by Simon Cursey
‘If they stand up with some form of explosive device or aiming a weapon and are a direct threat, that will be the signal to open fire on our designated targets with the SMGs.’ He also contacted our backup car to move in a little closer, but to stay off the main street and await instructions. The lads downstairs took up positions to cover the rear area and the guys at HQ acknowledged, as they all could clearly hear our conversations while they listened in on the radios.
The air was still and what seemed like hours going by were only a few moments. My window was slightly ajar and the muzzle end of my SMG was just inside the opening. My heart was pounding in my chest while I held my aim at the point where the men had ducked down. I was controlling my breathing, trying to keep it slow and calm, preparing to open fire and straining to listen to what they were doing or saying, although I could hear nothing. Kev, who was with me, slowly moved back into the room, away from the window and huddled down in the corner furthest from me, whispering on the radio. He was on the air informing base HQ, together with everyone else listening in, of the possible attack, and noting the time and the descriptions of the two men.
Then without warning they jumped up side by side, looking very confident, one man holding a petrol bomb in his right hand and leaning back preparing to throw it at the lower windows just below us. The other, with a large nail or pipe bomb in one hand and a pistol in the other, just stood there as if to innocently observe what was about to happen. There were no vehicles or other people in the area; they had arrived on foot and were alone. Just as we had practiced a thousand times, I drew my breath with my eyes fixed on my target, exhaled about 30 per cent, held it, checked my aim and opened fire from the bedroom window at the same time as the other SMG at a range of about six or seven metres. They fell and the petrol bomb was on the floor, still alight but not broken, as I could see from the glow of the device. It was all very quick and over in less than four or five seconds.
I whispered to Kev while he was moving back towards me at the window: ‘Two men down. One man has managed to crawl away up the street behind the wall on hands and knees but I’m sure he’s badly hurt.’
We both had a clear view and we could see that the man lying on the ground wasn’t moving. Nonetheless, he was still there and still a threat, if only a minor one. We didn’t know for certain of his condition and he could have jumped up with the gun or bomb he had, at any moment, or perhaps be calling in some support on a radio.
We slowly and gently closed our windows a little way and I waited and observed in case he made a move, while Kev transmitted his contact report. The four-man team downstairs with Mike were covering the rear of the building in case a secondary attack was launched from there. Kev also contacted the backup car to stay in position unit all was clear and await instructions. We didn’t feel it was worth them showing themselves to search for the injured terrorist. He was obviously in a bad way and would turn up sooner or later.
Our procedure after a contact was to silently wait and observe in case of follow-up by an ASU. We were using silenced SMGs, producing little more noise than if you were tapping a wall with a pen, more like a tap than a bang. The only disadvantage with silenced weapons is that they lose much of their hitting power, although at six or seven metres range and firing four to six rounds each they’ll stop any man: they might not kill him outright, but it would ruin his day in a big way.
Within moments of the shooting, the streets were silent again, not a movement or a light going on anywhere. Nobody heard or saw a thing … just the way we wanted it. A few minutes later, a uniformed patrol arrived in a Land Rover, pulled up, checked the body and lifted it into the back of the truck, with the devices on the floor. It all appeared very matter-of-fact. To any innocent onlookers, it would seem as if the Army had simply picked up a drunk from the streets and taken him away to sober up. The troops didn’t even look in our direction. They flushed the pavement with a bucket of water and then left a few moments later.
Mike came up to see us. ‘Well done lads, that was nice and quiet. We’ll just hold our positions and observe till we pull out.’
We held our positions until just before first light at about 5:30 am and then with our radios and SMGs bagged up, one group covered the other as we moved out through the back gardens. We RV’d about half a mile away, near the junction of Castlereagh and Knockbreda roads, to be picked up by the standby section in the area, which had been waiting near there in case everything went pear-shaped.
On our return to base HQ, after cleaning and handing in our equipment, we piled into the operations room for a debriefing to make out our reports over some hot tea. Later, we signed the section off duty before going to breakfast at 7:30 am. We spent the rest of the day lounging about discussing the events of the previous night, reading and sleeping, and then we all piled off to the canteen at 6:30 pm for a good feed before we signed ourselves on as standby section and drew our weapons at 8:00 pm. The rest of the evening was spent relaxing and watching TV, in between periodically checking with the ops room in case we were needed.
A few days later, we were informed that the body of a man was found in the boot of a car in a side road out of town towards Newtownards. He had four 9mm gunshot wounds to his chest and shoulder. As for the player the troops took away, little was known or said and perhaps it was just listed as another body found or as somebody who had simply disappeared, as happened to quite a few people during that chaotic period, but I doubt it, he’ll be registered somewhere.
This type of operation was successful for more reasons than just destroying the enemy: it also made the IRA nervous of mounting such attacks. They knew we were around, operating in the area of Belfast, but had little idea of who we were and when and where we would strike at them – especially in such a deadly silent, deliberate way. They really didn’t appreciate the way we operated and often voiced complaints of our so-called underhand, cloak-and-dagger methods.
We didn’t care. We had a job to do and if the IRA didn’t like the way we did it, that was just tough on them. We were really far too busy to be answering snivelling complaints from the so-called Irish Republican Army. They took great pride in killing, maiming, and destroying people’s lives, but they felt totally cheated and insulted when we covertly and aggressively hit them back as hard as we could.
Earlier, when I was in training for the MRF, one of the instructors regularly told us, ‘You have to be like, and think like a terrorist in order to beat one.’
Those words have stayed with me ever since, and I soon learned how true they really were after seeing how conventional, uniformed military methods simply don’t appear to work very well in a restrictive, urban guerrilla-warfare environment. Even today, terrorists seem to screw the system. They play on the security methods we use and turn those methods to their advantage. I feel that the best way to eradicate terrorists is to obviously always try diplomacy and negotiate a lasting peace. But if that doesn’t work, I feel it is best to send out small, specialised hard hitting units to literally hunt them down and hit them extremely hard. But I know it’s not easy in today’s environment but we’re slowly getting there.
Chapter Eleven - A Faceless Enemy
We were involved in many types of surveillance operation and a lot of them were very uneventful – like so many other operations we took part in. We spent hours and sometimes days just sitting around, doing nothing and waiting. That is similar to operations in other conflict areas … 95 per cent of the time consists of hanging around twiddling thumbs and then for the remaining five per cent all hell is let loose and everything is happening at once. That, though, is the five per cent when your training really shows and when everything clicks and falls into place, as best it can in the chaos. The four of us in our subsection discovered that we moulded together and automatically acted and operated as one. Almost being able to read each other’s thoughts, we moved and covered each other with almost nothing being said.
Like all military units, we had our successes and also our o
ccasional failures. Battles and fire-fights are fluid environments and everything can change at a moment’s notice. Having access to reliable information and being well trained and flexible enough to bend with the situation is absolutely essential.
Thankfully we had far more success than failure and this can be seen by the lack of detailed, accurate publicity and information that arose regarding MRF operations. Very few people knew anything about us, our operations or our successes. Even the few operations we were involved in that did create some media and public interest remained pretty much secret, and very few people knew for sure who was really involved.
It was the Army itself that eventually weakened and compromised us, allowing the Press and public to pick up on a small element of our activities. We were tasked with far too many commitments and way too much ‘in-your-face’ active. The government allowed the Army to feed us to the wolves by claiming we were to be soon disbanded, but this in turn only resulted in a shuffle of name changes during 1973 and 1974, creating confusion everywhere while, in fact, 14 Intelligence Company was developing in its shadows. Many MRF personnel were part of the newly forming 14 Int. and very few actually departed for anywhere. We just underwent a period of changing identity while continuing with our ongoing commitments. To us in the sections, there was little change except a toning down of some of our operations.
Perhaps we in the MRF were a little more successful than was originally anticipated. Perhaps we really were being used as ‘cannon fodder’, as my brother said to me some seven years earlier. Perhaps the Army was testing the water with us to see what happened and not expecting us to survive or last so long. Perhaps that’s the reason why we were, for years, such a very small unit.
A larger unit is anyway far too difficult to hide away in the shadows of the military system. Perhaps they were using us to evaluate and analyse the best way to evolve and develop 14 Int. at a later date. Who really knows? I don’t know, but one thing I am quite sure of … it wasn’t Oswald alone that shot Kennedy.
In a place like Ulster in the early 1970s and on, into the 90s, you tended to build a special kind of friendship when every night there were gunfights or bombs going off all around you. Some people call it camaraderie but I think it’s more than that. Camaraderie is normal in the long-term close environment of a barrack room in the average military unit. But in a conflict zone like Ulster, and later the Falklands, the Gulf wars or Afghanistan, when you can be literally blown to bits or shot dead at any moment, something more profound develops.
You and your friends become totally reliant on each other for everyone’s survival. That’s a different kind of camaraderie altogether, quite an emotional feeling that non-combatants will never understand. It stays with you for life.
You can see this almost every day, when World War Two and Vietnam veterans are seen on TV programmes or parading in the city streets wearing their regimental badges, medals and berets. This display of loyalty and lifelong friendship is much more than the normal unit camaraderie most people understand and accept. I personally don’t parade in the streets, except on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month (Remembrance Day). When I’m in UK and I have the opportunity, I’ll join the onlookers and mingle with the crowd. When I’m not, I’ll usually watch the ceremony on TV. However, I do have a little corner of my home where I keep some things as a personal remembrance and sometimes I stand and look at them.
You probably think that the Ulster conflict wasn’t or isn’t the same as the Falklands or the early part of the Gulf wars and you would be right. The main difference with Ulster, in some ways similar to the cities of Iraq and Afghanistan now, is that the enemy was everywhere and faceless and wore no uniform. Very rarely would they stand and fight, although they were always ready to strike at a moment’s notice. Also, Ulster is British soil and very close to home, which means the Press and cameras are on top of you, constantly hanging on every word or action: it was very frustrating.
I know that the Falklands was a hard slog and had its own set of problems and setbacks – I was there too. I appreciate that the Gulf had its difficulties with the hard living conditions, wide-open deserts and the Yanks hitting us from behind without warning. I also had an involvement in Desert Storm. But generally speaking, in the Falklands and early stages of the Gulf wars, the enemy was to the front and wore a military uniform that was quite recognisable.
During my time with the MRF, we were involved in and tasked with some quite dangerous and hair-raising operations, but I can’t remember any one in any of our sections ever refusing an operation. Occasionally we had our concerns, but none of us ever refused a job.
Often I felt lucky not to have to be in uniform, walking the streets like a figure 11 target – which I had done in the past – just waiting for a sniper to take a shot at me. Working in plain clothes, we could quickly slip out of sight and blend into the shadows if a situation turned dodgy. We’d wait and observe until the right time to make our move.
When I was operating undercover in plain clothes I looked as rough as any of the worst IRA players. I blended in with my surroundings and usually felt quite secure. If I came across some bad boys and they looked me over from across the street, I just looked back at them the same way. They wouldn’t know for sure who I was and they normally avoided close contact, at least initially, because of their uncertainty. Perhaps they felt I might even be part of an ASU operating from another area, on a mission and not to be interfered with. All that worked in our favour. On the streets, we had to look like and act like the terrorists, pretending to be one of them, because if we didn’t we were dead.
I saw much death, pain and misery during my time in Ulster, like many other soldiers over there – surely far more than the average person on the UK streets could ever imagine. It’s strange, but thinking back I very rarely felt any great fear or concern for my own life. I was usually more concerned about others in the unit and being caught up in a bomb blast and being crippled, perhaps losing a leg or an arm. Being bedridden or wheelchair-bound for the rest of my days was my greatest fear. Death was a simple final solution but being crippled or disfigured, with the concomitant never-ending pain and misery, was the one thing I didn’t want to happen to me. I think many of us felt this way. I was always far more concerned for my colleagues lives rather than my own; but that’s not to say I, or any of us, were reckless. We all knew the risks and we planned all our operations meticulously and down to the smallest detail.
An interesting little surveillance operation I was part of started in the area of Andersonstown and was initially mobile surveillance (in cars). The operation lasted for some four hours and ended up with a change to foot surveillance around the city centre.
All we had to do was follow a chap, make notes and try to photograph anyone he made contact with. We had four cars involved, Alfa, Bravo, Charlie and Delta, with our team shared out amongst them. Mike and Tug were in Alfa, I was in Bravo with Kev, Colin and John were in Charlie, with Dave and Ben in Delta.
In our briefing we were told that our target would be driving a maroon-coloured Hillman Minx. We had the registration number with a description and photographs of the driver. We were to make our pickup (‘first contact’) in the area of Glenhill Park, and from there we were simply to follow, writing notes and taking photographs.
We drew our weapons, radios and map-books and set off individually, performing radio checks as we left. We made our way to the pickup location and were all in position in good time in the general area of Glenhill Park and Fruithill Park. We had spread ourselves so all the roads in and out of the area were covered from a distance, and once again we carried out a radio check. We had no idea which direction our man would be coming from or where he would be going. Any one of us might have had to take the lead when he appeared, so we all had to be on the ball and ready to move when he showed up. We had been waiting around for almost an hour, moving around from position to position, when suddenly he appeared driving northwest along Kennedy Way
in the Minx.
Colin, with John driving, was in the best position and off we went with them in the lead. The traffic at the time was quite light, and the weather was cloudy but calm with a chill in the air. Colin in car Charlie was approximately a hundred metres behind the target with the rest of us strung out another few hundred metres behind him. Colin was giving us a good commentary on the radio as they moved towards the city centre.
The target car stopped by the school opposite Broadway and the driver spoke to another man. By this time Dave and Ben had taken over the lead position and Dave got about three photos of the other man as he and the target chatted.
When our target set off again, Kev and I assumed the lead and we followed him around the Markets area of the city. Meanwhile, our other cars closed up and moved nearer, we all moved into various positions so we could cover the target from all sides and directions as we entered the main part of the city. From there Mike with Tug took over the lead until we were over near the Europa hotel on Great Victoria Street. Moments later Colin took over again and before we knew it, he came up quickly on the air saying: ‘On foot, on foot, on foot!’
The target had parked in a car park near College Square North and was now walking. Immediately we all moved up much closer while Colin and John locked up their car and followed him. John was in front with Colin backing him up until the rest of us managed to deploy around the area. I was already out and on foot with Dave while Mike was still parking his car. Our drivers stayed with the cars and periodically brought them forward as we moved along. The streets were quite busy with shoppers and the weather was still clear and calm.