Alexander Cary won an Emmy Award for his work on the television show “Homeland” in part by writing what he knows.
In the hit Showtime program, Carrie Mathison and Saul Berenson are no strangers to explosions and their gruesome aftermath. As it turns out, neither is Cary.
Before his career in Hollywood, Cary was a soldier, serving in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and in Iraq during the Gulf War.
When he sat down with KTLA’s Frank Buckley on “Frank Buckley Interviews” to discuss his newest project, MGM+’s “A Spy Among Friends,” Cary also opened up about the time he helped save a fellow soldier’s life in Northern Ireland.
Cary, a young officer in the Scots Guards in the British Army, served as commander of the Army’s Quick Reaction Force in South Armagh in the 1980s.
One day, when Cary was on patrol in a helicopter with the QRF, the heard reports of British soldiers being struck by mortar fire from the Irish Republican Army.
“We responded and flew into that situation and landed,” he said. “They had sustained one fairly major casualty. It was a young soldier, I think he was only 17 at the time, who basically had his arm blown off, or his hand. We put him on a helicopter and got him into the hospital.”
That soldier survived the ordeal and actually had his life changed in a few ways that day, Cary said.
“Not only was his life saved, he met his wife there. They have children, so it’s the most amazing story after what we did,” he said.
Cary and the soldier, Patrick Provis, were profiled a few years ago on the BBC show “The Gift,” which the Belfast Telegraph described as a “two-year mission to reunite people with others who they have long wanted to say thank you or sorry to.”
Cary “defied military protocol” in rescuing Provis, as the IRA was known to set off one explosion, then detonate a secondary device to attack those who came to rescue the first round of victims, the Telegraph wrote.
“It was done on many occasions. The potential was there to lose everyone,” Provis told the BBC.
While Provis praised Cary for his heroism, the Hollywood writer did the same, noting the teen was “tough on that helicopter, I remember that.”
“I cannot imagine what kind of courage it takes to deal with an injury like that,” Cary added to the BBC.
The Telegraph’s account, which lists Provis as being 19 at the time of the attack, confirms the most heartwarming part of Cary’s account: Provis indeed met Jamey, his wife and the mother of their five children, while recuperating from his wounds.
“What you have given me is my life and a family, a great family,” Provis told Cary on the BBC program.