A WOMAN from the Newton Abbot area who survived being shot four times by an IRA assassin on the streets of Belfast is finding a new zest for living after winning a silver medal at an international games event for military veterans.

Caroline Beazley’s promising career in the Royal Military Police was cut tragically short by a paramilitary sniper 25 years ago when she became the only serving regular female soldier to be targeted by the republican army during the infamous Troubles in Northern Ireland.

She has fought back from the physical and mental scars inflicted on her to win honours in a swimming event at the first ever Veteran Games in Israel.

Caroline, 48, who lives just outside the town, said the achievement in Tel Aviv served as an important milestone in her long and painful recovery from the dark days of her nightmare in the New Lodge area of north Belfast on January 12, 1994.

Only now, after the ‘amazing’ experience of her sporting get-together with other combat casualties, did she feel comfortable telling her astonishing story to the news media for the first time.

She retains vivid memories of the moment shots rang out like ‘cracking fireworks’ from the barrel of a notorious AK47 Kalashnikov, the IRA’s favoured weapon of despatch.

The instrument of death was fired just 10 metres away by the would-be killer hidden in the front room of a terraced property she and her colleagues were passing.

Caroline, whose job it was to search female suspects, was unarmed. It is probable that her life was saved because she was wearing an ill-fitting man-size helmet on the day of the attack.

One bullet passed straight through the protective headgear and the padding she packed it with to make it a snug fit.

The trio of other bullets zipped through her lower back, face and right hand, a devastating array of life-threatening injuries which she refused to be killed off by.

‘I knew that if I shut my eyes as I lay on the ground in a pool of blood and knocked-out teeth I would not wake up again,’ she told the Mid-Devon Advertiser this week.

She added: ‘My first thoughts were obviously of my family, people I loved. And I so desperately didn’t want to die alone on the streets of Belfast.’

The gutsy girl of just 22 said the same ‘can do’ spirit helped her overcome half a lifetime of adversity to gain honours in the Veteran Games and linked mental health conference.

‘It was an amazing time with so much positive energy about. I met so many incredible people out there – amputees, people in wheelchairs, those with mental health issue.

‘The experience was full-on. It made me feel me so proud. All us were treated like kings and queens,’ said Caroline after her success.

She added: ‘I have been in a dark place for many years – and I’m not back totally even now. I have a way to go. But I am so much more in a better place now than I was only two years ago.’

COURAGE

Growing confidence in herself and what life can still offer has fuelled the courage to tell her story openly for the first time.

‘I’ve found that if you live in fear, as I have, you will never move forward. When you take a few knocks you need to rebuild yourself.

‘I still doubt myself – but not as much as perhaps I did just a few months ago. Life now is good – and it can get even better,’ she declared.

But she will never forget the day her mortal existence rested on the faintest of heartbeats.

‘I was so young, just starting out on a very promising career. Colleagues always told me I was driven and determined – that I would get promoted quickly. All that was taken away from me on that day by the simple pull of a trigger… five rounds from a gun, four of which hit me. It was devastating,’ she recalled.

Even in her bleakest hour humour shone a speck of light. She remembers being carried to an awaiting Royal Ulster Constabulary Land Rover where she was unceremoniously dumped face-down in the back of the vehicle with her helpers shouting: ‘It’s OK son. You’ll be all right.’

Her facial injuries were so horrific that her rescuers could not see that he was a she.

‘It’s only when my clothes were torn off in hospital that my true identity was known,’ chuckled Caroline, who is 48 and lives at home with her much-adored 17-year-old son James.

‘I remember looking at myself in the mirror in hospital, the first time I had seen myself since the shooting.

‘Staring back at me was a swollen, scarred, broken face, unrecognisable as the person I once was. My face and head were held together with what I can only describe as facial scaffolding.

‘Pins in my chin and forehead, a silver frame connected by nuts and bolts, and my teeth wired up like a character from a James Bond movie.

‘My only form of verbal communication was a hole in my throat which I had to cover to make a sound.’

She revealed how her colleagues had broken rules to chase the gunmen as he ran off from his hiding place.

The procedure of pursuit was forbidden because such lairs were known to be booby-trapped. And so it was when 50 minutes after the shooting the terraced property was blown to bits by a bomb left as a parting gift by the thwarted executioner.

A man was arrested near the scene – but insufficient evidence allowed him to walk free.

Caroline later learned that the suspect had been living not far from her during a subsequent stay in Ireland.

‘If I had known that, I would have left straight away,’ she said.

One question she kept asking herself during her lengthy stay in hospital was: ‘What the hell am I going to do now?’

DARK MOMENTS

She conceded: ‘There were dark moments. Sometimes I found myself wishing I didn’t make it, but my family were with me every step of the way, sitting with me, comforting me, telling me I could go on, to be strong.

‘It’s not been an easy ride. I’m not there yet, but I have my lovely family around me and my wonderful son to help me along the road ahead.’

Caroline, who works part-time for Rowcroft Hospice and was invited to the Games by the Not Forgotten Association, is hoping to be able to return to competitive sport and compete in more events.

‘They have shown me that I am still me,’ she observed.

‘I’m still that competitive, driven 22-year-old – and I’m so grateful I was invited to take part in Israel. I have met some wonderful inspiring athletes, with both physical and mental disabilities.

‘They were doing things and taking on challenges you wouldn’t have thought possible. That is the power of the veteran community.

‘We are all one family, no matter what service we come from... bound together by an invisible thread.’

She thanked all the Games sponsors, including the Royal Marines Charity and the Beit Halochem, for allowing her to rediscover her former feisty fun-loving self.