‘It wasn’t always safe to wear my Army uniform in public – but it made me feel proud’

The cowardly knife attack on a senior officer will strike a chord with anyone who, like me, has served in the Forces – but we’re not afraid

The news today is shocking. A British Army officer is fighting for his life in hospital after a cowardly knife attack. The authorities are suggesting that this “is not believed to be terror-related”, but, nonetheless, the assailant appears to have been a stranger who chose his target simply because he was wearing uniform.
It’s a situation that will strike a chord with anyone who has served in the Armed Forces, especially those, like me, who were in uniform back before the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Up until then, the Provisional IRA (PIRA), one of the most dangerous and professional terrorist organisations there has ever been, regarded British servicemen as legitimate targets in any circumstances. 
It remained a stated PIRA aim to kill us wherever we could be reached – especially off-duty and unarmed, as it was much safer for them that way. Particularly high-value targets such as members of the special forces didn’t reveal their full real names even in their own units, in case someone should be captured, tortured and forced to give up details of his comrades.
Against that sort of background, walking around in public wearing uniform could sometimes make one feel a little bit vulnerable. Indeed, in those days, it was forbidden to do so off-duty.
The threat was real, but nonetheless the security precautions didn’t always make a lot of sense. I remember as a Royal Navy cadet at Dartmouth being very firmly told that we were not to wear uniform “ashore” – for instance when going into town to visit a pub. But there were still extremely strict rules on civilian attire: at a minimum, aspiring officers had to wear a smart jacket with neatly pressed trousers – not jeans, God forbid – a crisply ironed dress shirt without pockets and with double cuffs and cufflinks, of course a tie, and one of the approved types of shoe, gleaming with polish.
We weren’t hard to pick out – we might as well have been wearing uniform. Indeed, there’s an old joke about Army officers, with all their many regiments and corps, all with their different non-uniform “uniforms”: the only time they dress the same is when they’re in civvies (sorry, “plain clothes” for officers).
In any case, there were still occasions when I and others would wear uniform in public. I later became a bomb-disposal operator on the UK mainland, among various other tasks at the time, and spent several years working among the public in uniform and unarmed.
Sometimes, I’d be working with the police: in my experience the number of coppers likely to turn up would vary with the weather and the location. On a sunny day on a sandy beach, dealing perhaps with an old sea mine, the police presence could easily run to a dozen officers commanded by an inspector or higher. In heavy rain, dealing with an unexploded artillery shell in a muddy field, you’d be lucky to get a single miserable constable. It didn’t really matter in terms of my security: the police are usually unarmed too.
In any case, often there wouldn’t be any police and we would handle things ourselves. It wouldn’t be unusual for just me and my No. 2 operator to attend an incident. And yes, we knew we were in uniform and driving a marked military vehicle containing a fair amount of explosives. I personally thought, and argued in writing, that the explosives and detonators were a desirable target for various undesirable people, and that we should be armed for that reason: but not because we were in uniform and identifiable.
The fact is that I never felt in any danger from the British public, even though there clearly are a tiny minority who wish the Armed Forces harm. Even the threat from PIRA was pretty much nothing compared to the risk peacetime service posed to my life: of being in a car crash or a training accident.
If you were on some kind of active or dangerous duty, as a lot of servicemen are all the time, the danger of a PIRA attack while off-duty would pale into insignificance.
Nowadays, PIRA have long since made their peace with us, though a few dissident republicans are still fighting their senseless war. The main threat now is Islamist terrorists, like the two who murdered Fusilier Lee Rigby in 2013, and – perhaps – the man who attacked one of our soldiers this week.
I would personally suggest that today’s domestic Islamist terrorists are less numerous and considerably less professional than PIRA was. After Rigby’s death, the top brass nonetheless decided to return to the PIRA era, and issued a renewed ban on uniforms in public. But this led to an instant backlash among the Armed Forces, with many posting photos on social media in their uniforms, and the ban was overturned by then prime minister David Cameron.
I think he was right, and I would certainly not criticise our injured soldier today for wearing his uniform. I was proud to wear mine in public and I would hate anyone to think that my comrades and I are afraid of terrorists. Frankly, any serviceman seriously concerned about such an attack is probably in the wrong job.
These days, I’m no longer a serviceman. I’m a member of the public myself, and I know that the huge majority of us respect our service personnel and are grateful to them. We expect them to be proud, and reasonably brave. Wearing uniform off-duty is a sure sign that they are.