by Simon Cursey
We decided that if we were ever seen dealing with anyone, we knew that we would be on our own. We were all volunteers and most of us had been operators and worked together a long time; we knew we were there to carry out an important task, and we understood the nature of that task. The Army didn’t supply us with silenced submachine-guns because they expected us to act like the uniformed services. It appeared that the terrorists had to be stopped one way or another. Getting caught wasn’t a big issue or great fear for us, we knew the area and how to operate. Most of us felt relieved that our leash appeared it was being loosened, at long last.
We felt we were indirectly being sanctioned to go out and specifically hunt down the IRA. ‘Seek out and destroy’, ‘cut it off and kill it’ – whatever phrase you preferred, we knew it wasn’t going to be easy.
In the past, we opened fire at anyone seen to be carrying and aiming, or firing a weapon in a threatening manner, in the ‘hard areas’. Now, it seemed that guys in the unit were discussing and planning to go out on patrol, occasionally stirring up a little trouble and targeting selected groups in the street – not every night, but occasionally. If we were out and ran into vigilante groups late at night patrolling in hard areas … then as far as we were concerned they were up to no good, assisting and supporting the terrorists, most likely armed. Then the general idea was that they were a legitimate target and we were there to punish them.
The situation down in the city was an ongoing nightmare, night after night. Perhaps the politicians were getting desperate, and it certainly looked that way. One thing was certain, the policy was definitely changing and we felt it.
It wasn’t only the people of Northern Ireland who were suffering at the hands of the terrorists. On the mainland 12 people, soldiers and their loved ones, were killed on the M62 when the IRA blew up the coach they were travelling in back to an Army base at Catterick, North Yorkshire, spreading mutilated women and children 200 metres along the motorway behind the wrecked vehicle. Six people had previously been murdered in another IRA bombing in Aldershot in February 1972. Many other atrocities were to follow.
It was occasionally discussed within our sections to work to some strict rules, mainly for our own benefit and security. These were, if we ever got involved in a contact in daylight, we played it strictly by the book. Our main areas of operation were in the hard Republican areas of Belfast and our main target was the IRA and its structure. We weren’t too concerned about the UDA, UVF or the UFF unless we bumped into them as they were committing criminal acts. They were Loyalist groups and mainly involved in defending themselves against the IRA, along with some ‘tit for tat’ killings which were mainly carried out by the UVF and UFF.
We didn’t feel we would last very long simply driving around the city, indiscriminately blasting people from our cars during daylight hours, like Los Angeles-style drive-by gang shootings. The IRA was probably one of the best terrorist organisations in the world at that time and we didn’t fancy our chances using that tactic.
We had to be like them and think like them, but also be a little more subtle in our method of approach.
Over the next few days, we all got together during our standby shift to discuss these ideas of one or two possible methods. Firstly, it was felt that if possible, we would avoid all contacts in daylight hours. But late at night if we came across manned barricades, masked vigilante patrols or suspicious groups milling about in the most dangerous notorious areas and streets, we could possibly initiate a contact. The idea was, we’d make a pass, checking them over, then perhaps open fire and let them have a short burst of four or five rounds from our SMG. This would make them think they were being attacked by some other terror group.
In our planning, if we decided to go ahead; we would only fire aimed shots at groups of more than four people on barricades or patrolling vigilante style and never at anyone wandering around in the streets, alone. This was an important rule, as anyone on his own could well be someone working undercover, like us. We didn’t know of any other specific undercover units in our area, but we knew that some local Army units had people on the streets in plainclothes in their areas for short periods. We didn’t want to take any chances.
We discussed these ideas and thought we could target specific groups manning barricades or patrolling the unforgiving hard areas in the darkened streets late at night. These groups were always up to no good, usually masked and had some form of weapons on them and constantly looking for trouble. Now we thought it was up to us to deal with them.
If these groups were stopped or confronted by the uniformed Army, they’d quickly hide their weapons or get children to carry them away. These groups always claimed to the Army that they were only patrolling and guarding their own areas from Protestant attacks. But on the barricades or in the vigilante patrols someone was always armed – perhaps not all of them, but there were undoubtedly always some weapons among the group. As far as we were concerned these people were just as guilty as the most hardened terrorists gunmen or bombers. They would have quite joyfully killed us or any of the uniformed troops without hesitation just the same if given the chance, as such groups had done on many occasions in the past.
Types such as these probably didn’t have the balls to go out and join an IRA Active Service Unit but they were nonetheless sympathisers and supporters, assisting the movement.
Another method, which some in the MRF felt would be useful to the task, was to carry out ‘lifting and snatching’ operations, again late at night or in the very early hours. This time lone men aged between 20 and 40 could be targeted, again in the most dangerous areas. They would be ‘lifted’ and taken out of the city a little way, following a quick ID check and search in the back of the car for weapons.
Not so dramatic or colourful as what the IRA did with their captives. Their victims would be hooded when first accosted, then driven out into the countryside and shot. The terrified prisoner would be sure from the moment he was taken, what was going to happen to him.
It was different with the MRF. Our general idea was, if a ‘lifted’ person checked-out clear, unarmed and not on our wanted list, he would only be reprimanded or warned a little – just pushed around a little and thrown back in the car – then taken back into town and dropped off near the city centre. So when the lucky ones got back on home ground alive and relatively well, they never knew for sure who it really was that actually snatched them. The shadowy figures of the MRF would appear to have been any one of a number of terror groups which were actively running around the cities at the time. The general idea was to sow even more terror among the terrorists, and that is what was planned.
Over those few weeks everything was regularly changing. The unit’s name was changing almost daily and many of our operations were being toned down and our section didn’t actually get around to putting our ideas fully into action. In our section, we decided not to follow this earlier discussed direction and didn’t get involved in going after any vigilante groups or snatching anyone in particular in any of the hard Republican areas late at night in this way, as we had thought about earlier.
However, one incident which comes to mind and the Press managed to get their hands on was a shooting one night. I wasn’t involved in this as I was only on standby section at the time and only heard of the shooting while listening in to the action on the unit’s car radio in a different location.
Our duty section had been in the city for most of the evening on general surveillance patrols and it had been a fairly quiet night. However, in the early hours, between about 12:00 or 2:00 am, I heard over the radio a report of a brief shooting taking place. It must have lasted at the most half a minute. I don’t know if the members of our unit were fired at first, or if they saw weapons on the vigilantes.
The one detail that stirred up the attention of the Press with regard to this incident was that someone on the street claimed that the people in the car had used a Thompson submachine gun. As far as I know we had one, perhaps a couple of Thompson
.45s in our armoury. We occasionally used them on the ranges for fun but I personally never saw anyone in any of the sections take them down into the city on operations.
The people on the barricade had no idea who it was that shot at them, until some seven weeks later. Following their interviews with the police, one of the injured men was asked by a detective, ‘Do you know who shot you?’
The victim replied, ‘No.’
The detective then told him: ‘It was the Army who shot you. We have four sworn statements from the occupants of the car that they were returning fire after they had been shot at.’
It was following this revelation from the police detective that the Press grabbed hold of the story, which previously they had been either unaware or uninterested in (just another shooting). Now the big story was that one of our sections had ‘perhaps’ fired on an unarmed vigilante group with a supposedly unofficial weapon, but I personally very much doubt it.
To us, of course, it was no big deal: the incident was just one of similar shootings we as a unit were involved in. There were just so many nightly shootings taking place all around Belfast during this very dangerous period that nobody could really know for sure who on earth was involved in what, or who was shooting at whom. Most often, the majority of the shooting incidents and exchanges of fire, with us involved or not, weren’t fully reported or didn’t even reach the pages of the newspapers – they were very much ‘dog bites man’ stories in Ulster at that time. Obviously today it’s very different.
If someone is shot or stabbed in the streets of London or Manchester it’s all over the media the next day. But in a place like Belfast in the 1970s, when there were perhaps ten to 20 shootings and between two to four bombings incidents almost every night for weeks and months on end, the marginal news value of minor tragedy steadily declined. The Press tends to get a little blasé at times, sifting through the incidents and picking only the most interesting examples to build a story on. If they tried to cover every single one, each day or night, they would have to have been marathon runners to keep up with it all. As it was then, much of the time, the Press relied heavily on the Army and police to give them information and leads.
That particular night, when the patrol returned to base soon after the shooting, I didn’t notice a Thompson among their weapons. The lads all came into the ops room together, told us that they had been fired at first which appeared very plausible, and filled in their reports. To me it was just another adrenalin-filled day at the office spent cruising around in enemy territory – one day out of very many similar days.
However, in our section during this changing period, we perhaps stopped and checked a couple men in the city, of whom neither of them were found to be illegally armed, or were on our special ‘bad boys’ wanted list for terrorist activities. We simply just checked them out and dropped them off in the city centre area. We never normally discussed our general patrols with the other sections just as we never asked what the other sections were doing … and nobody asked us. These earlier ideas were just that; ideas, we never put them into action and I’m sure none of the other sections went along this path. We always stood by the Yellow Card – RoE.
There are quite a few reports in other books referring to the ‘disappeared,’ a few people who have simply vanished without trace during the early troubles and never seen again. I’m not saying that the MRF was responsible for any or all those disappearances – it was a very hectic time and I honestly don’t know for sure. However, it is quite possible that we may have been indirectly responsible for some of these missing terrorist activists who perhaps decided to move far away and begin a new life in a better place – or a much worse destination.
As for terrorists who are known to have died, I have noticed mention of them in one or two books that list all the killings during the The Troubles. Frankly, I am quite surprised at the apparent accuracy of these listings, which seem usually to be collated by journalists using information ‘given’ to them through various sources, reliable or not.
Also, to my surprise, they categorically state who the victims were: whether they were terrorists, Army or civilians; where and when they were killed; and who actually killed them. They state, for example, whether the deceased were killed by the Army, police, IRA, UVF, UFF or the UDA. I find it quite unbelievable how anyone can categorically state a murky fact like that, or make such bold statements, having had first-hand knowledge of what was really going on around the streets of Belfast at the time.
These authors appear to my mind a little naïve and with very limited knowledge and understanding of what was happening on the ground in Northern Ireland during this early part of the 1970s. The whole situation in Ulster during that decade, and even into the 1980s, was not so clear cut as many people would like to think. Many dark and shadowy, secret things were going on and many strange, mysterious events were taking place on a daily basis.
It has been loosely mentioned that the MRF was a rogue unit, which is absolutely ridiculous. The streets of Belfast during the 1970s were heavily patrolled by uniformed Army and police units. If we had been some kind of rogue unit, operating totally independently, driving around randomly blowing people away (which has been implied), we would not have lasted very long, as the uniformed forces would have easily caught up with us and either shot us or arrested and jailed us all. At that time, we only operated in the boundaries of Belfast itself. We needed their co-operation and their manpower – for keeping their patrols out of the way when required and then taking over from us and cleaning up and ‘disinfecting’ the scene after us, if for nothing else. Had we been a rogue unit, out of control, we would have been caught and after our arrests we would all have been publicly charged and tried before the court-martial. As I said earlier, it was the Army that supplied us with silenced SMGs: what did they expect us to do with such weapons?
If you were issued with a silenced SMG, and told to go and patrol the murky unforgiving streets of Belfast at all hours of the night during that period, what would you honestly expect was required of you? Likewise, where are the file boxes filled with our innumerable incident reports from every day over a period of a few years? They should be somewhere – or perhaps not.
The facts are these: we operated out of an Army location – Palace Barracks – on the outskirts of Belfast. We were issued with civilian vehicles and specialist items of equipment, radios and some unconventional weaponry. We worked from an office/compound that held an operations room, briefing room and sleeping accommodation. And we often sat and ate our meals with the uniformed forces within the barracks and in other places.
I have never been court-martialled and after my time with the MRF, I returned to general uniformed duties, as did all the other members eventually. However, there was one strange point I recently noticed during the later stages of writing this book. In my army ‘red’ discharge book, my listed service dates are partly broken, showing that I was periodically serving in Germany during 72-74, when in fact I was in Northern Ireland with the MRF and I have proof of that. My discharge book had been at my parents’ home, sat in a draw gathering dust for the last 30 years, and I had never noticed the anomaly concerning these dates before. This manipulation of dates in my discharge book could well be an innocent mistake, or it could have been done purposely for some reason. I don’t really know, but it looks quite odd.
There are never any hard and fast rules in undercover work, chasing terrorist killers. It can all get very strange and mysterious, dirty and messy at times. We were a new unit, a new idea, and we just had to make up our procedures and methods as we went along. We obviously kept strictly in line the Yellow Card – RoE, for our own security and survival. But we also had a relatively free hand with regard to spoiling and compromising IRA activities and occasionally tracking down and dealing with terrorist baby-killers the best and most efficient way we could.
Our role in the MRF was to mainly to spy on and interfere with terrorist operations and to hunt down, when possible, vicious ha
rd-core murderers and to protect innocent lives. I’m a great lover of animals but sadly, whichever way you want to look at it, the best way to protect the sheep is simply to kill the wolves.
Chapter Thirteen – Hunters of Men
It was spring 1974 and we had just heard that the miners’ strike had come to an end. They had called off their four-week action following a 35 per cent pay offer from the new Labour government, which was seen as an enormous victory for the miners.
At this time I was recovering from my little going away gift from the IRA of a GSW (gunshot wound) to my left knee. It took me almost two months to walk again with any degree of stability. I was also back in uniform, with my unit, again in Germany. But in truth I wasn’t very happy and soon began to feel despondent about the regular military lifestyle.
It was back to regimental duties, standing to attention and ‘Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir’, which by now seemed totally alien to me. I had been away for years working undercover, being treated as an equal among what was basically a unit without rank, and where, Special Forces-style, we were expected to all chip in and formulate our own tactics and solutions, and then execute our plans. Now it was back out with the Brasso and BS and I felt that I simply didn’t fit in with Army life any more. Most people had no idea where I had been or what I had been doing for the last few years, and the de-militarization process I had been through didn’t help the situation very much. I also couldn’t talk to anybody about what I had been through, of course.
I found it quite hard to mix, work with and relate to others, as I had been totally self-reliant for far too long. My life was on a bit of a downer and it was doubly difficult for me because, being out of sight and out of mind, I had been left way behind on the promotional ladder. It was irrelevant to my superiors where I had been or what I had been doing. They had no idea, and as far as many were concerned, I had been away on some holiday.