Live by the sword, die by the sword.
- Metaphorical expression based on the Book of Matthew, verse 26:52

The Bleeding Hills - A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss

During the research for my book “The Bleeding Hills” I stumbled upon the intriguing story of one charismatic character, British Captain Robert Nairac, an undercover agent active during the Irish troubles (For more references see the hyperlinks at the end of this article). While Irish republicans consider him a butcher, and the British Army calls him a war hero, they all share the view that “he was strange” – to use a mild expression.

First of all, after studying various articles on the life and death of Robert Nairac, I have come to the conclusion that Nairac was driven by a death wish, a point that may not be disputed by many of those who knew him. My next conclusion may be, however, far more controversial. After applying a simple method of studying behavioral patterns and comparing it to recent as well as historical cases, I have come to the personal conclusion that Captain Robert Nairac was either gay and/or the victim of sexual abuse during his childhood.

Before I go into further details let me make a statement to counter some potential accusations such as smearing the memory of a British soldier on one end or discrimination of gay rights at the other. I strongly support the view that homosexuality is not a mental disorder. In the same sense, a person’s sexual orientation is not a matter of choice; individuals have no more choice about being homosexual than heterosexual. I am heterosexual, but I accept homosexuality as a different form of life style.

My conclusion that Robert Nairac was gay is still a theory and I am far from trying to cast a blame of any sort; my mere intention was to find an understanding of Nairac’s irrational behavior. An irrational behavior is not necessarily a typical gay feature, but the development of a homosexual identity is a complex and often difficult process, especially in an environment that is either ignorant of or openly hostile towards homosexuality (as much can be assumed of the British armed forces during the 1970’s). I believe, Nairac, during the years before his death, had trouble dealing with the so-called second phase of “coming out”. The first phase, the internal coming out, is the realization that one is open to same-sex relationships. The second phase involves one’s decision to come out to others, e.g. family, friends, and/or colleagues, which would have been a daunting task for Nairac considering the times and society he lived in. He had to deal with social isolation, the feeling that he was different from peers, feeling guilty about his sexual orientation, worrying about the responses from family and loved ones, fearing discrimination, and the fear of being rejected and harassed by others.

Nairac has been described as being highly intelligent, cocky at times, being a loner, but nevertheless liked the limelight, not a Smiley figure content to stay in the shadows, was instilled in his psyche with a kind of romantic intensity, single-minded and charismatic. He went to Oxford to study medieval and military history and here he showed the first signs of standing out from the crowd. He kept a trained hawk in his bedroom and wore a Grenadier Guards uniform during exams (Michael Jackson comes to mind). After Oxford Nairac attended the Sandhurst military academy, and while most soldiers tried to avoid the province, Nairac volunteered to serve in Northern Ireland. A colleague described him as having “another element which made me think that I couldn’t quite trust the guy or begin to work him out.” There are many more, very similar comments about Nairac, indicating a great deal of ignorance on behalf of the sources, which is understandable considering that at today’s times we are much more familiar with lesbians, gays, and bi-sexuals than 1970’s Europe.

Nairac also showed a tendency towards the flamboyant. He was seen heading out on patrol, just on his own, parading through the streets of Belfast, wearing a cowboy hat, trainers, and a pump-action shotgun, which is, needless to say, against British military code. The recklessness of his actions must be seen under the aspect that he, in his capacity as an undercover agent, had been frequenting local IRA or loyalist bars. That was also the case the night before his lone parade and it took place in the same neighborhood (I am reminded of the movie Die Hard With A Vengeance where Bruce Willis wears a sign “I hate N…” in the middle of Harlem). Talking about a death wish. As reporter Eamann O’Neill of the Esquire put it, “To describe this as reckless would be generous. Perhaps Nairac simply thought he was different, that the normal rules didn’t apply to him … that he had ruled himself out as a target. Perhaps he was working to a secret agenda. Perhaps he was out of control.” I say, perhaps he, the Roman Catholic, felt guilty about his sexual orientation and was looking for punishment.

Nairac has often been compared to another British war hero who had displayed a similar strange and self-destructive behavior. This man was Thomas Edward Lawrence, most famously known as Lawrence of Arabia. Both men, Nairac and Lawrence, are considered war heroes, yet showed a pattern of irregular behavior, even a death wish. Some historians had suspected that Lawrence was gay, especially since he had once written that he did not find homosexuality morally wrong, but nevertheless distasteful. Like Nairac he was looking for punishment; he hired people to whip him. Many photographs show Lawrence wearing an Arab garb, which can also be seen as an affiliation with the flamboyant.

There are two other, very famous examples of gay people who went through the same process as Nairac, ironically at the same time and in the same country, however, with a less destructive tendency. Those two examples are Elton John (born 1947) and Freddy Mercury (born 1946) – Note: Nairac was born in 1948.  Let’s recap some of Nairac’s properties: Highly intelligent, cocky, liked the limelight, romantic intensity, charismatic. The same attributes apply to Elton John and Freddy Mercury, who both had the luxury of coming out in an environment where homosexuality was increasingly accepted as a different form of lifestyle. They both had their difficulties, though, going through the phases of coming out. Elton John, for instance, married a German woman in 1984, until, after the divorce four years later, he came out as gay. Freddy Mercury had a long-term relationship with a girlfriend before he started sexual relationships with other men. Both men went through phases of flamboyant public display. On a side note, Mercury always desribed himself as an introvert in private life. The extravert personality came only out during his performances.

Still, features like being highly intelligent, cocky, liking the limelight, owning a romantic intensity, and being charismatic does not provide enough evidence for homosexuality. However, add to this the typical features during the ”coming out” phase such as social isolation (Nairac has been described as a loner) and a tendency towards depression, even suicide. In his article titled “shadow man” Eamann O’Neill quotes a former high-ranking military source as saying, “It’s simple: Nairac didn’t just stick his head into the lion’s mouth – that wouldn’t have been enough for him. Instead, he had to go and stick it right up the lion’s arse.”

During his duty in Northern Ireland, especially between 1974 and 1977, the year he was killed, Nairac has been accused of planning and/or executing a considerable number of shootings and bombings targeted against Republicans and Loyalists alike. In 1974 Nairac partnered with an SAS man, Julian “Tony” Ball, and it is said that Nairac “was going out with Ball in the evenings, shooting Catholics one night and Protestants the next.” In military terms this irrational pattern could be explained as “working the enemy”, but these men were simply out of control and in the summer of 1975, on military orders, Nairac and Ball were split up. Ball died a few years later in a car accident, while Nairac’s self-destructive behavior seemed to have amplified after the forced break-up. Another movie comes to mind, Brokeback Mountain, where Jake Gyllenhall’s character, Jack Twist, is killed, because in the end he took too many chances. Like Jack Twist in the movie, Robert Nairac took too many chances in real life and that got him killed eventually.

There is still a great deal of speculation regarding the exact circumstances of Nairac’s abduction and killing and I would like to add another aspect to the abduction part. Let’s first look at some details that are widely agreed on: 1. Nairac displayed a behavior, including his cockiness, that rubbed some people the wrong way, 2. The men Nairac ran into were not IRA men, and 3. The men who beat and abducted him did not know who he was. Nairac’s killing was a far cry from a military-style execution and IRA seniors were furious about the circumstances of Nairac’s killing. There are speculation that the IRA themselves had turned over the suspects to the Garda and RUC. My conclusion is that Nairac’s abduction, at least initially, had nothing to do with the view that a spy was caught in the act. Nairac, intentionally or not, did provoke a brawl in the Three Steps Inn, which resulted in a severe beating in the parking area, his abduction and consequently his killing. The cause of the initial brawl is unknown to this day, but it may be that Nairac had simply provoked people with his cocky behavior. After all, it was almost closing time at the pub and nearly everybody, including Nairac, was drunk. In the worst case scenario it may even be that Nairac, drunk as he was, went too far and actually hit on one of the men. The last scenario would explain the intensity of the beating.

While I have made the case that Captain Robert Nairac was gay – because his behavior definitely points in that direction – I could not explain his violent side, which was the only atypical feature on Nairac. The only other explanation would be sexual abuse during his childhood and, until now, I had no evidence supporting this theory. Sexual abuse could mean that Nairac was unable to have sexual relationships with women or even maintain a long-lasting homosexual relationship. Sexual abuse would also explain his relationship with Julian “Tony” Ball, which was not necessarily a sexual relationship, but a partnership to commit violent acts for the sake of violence. Ball has been described as “a nasty bit of work — a psychotic … He bit his fingernails down to the white half-moons and was living on his nerves continually, possibly taking drugs.”

On May 21, 2009 I read an article in the Washington Post titled Pupils Abused For Decades in Irish Schools and there is no connection to the Nairac case. It did, however, trigger a thought and I started looking for similar abuse cases in Great Britain. Imagine my surprise that the most recently discovered case of sexual abuse took place at the Ampleforth College. Ampleforth College in North Yorkshire, England, is the largest private Catholic mixed boarding school in the United Kingdom. According to The Guardian (November 18, 2005), “For three decades between 1966 and 1995, a number of boys at the school endured sexual abuse at the hands of some of the monks who taught there, assaults that ranged from relatively minor incidents to, allegedly, rape.”

Robert Nairac attended Ampleforth College starting in 1959, which is outside the time range of the reported alleged incidents. However, I found another reference written by a former pupil who attended Ampleforth College between 1958 and 1963. I quote: “There were a lot of stories about sexual incidents among the boys and monks. Most of them were not true. Boys like to make up stories. Yet some of them were true. It was the practice that if a monk became too friendly with the boys he would be sent away to be a parish priest in Yorkshire, where he probably continued to seek out young boys.” The same source also writes “the housemaster rejoiced in summoning the boys to his study in rotation either to be beaten or to be given embarrassing and uninformed talks on sex, of which they had no experience and hence only theoretical knowledge. These summonings could often arise after the boy was asleep so that he had to be woken up. In this state the victim is more vulnerable.”

If my theory of sexual abuse is correct, it would be haunting to think about the many senseless killings that have been caused by these despicable actions. The blame is not only on those who committed the crime of sexual abuse, but especially on those who knew about it and looked away. Regardless of his sexual orientation and how history judges him, Captain Robert Nairac will remain one of the most charismatic characters of the Irish troubles and the account of his life and death will remain one of the most intruiging stories.

About the life and death of Captain Robert Nairac:
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sunday-life/news/nairac-an-undercover-hero-or-a-maverick-fool-13903699.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1020695/Heroic-undercover-soldier-Robert-Nairac-savagely-executed-IRA-Will-yesterday-arrest-solve-mystery-missing-body.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3972512.ece
http://www.irishecho.com/search/searchstory.cfm?id=3862&issueid=90
http://samilitaryhistory.org/lectures/nairac.html

Child sex abuse at Ampleforth College:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/3344090/Leading-Catholic-school-is-focus-of-abuse-inquiry.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article720925.ece
http://onwardoverland.com/articles/ampleforthabuse.html