulster, so what I report from his book should be double-checked. One of the things Taylor says is that, at the time of the 1974 Ulster Workers Council strike , Ian Paisley had a confrontation with UDA-UWC liaison Glenn Barr and then UDA head Honcho Andy Tyrie (also from Glencairn, which will be material in a bit.) Paisley wanted to be in charge. Barr and Tyrie refused, Barr physically removing Paisley from the head of the table during a meeting. What Taylor reports is consistent with what Padraig O’Malley quotes Tyrie as saying in The Uncivil Wars, namely that, during the 1980’s, Tyrie wanted peace with SFIRA and was distancing himself from what he called “Paisley’s irresponsibles.”
That, on a macro level, reinforces what A Belfast Child,on a micro level demonstrates, namely that there is no such thing as “Unionism” in real life. Ulster Protestants fight each other as much as they fight SFIRA, and many times, it seems that they are more interested in fighting each other than in fighting SFIRA. But there is one point on which A Belfast Child strongly refutes a thesis of Padraig O’Malley’s in The Uncivil Wars. O’Malley claims that the Anglicans/Church of Ireland members in Ulster are “the Ascendancy,” the ruling class, or, in 21st Century terms, the Downton Abbey Crawleys of Ulster. If I am correct in concluding that Mr. Chambers’ family are indeed Church of Ireland, they torpedo O’Malley’s thesis, since they lived in what is called the projects/the PJs/Section 8 housing in America. This shows that relying on academics is insufficient if one wants to get at what one wants to get at. There is something from O’Malley, however, that would explain some of the horror Mr. Chambers went through at home.
O’Malley says that, in the 1980s—circa the time Mr. Chambers was routinely brutally beaten by that scumbag piece of shit foster parent Alastair—Andy Tyrie, who Taylor quotes as saying he is from Glencairn, was focused on a) condemning UDA killings “of the past,” and b) making peace with SFIRA. Mr. Chambers, you see, came to live with asshole Alastair because his father died and his grandmother, uncles and aunts did not have the resources to take in all four children. (Mr. Chambers’ father was a member of both the UDA and the Orange Order; WHY DID NEITHER ORGANISATION GIVE MONEY TO HIS GRANDMOTHER, AUNTS AND UNCLES SO THAT THE FOUR CHILDREN COULD BE KEPT TOGETHER? IS THIS THE LOYALIST “UNIONISM” I KEEP HEARING ABOUT? If so, “unionism” has an extremely different meaning in Ulster than it does in the rest of the English-speaking world.) There is evidence in the book that strongly suggests that the UDA was very well aware that asshole Alastair was committing serial child abuse on Mr. Chambers. YET THEY DID NOTHING. Since Andy Tyrie, the head honcho of the UDA, lived at Glencairn, his inaction regarding Alastair says a lot about him. Mr. Chambers’ horror is not the only instance of this. Sergeant McCallion reports that a UDA hardman strolled into the station house one day after shooting up Sergeant McCallion’s RMP. Sergeant McCallion said “You make me sick! You shot up my RMP, but you let a little old lady in your neighbourhood get her skull bashed in by a thug for her purse!” at which point Sergeant McCallion showed the UDA hardman photos of the injured old lady before telling the hardman once more “You people make me sick!” Likewise, there is the case of Brian Nelson, the UDA intelligence officer who supplied information to British Army and who took British Army files to the UDA to target SFIRA members. Again, this source is questionable—for one thing, it gives Nelson a code number that is different from the one cited by former Para Tony Geraghty in The Irish War, for another, it has no index—but journalist Nicholas Davies wrote a book Ten-Thirty-Threeabout Brian Nelson. In that book, Davie reports that Nelson went over to the British Army because the UDA refused to take action against a UVF man who tried to rape Nelson’s wife.
The sum of these three pieces of evidence leads to the conclusion that the UDA resembles the street gangs of Fort Apache in New York in the 1970s. They claim to be “protecting the community,” but they are doing anything but. In this regard, Andy Tyrie must have succeeded in making peace with SFIRA because, in Killing Rage, SFIRA cop-killer Eamon Collins, who later turned against SFIRA, reports that there was a lady in his neighbourhood who told SFIRA of each and every little infraction everyone in the neighbourhood was doing so that SFIRA could assault members of their own community. Collins also says that this woman was hated by most of her neighbours, which is consistent with Ann Travers and Mairia Cahill’s stance on SFIRA.
The Glencairn UDA did, however, find the wherewithal to assault, kidnap and tar and feather a woman who went out with a Catholic man. In this regard, they resemble ZANLA and ZIPRA in Rhodesia, the Vietminh in Indochina and the FLN in Algeria, all of who got the “support” of their communities by exemplary slaughters of members of their communities. This incident also speaks to the issue of collusion between the loyalist paramilitaries and the Security Forces.
That there was collusion of some level is not in question. Simply Google the name “Brian Nelson,” which also appears in several books. Does that mean, however, that the Security Forces and the loyalist paramilitaries were interchangeable? No. The incident described in the above paragraph shows that. That incident stands in complete contrast to the procedure described in Forces Research Unit man Rab Lewis’ Fishers Of Men. In contrast to the UDA, the FRU, upon learning that this woman had dated a Catholic man, would have tried to induce her to continue seeing him, then report back to them on what she saw in Catholic areas. Not necessarily Mata Hari sleeping with Gerry Adams, but just observations on new faces and regular faces in Brand-X’s territory. It is clear from the way that poor woman was brutalised that FRU never trained the UDA in this manner.
Another piece of evidence that shows that there was less than a 100% community of interests between the loyalist paramilitaries and the Security Forces is Sergeant McCallion’s book. Sergeant McCallion was a Para. Then he served in South Africa’s elite Reconnaissance Regiments (Reece.) Then he served in the SAS. Lastly, from 1985 until his car accident in 1990, he served in the RUC. Sergeant McCallion recounts how loyalists attacked him and his mates both in his capacity as a Para and in his capacity as an RUC Constable, and later as a Sergeant. From all of this, the most accurate thing one can say of the relationship between the loyalist paramilitaries and the Security Forces is that it was like the relationship between the Cumans/Kipchaqs and the West. In 1091, the Cumans/Kipchaqs allied with the Byzantine Empire’s elite Varangian Guard to defeat the Pechenegs at Drstarin modern-day Bulgaria. But, by the 13th Century, they had invaded and were making a nuisance of themselves in Hungary. Another way of accurately describing the relationship between the loyalist paramilitaries and the Security Forces is to show the similarity to the relationship between the Teutonic Knights and the native Prussians, specifically the Pogesians. At some points, the Pogesians allied with the Order against Scumand’s Sudovians, but, at other points, they attacked the Order.
Nothing in life, you see, is simple. I have the feeling that, if more people were to understand this from the get-go, there would be fewer heartbreaks in general.
Now, enough of my ignorant mouth-holing about Ulster from an ocean away. Let me get to more personal aspects of the book. Mr. Chambers recounts how it was impossible for him during his childhood to get to know Catholics because of the Troubles. This is consistent with what George Best and the author of the Linfield FC book Every Other Saturday have reported. Mr. Chambers also reports living with the prospect of being bombed or shot by SFIRA. This is also something Royal Irish Regiment Captain Doug Beattie, MC, reports about the time of his childhood he spent in Ulster. Mr. Chambers reports on his lifelong quest to see his mother, his joy at finally meeting and getting to know her, and the crushing pain he felt when she died. I was spoiled rotten in comparison. I had my mother with me until last year. I simply failed to love her enough when she was alive. Mr. Chambers reports that he worked in medical records and in the morgue. I studied Biology, Health and Social Services Management and Health Information Management, which means that, unlike Mr. Chambers, I had a wealth of health care knowledge when my mother was diagnosed with vascular dementia just about three years ago. Mr. Chambers was a loving son who did every thing he could for his mother. I am an asshole automaton who simply reacted to my mother’s diagnosis and subsequent slow and horrific decline by following protocol regarding. That protocol says to preserve life above all else, despite the fact that, as well as anyone else in the health care field since the 1980s, have attended countless lectures on quality of life as opposed to mere lack of illness. I tried to keep my mother physically alive, but completely failed to conceive of a way to ameliorate her quality of life because I am stupid, intellectually deficient (YES! I have the documentation to prove this) and completely without imagination.
Mr. Chambers, as I noted in the penultimate entry, was, due to the extremity of his poverty, involved in unofficial supply chain management. Other than violating Darwin’s Law of Natural Selection every time I take a breath—which, unfortunately, is not a capital felony even in a country that supposedly “believes in science”—, I, as far as I can tell, have never committed a crime. Yet, Mr. Chambers is a far better son than I ever could have been. That his mother died was not his fault. That my mother died is due to my lack of imagination, my intellectual deficiency and the fact that I am an unnatural monstrosity whose continued existence on this planet required nature to find a balance by killing two perfectly good people, my brother and my mother.
So, yeah, Mr. Chambers’ last chapters were extremely hard for me to read. That is not his fault. That is mine. These chapters are beautifully and poignantly written. They tell others what Mr. Chambers and I went through in losing our mothers.
But, there are bright aspects to Mr. Chambers’ book.
For one thing, let me compare and contrast Mr. Chambers’ book to the prologue of Taylor’s Loyalists. In this prologue, Taylor speaks of a loyalist named Giles. Giles’ father had joined the UDA in its inception to defend his neighbourhood from SFIRA. Giles himself joined the UVF and was more active than his father. His father and mother were shocked at Giles’ UVF activity, which landed Giles behind bars. Giles did his time, spoke to Taylor, got out and committed suicide. So far, this account corroborates what Mr. Chambers says that the UDA was legal for a long time. Mr. Chambers’ book, however, is far superior to Taylor’s in that it is written in the first person as opposed to merely being answers to Taylor’s questions. The effect is that the reader can fully feel and appreciate Mr. Chambers as a human being in a way they cannot with Giles and Andy Tyrie from their dry, colourless interviews with Taylor.
As well, Mr. Chambers loves to learn, he loves to explore, he loves nature, just as do Mr. Mike and Sergeant Tangye. This will serve him well, as neuroscientist Dr. Daniel J. Levitin reports in Successful Aging—one of the many books I read to try to help my mother after she was diagnosed with vascular dementia but which I was just too plain fucking brain-dead rock stupid to be able to apply in time—a love of exploration is correlated with an increased health span (as opposed to a mere increased lifespan) as well as long preserved cognition. At the same time, Mr. Chambers, like Mr. Mike and Sergeant Tangye, loves nature but does not do a Lermontov/Kōdō-Ha and fanatically advocate a return to a Eden-like fantastic pastoral time that never was as a cure all for the ills of the modern world. This quality cannot be overemphasised. The Kōdō-Ha were a fanatic sect of young Japanese officers who, on 26 February 1936, tried to overthrow the de jure Japanese government, massacring the Prime Minister (a former Naval Officer) and others in the process, before they were wiped out by then Imperial Japanese Gendarmerie OC Hideki Tojo (later hanged for war crimes, which should tell you all you need to know about how stupid it is to divide people into “good guys” and “bad guys.”) Later in the 20th Century, this Kōdō-Ha-obsessed dumbass named Yukio Mishima tried to replicate the 26 February 1936 coup attempt . Mishima was laughed away by the then Japanese Self-Defence Force before own-goaling his dumb, deluded ass off the planet. The scary thing, however, is that Mishima has a cult following among the brainless mopes who spend all their days on the YouTubes. That is why balanced people like Mr. Chambers Mr. Mike and Sergeant Tangye, are such a welcome breath of fresh air.
Mr. Mike is a teacher. That is also key to Mr. Chambers’story. Mr. Chambers reported that his teachers simply did not care about him, leading him to view his prospects dimly. Sergeant McCallion grew up in circumstances similar to those of Mr. Chambers. One big difference was that Sergeant McCallion had a history teacher who cared, who gave him a sense of purpose, enough for him to seek to get out of that life sooner than Mr. Chambers did.
Now, I cannot end this without entering at least a couple of criticisms of the book, to show that I am unbiased, and because I am not a hagiographer. I cannot endorse the Ulster Fry diet. That kind of food is linked to diabetes and heart disease. Likewise, and this is far more a reflection on me than anything else, I simply do not understand Mod music. I listened to some of it on YouTube, but I could not get it. Then again, you must understand that, although I am musically knowledgeable, I am also musically illiterate. Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” (the music of the helicopter assault in Apocalypse Now and Daniel Bryan’s entry music on WWE Smackdown) is supposed to be good music. All it ever did was put me to sleep. By contrast, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, (which I was introduced to because it is the opening theme of the 1931 Bela Lugosi Dracula, and not because I am culturally refined), in its entirety, has always moved me, as does Tchaikovsky’s “Marche Slave” as does “Je Crois Entendre Encore” from Bizet’s Pearl Fishers, an opera my mother got me tickets to because she knew I loved it while all I did for her in return was put her in a care home because that was what the protocol said. Mr. Chambers speaks of heavy metal music and says it does not appeal to him the way Mod music does. Since my brother introduced me to heavy metal to boost my morale when I was failing out of graduate school, I have always loved the genre, and it gets me pumped even today, from Black Sabbath’s “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” (the last two verses perfectly describing how I feel about losing first my brother, then my mother), to Judas Priest and Iron Maiden to today’s Tarja Turunen, Grai and The Hu, the latter whose “This Is Mongol” is my current favourite metal song.
All in all, I highly recommend John Chambers’ ,A Belfast Child just like I highly recommend Sergeant Tangye’s Firearms and Fatals and Mr. Mike’s Owl’s Moonlight. All three books are, in their totality, inspiring stories of courage and hope, something everyone in 2021 could do with.
