The British Army in Northern Ireland 1975-77

by Ken Wharton

  SOUTH ARMAGH: AFTERMATH

  Corporal Martin Wells, 1st Bn, Royal Green Jackets

  Later in Bessbrook Mill, I bumped into the Boss as I was going to lunch and he asked me if I had read the Incident Report on the previous day. I said I hadn’t, and he said, ‘Well you need to go into the Intelligence Cell and read it. They, (the DERRs) are blaming us for the shooting because we left the top of that hill.’ I just stood there looking at him with my mouth hanging open. I was speechless. ‘I’ll go and read it,’ I mumbled and headed straight for the Int Cell. Sure enough, the Report had a paragraph that went something like this; ‘… had the Patrol from the Royal Green Jackets not left their position at the top of hill GR123456, this incident would not have occurred…..etc, etc.’ It was not good reading and the Report seemed to be saying that the hill we had spent so much time on, was vital to the whole Search Operation.

  I was well pissed off after reading the Report. Not for myself or even my Regiment. But for my Boss. For someone to try and shift the responsibility for that incident onto Captain ‘J’ was outrageous. It was wrong on so many levels that it was hard to know where to start. The Covert part of that operation had already lasted over two days when we arrived on the scene. The overt part was probably at least eight or nine hours old when we arrived. The DERRs had paid no attention to occupying that hill in the planning stage of this Operation. It had not registered on their radar that it might be potentially dangerous. And if it did, they had not been bothered to do anything about it, instead, deciding to keep all their men, not unreasonably, inside the safety of the farmyard walls. Probably because it would have required quite a large effort to put troops on that hill for any length of time. A small bunker or sangar of sandbags would have had to be constructed to ensure the safety of anyone up there. And the planners, if they did think about it, might well have decided it not worth the effort. Next, our small three-man patrol was not part of the Operation. We had no official role in it. We were casual observers and were not allocated a part in it. We were then given the option of going up that hill, not the task of holding the hill. The only reason we ended up on it was because it got us out of the way. We were given no instructions of time to be spent up there, nor was it pointed out to us it was a vital requirement to stay there. And lastly, we stayed up that hill way over the safe time we should have. And nobody objected or said anything when we came down.

  And the report made no mention that it was Captain ‘J’ of the Green Jackets that got me to go around and check if there were any casualties. And Captain ‘J’ got Dave Brown to go out in the open and meet the helicopter, unload the resupply ammo, and bring it back inside the farmyard. Or that he, probably exasperated at the inertia around him, got the ‘follow-up’ underway by taking the three of us and heading up the hill. And had it not been for him ordering some DERR soldiers to cease firing, there may well have been some perfectly innocent farmers killed or injured.

  What that report was doing, was covering the arses of all the DERRs involved at the various planning and execution stages, because it all turned to rat’s piss on them. It was important to point out, that as far as the DERR involvement was concerned, everything went well. And that the whole thing was put at risk by another regiment in general and Captain ‘J’ in particular. Luckily, nobody got killed.

  The IRSP/INLA feud with the Official IRA (OIRA) reared its head again on the evening of the 25th when INLA gunmen opened fire on two OIRA members as they entered the Divis Street flats area in Cullingtree Row. Several shots were fired and Chris Fox (32) (described by Lost Lives as also being known as ‘Sean’) was hit and died at the scene. The other OIRA man – Eamon ‘Hatchet’ Kerr’ – escaped injury but he was killed later by the Provisional IRA on 11 March, 1983. Two were now dead, and the feud had still three more months to run. The Divis Street flats was an IRSP/INLA stronghold, and the IRSP, known as the ‘Erps’ to the Officials, concentrated their Belfast efforts and organisation there. The flats were known somewhat derisively by the Officials as the ‘planet of the Erps.’

  The OIRA whose public image had taken a beating amongst members of its own community after its murder of Ranger William Best in 1972, called a ceasefire with the Security Forces. [See the May chapter of The Bloodiest Year by the author] In 1974, radical elements within the organisation who objected to this ceasefire, led notably by Seamus Costello, established the INLA. The aforementioned feud was to claim eight lives. The dead included prominent members of both organisations including Costello and the OIRA’s OC, Billy McMillen. However, from the mid-1970s onwards the OIRA became increasingly focused on achieving its aims of a United Ireland through left-wing constitutional politics. This however did not stop occasional paramilitary activity and in the late summer of 1979, members beat Hugh O’Halloran to death, luring him to his death on the Ballymurphy Estate.

  The two OIRA men who carried out the killing were convicted and sentenced to imprisonment in the Maze. The OIRA lost a number of members who gradually drifted away from the ceasefire up to shortly after the 1981 hunger strike; many joined PIRA or their hated rivals, the INLA, or simply turned away from political violence.

  Limestone Road in Belfast was the scene of a death and near fatal shooting of two Catholic men on the 27th. In the very early hours of the 27th – a Thursday – two Catholic friends were walking down the Antrim Road, a little over half a mile north of the Crumlin Road and close to the waterworks. The two men had been unable to hail a taxi because of the heavy fog which enveloped north of the city centre that morning. Working on the assumption that the two men were Catholics as they were walking in a Catholic area, a car containing a UVF murder gang which had apparently lain in wait for a ‘target of opportunity’ roared past the two friends. Several bursts of automatic fire hit the two who collapsed in a crumpled heap, incongruously bathed in the light of a Chinese restaurant and the car drove off in the direction of the nearby Crumlin Road, en-route for Loyalist territory. Michael Convery (21) died at the scene and his friend was badly wounded and spent several months recovering in hospital.

  February ground bloodily on and later on that same day (27th) a PIRA gunman attempted to assassinate a leading Ulster Defence Association (UDA) commander at his home on the West Circular Road. The UDA man was hit several times and fell wounded in his hallway, although he was later to recover. It was the thin gossamer thread of fate which played a hand, immediately afterwards as a popular local musician, Wesley Black (32) chanced upon the fleeing PIRA gunman. Jazz player Mr Black who had no paramilitary links and played music to entertain his friends and fans in Belfast’s darkest hours, was shot by the fleeing PIRA gunman and died instantly.

  One of the most infamous incidents of the Troubles occurred in Balcombe Street in the Paddington area of London. In early December (see Chapter 12) a siege took place in which four members of the IRA’s ‘England team’ were captured by the Metropolitan Police. One of the members of that team – Liam Quinn – although not one of the siege participants, was involved in the death of an off-duty London policeman on the same day as the murder of Wesley Black.

  Plain-clothes policemen were carrying out an undercover operation aimed at catching burglars responsible for a spate of thefts in the Hammersmith area of west London. Police Constable Stephen Tibble (21), who had only been a policeman for less than three months, was in the area when his colleagues stumbled across what turned out to be a major IRA bomb factory. Liam Quinn was spotted behaving suspiciously and when PC Tibble attempted to question him, he pulled out a handgun and shot the officer, fatally wounding him. The young PC died less than two hours later in the nearby Charing Cross Hospital with his young bride at his side. Quinn eventually escaped to the USA where all efforts by the British to have him extradited failed. Filibustering and other attempts to block the extradition process by Irish-American politicians and the powerful ‘Shamrock’ lobby as well as the entrenched attitude of the anti-British US Supreme Court ensured that Quinn stayed at liberty for many years. The
murderer of PC Stephen Tibble was eventually – and most reluctantly – extradited by the Americans in 1988, some 13 years after the policeman had been gunned down.

  When officers from the anti-terrorist squad in Scotland Yard searched the house where Quinn fled from, a major cache of weapons, ammunition, explosives, incendiary devices and detonators were found. It was described as: ‘…the most important bomb factory we have ever found and the first in London.’ It is widely believed that the gang, later to be known as the ‘Balcombe Street gang’, were also responsible for the fatal bomb attacks on the Guildford and Woolwich pubs, the Tower of London attack and the murder of BBC celebrity Ross McWhirter (see Chapter 11).

  The final death for February – the twentieth Troubles-related killing – occurred on the final day of the month. It was a random sectarian killing carried out by random sectarian killers who always claimed that such a method of murder was not in their remit; the Provisional IRA. Thomas Truesdale (20) and a father of a baby was standing close to Silverstream Road, near to Ligoniel in the north of Belfast. As he waited for a taxi, a passing car containing members of a PIRA murder gang opened fire at him, killing him almost instantly and wounding a nearby girl. His wife, still cradling their newborn child heard the volley of shots, and rushed outside to find her husband dead; another victim of PIRA’s attempts to reunite Ireland.

  February was over and once again, the UVF had been to the fore of the killing as the senseless, obscene sectarian killings continued, seemingly unabated. In all, 21 people had died; of these, one was a British soldier, one was RUC; both killed by Republicans. 15 were innocent civilians including 12 Catholics, and three Protestants. Three Republicans had been killed and one Loyalist paramilitary.

  3

  March

  The month began with the PIRA ceasefire apparently intact, despite Sinn Fein monitors constantly accusing soldiers of trivial breaches. An allegation of an overzealous soldier here, or an intrusive search there, seemed to be the normal, petty type of complaints voiced when their officials made contact with Army liaison officers.

  Although the IRSP were not officially admitting the existence of the INLA as either an entity or as their ‘military wing’ it was in action on the 2nd. A masked member burst into a Republican club on the Twinbrook Estate in West Belfast and shot OIRA member Paddy McAllister, badly wounding him. On the next day, a brief exchange of gunfire on the Turf Lodge Estate left an IRSP man wounded in the head and his attacker from the OIRA also wounded.

  On the 4th, a UFF murder gang called at a house in a Catholic area of the Ormeau Road in South Belfast and shot and fatally wounded Joseph Clarke (18). He was hit several times and collapsed to the hallway of his home. Family members immediately gave chase as the UFF gunman ran towards a waiting car. The gunman fired twice at his pursuers but the weapon was empty and no further injuries were caused. Mr Clarke died of his injuries four days later. He had previously been shot and wounded in the head by Loyalists and they finally caught up with him as he relaxed at home. His crime had been to give evidence in Court against Loyalist murderers.

  On the same day, a UVF murder gang targeted Cathal Goulding, the Chief of Staff of the Official IRA. Goulding was known to be in the ‘Bush Bar’ in Leeson Street, Belfast, close to the Falls/Divis area. Shots were fired into the pub and an explosive device – subsequently defused by a British Army ATO – left in the entrance way. Several men were injured – Goulding had left minutes before – including Gerard McClenaghan who was badly wounded; he died 84 days later. [see Chapter 5]

  On the 5th of the month, Lance Corporal Derek Norwood (26) of REME died in the Province; the author has no details of the circumstances of this soldier’s death. His name is included at the National Memorial Arboretum in Alrewas, Staffs. The NCO is buried at Porthcawl in South Wales and it is likely that he was Welsh.

  Some mystery also surrounds the death of an innocent Protestant man from Armagh. Edward Clayton’s car was stolen the previous month by unnamed terrorists – likely PIRA – and used in the murder of James Breen on the Kilwilkee Estate in Lurgan. The car was later abandoned and recovered by the RUC before being returned to Mr Clayton. On the morning of 6 March, Mr Clayton (27) got into the car which was parked close to a Catholic section of Portadown. It exploded and he was severely and fatally injured and died within half an hour of the blast. He had had the car for almost all of the 17 days since the murder in Lurgan, so it is unlikely that it had been booby-trapped at the time. The more likely explanation is that PIRA thought that it might well have been a Loyalist ploy to pretend that the car had been hijacked, and then place an explosive device when it thought the time opportune. Whatever their motives, yet another innocent civilian had died needlessly.

  Terrorism either directly or indirectly caused three tragedies in the Adamson household in Clifton Drive in North Belfast. Two years earlier, barely weeks after a Loyalist murder attempt on his life in which he was shot, a Mr Adamson died from complications arising from the wound. On 3 March, 1975, his wife committed suicide on the second anniversary of his death, an indirect victim of the terrorists, but whose death is not recorded as Troubles-related. Five days after her death, a UVF murder gang visited the house in Clifton Drive, disguised as wedding guests and fooled Michael Adamson into thinking that they were part of the wedding he was due to attend. Mr Adamson (23) was shot dead as he opened the door and then his murderers accused his wife of belonging to the IRA and shot her several times, wounding her in the face and leg. The couple’s three-year old daughter who was asleep at the time was uninjured. The wedding went ahead, but guests were not informed of the murder until afterwards.

  LONDONDERRY

  Fusilier Ronald Francis, Royal Welch Fusiliers

  I was a soldier in the Royal Welch and our motto was ‘Ich Dien’ (I serve) and this relates to time I spent in Northern Ireland. We were not applauded on our arrival; we were just another bunch of squaddies to be spat and shot at. We quickly got on with our job as we saw it: patrolling, VCPs, searches and sangar duty. Our TAOR was the Creggan, Bogside in Londonderry and later in Strabane.

  On one particular day, we were resting up in the NAAFI, literally waiting for the next incident, and we were aware that there was trouble going on up in Irish Street on the Craigavon Estate. We were called out, and on our arrival we were informed that incendiary bombs had been set off and that three homes were burning. The crowd became abusive and threatening and one group came close to me and one horrible woman made grab for my weapon and I naturally pushed her away and got a gob full of further abuse and swearing from her!

  We all took a few steps back from the baying crowd and tried to calm the situation down. At that moment, Corporal Jones 01 came over to me and told me to search one of the burning houses just to check that there was no-one left inside. I didn’t stop to think, and I just dashed inside and ran straight up the stairs, where the smoke wasn’t too thick at this stage. I must have been adrenaline fuelled, because I didn’t stop to think and instantly forgot all of my training. I opened one door which could have so easily been booby-trapped and I never checked for wires. Anyway, what was in store for me wasn’t part of an IRA come-on; it was the fire you see. The very instant that I opened the door and noticed that the whole room was ablaze, a blast of air – the backdraft, firemen call it – hit me and I was blown back down the stairs! I landed outside, most unceremoniously on my backside, and the lads thought it was quite a sight; even in the middle of all the burning, shouting and abuse we saw the humour in the situation.

  We all managed to get back that night in one piece, but I still see that night and a later firefight at Strabane which we ended up in during a search operation, and will never forget it. It will always be with me; that never forgotten tour or the boys that I had the pleasure of serving with. I remember the lads who did their duty to each other.

  Four days after the sectarian murder of Michael Adamson, the INLA took it upon themselves to have a break in the ongoing feud with the Official IRA an
d instead killed a Protestant, apparently in reprisal for the aforementioned killing of Mr Adamson. An INLA gang called at the house of Raymond Carrothers in Orient Gardens in North Belfast off Cliftonville Road and close to the, by now, infamous Antrim Road. A young child answered the door and the INLA gunman calmly asked for the child’s father. Mr Carrothers (50) came to the door and the gunman fired several shots into him at very close range in view of the child and he died shortly afterwards in hospital. The victim had been hit at the door and managed to close it, but the gunman fired at least five more shots through the closed the door and fatally wounded the Protestant worker.

  The day after the tragedy for the Carrothers, the UVF continued their evil ways and attempted to bomb Conway’s Bar in North Belfast; it was the subject of another UVF bomb attack in 1974. The pub, which was Catholic-owned, was quite naturally located in a Catholic area, in the vicinity of Belfast Lough and the docks. A UVF gang attempted to place the primed bomb inside the doorway to the bar, at the same time firing indiscriminately at the drinkers. But as they opened fire, it detonated prematurely, and one of the bombers, George Brown, had a foot blown off and received fatal injuries which led to his death the following month, and two of the other bombers received significant burns. Tragically for one of the drinkers, mother of three Marie Doyle (38), the blast caught her full on and she died at the scene and 14 others were injured in the evening attack. The badly burned bombers were caught by locals and in a splendid example of co-operation with the Security Forces, handed them over to a passing foot patrol which had been alerted to the sound of the blast. What is more surprising is that the murderers were not torn limb from limb by the angry mob.

  A few hours later, Robert Skillen (19) who had been fatally wounded some 19 days earlier in a UFF attack, died of his wounds in hospital. He had been shot and another woman injured in a Loyalist attack in a shop on North Queen Street. The coroner described his murder as: ‘… a particularly insane and cold-blooded murder…’ Every sectarian attack, whether perpetrated by Loyalist or Republican was just that; particularly insane and coldblooded.