by Ken Wharton
That bloody day was not yet complete and the Provisionals killed another policeman – this time on the Irish side of the border – when they left a booby-trapped device for the Gardaí Siochana in Portlaoise, Co Laoise. Gardaí had been lured to a derelict cottage at Garyhinch, close to Portlaoise Prison following an anonymous call to their station that a gang of men were seen inside. Irish police were aware that the cottage had been empty for years and, fearing some attempt on the nearby jail, sent a squad of officers to investigate. As Constable Michael Clerkin (24) touched the door, the trap exploded, killing him instantly and badly wounding four other officers. The IRA’s Green Book specifically prohibits the targeting of Gardaí officers in a pathetic attempt to legitimise them as a real Army and this was a clear breach of their own rules. Cue embarrassed Sinn Fein apologist to explain their actions. That the actions by the IRA were designed to result in death and injury there was no doubt but mystery surrounds their actual motives. Over 100lbs of explosives had been packed into all four walls and trip wires had been laid all over the cottage; the blast left almost the entire squad buried under piles of rubble.
The IRA was again in action that day and planted two small devices in the Elk Bar between Toomebridge and Castledawson in Co Tyrone. The bar was evacuated and the smaller device exploded. The RUC were investigating when a secondary device exploded, slightly injuring three officers. Within hours, the UVF had retaliated and one of their bombs exploded in the Rockboat Bar in Martinstown near Ballymena.
On the 17th, a Catholic workman – Bernard McCarron (45) – was in the Belfast area, possibly looking for work and his adventures led him to take a drink or two in the Shankill Road area. He was from Co Fermanagh but had spent some time on the building sites around England where there is a huge element of itinerant Irish migrants. His accent, according to eyewitnesses in the pubs in which he drank that day, was more ‘Irish’ than Northern Irish, and it may have been a combination of his rural accent and the influences on him, but Loyalist paramilitaries in the Berlin Bar and a further, unknown Loyalist bar to which he went, may have thought that he was from the Republic. He was beaten almost to death with pieces of timber, before being shot twice in the head and his body was dumped in Richmond Street. His likely murderers were members of the UVF.
The day after this latest sectarian murder on the very dangerous Shankill, Loyalist gunmen opened fire on a heavily pregnant woman – 32 weeks – as she left a GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association) club at Greencastle in South Belfast. The woman had just left the club and was walking towards a car when gunmen fired into her back. She was rushed to hospital where her baby was stillborn as a consequence of a cowardly attack by Loyalists, thought to have been UVF. There is, however, still much speculation surrounding the identities of the organisation which carried out the attack. Shortly afterwards, an RUC team visited the People’s Filling Station on the Upper Springfield Road, Belfast, in order to investigate a robbery. As they approached, a car bomb exploded, having been left on the most likely route for them. The vehicle was badly damaged but there were no serious injuries.
PIRA launched a major attack on an Army Land Rover the following day and badly injured two soldiers. The mobile patrol from the King’s Own Scottish Borderers (KOSB) was driving up the Falls Road and had just made a right turn into the Whiterock Road which bisects the Turf Lodge and the Ballymurphy estates. Gunmen opened fire from nearby houses with automatic weapons, and one soldier was hit in the back and the other received a groin injury.
On the 24th, a soldier was killed and another fatally wounded as an Army foot patrol came under fire in the Ardoyne, Belfast. A foot patrol with mobile back up from the Royal Artillery was attempting to investigate a vehicle involved in an earlier RTA. PIRA gunmen, firing from two locations, ambushed the soldiers in Oakfield Street – now no longer still standing – and hit several men. Gunner Anthony Brian Abbott (19) was hit in the chest and died shortly afterwards after being rushed to hospital. Several of his comrades were hit by the gunmen who fired 27 rounds – and Gunner Maurice Murphy was fatally wounded and died four weeks later. Gunner Abbott was a Manchester lad and had not been in Northern Ireland for very long before he was killed. The men’s comrades were unable to return fire as the terrorists had ensured that there were plenty of civilians to cover them.
ARDOYNE PART ONE
Michael Sangster, Royal Artillery
It was Sunday, 24 October and word came down about one of the worst incidents of the year. A mobile patrol from 46 Battery of 32 Regiment RA had been sent to investigate a report of an abandoned vehicle in Oakfield Street, Ardoyne. As the patrol stopped to investigate, they were ambushed by gunmen firing automatic high velocity weapons. Five members of the patrol were hit. One lad who was later named as Gunner Anthony Abbot was killed and another, Gunner Maurice Murphy was critically injured. The other three patrol members received various wounds. This tragedy virtually took out a complete call sign.
I was patrolling the Markets area with my section at the time, giving the lads of 49 Regiment Mission Troop a short respite and didn’t find out about it till we got back to Aldergrove that evening. The usual thoughts of sadness, anger and frustration ran through me. We had worked alongside 46 Battery a few times from their base at Flax Street Mill and being fellow Gunners, felt their loss. Later that evening, I was called to the Ops room and warned off that me and my merry band were on a task starting the following morning. We were to deploy to Flax Street Mill to temporarily replace the section that had been shot up and were to pack enough kit for a seven day stay. I went back to our accommodation and gave my lads the good news and made sure they packed enough changes of socks, eating irons, washing and cleaning kit etc and also made sure the little buggers took enough money with them. They were good lads and took this all in their stride.
At about 08:00hrs, we were dropped off at the mill, and as I went to the Ops room for a briefing, one of the 46 Battery sergeants showed my lads where we were to sleep. At the Ops room, I was told that my call sign was 22E, the same as the one that was ambushed; that’s nice I thought. It was explained that we would be working a five-day cycle of foot and mobile patrols, guard duties, OPs and standby, and as we were on loan so to speak, we would miss out on the delights of base fatigues. That should make us popular with the rest of them. I was given a tribal map of the Ardoyne area, a slack handful of VCP sheets, ‘P check sheets’, various bits of bumf and for leisure time reading, a copy of Regimental SOPs. Oh yes; and we were due to start off on mobiles in about half an hour. I found our sleeping area, which was a small boxed-off room, but instead of my lads grabbing a pit space and unpacking, they were standing about looking sheepish. I asked what’s up and the answer was: ‘Which bed was the dead lad’s?’ I didn’t have a clue so I just threw my kit on the nearest bed and said ‘This one, and you’ve got 20 minutes to get unpacked and ready for mobiles.’ No problem after that.
My first surprise was that they were still using Land Rovers to patrol during the daytime. I would have thought after what had had happened the day before, armoured vehicles would be the order of the day. Ah well, just get on with it Jock. Second surprise was when it came to driving, it was a DIY job. Just as well nearly all of us had driving licences as nobody had thought to ask. Pretty soon we were into the swing of things. One thing I had my lads do was when we approached a road junction or slowed for a speed bump, was to make them dismount and clear the corner and when the Land Rover went through, do a moving remount. It was a technique a NITAT Sergeant had taught during our build-up training and although a bit hard on the lads, it was a lot safer than being caught cold inside a slow moving relatively soft-skinned vehicle. I did have a moment of sadness as we drove up the Crumlin Road past the junction of Butler Street. This was the spot where my mate Lance Bombardier Jock Laurie had been shot whilst driving a Land Rover. This happened on 8 February 1971 and Jock died a week later.
Berwick Road, in the Nationalist Ardoyne. Light Infantry soldier Tommy Stoker was killed he
re in 1972. (Mark ‘C’)
It was about one o’clock the following morning and we were out having a swan around the area. As I remember, we had just turned into Etna Drive when one of my lads in the back screamed out: ‘Stop! Stop!’ We did an emergency brake and I jumped out and went around the rear of the vehicle and found one of my lads looking a bit sheepish. ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ I shouted. You wouldn’t credit it. Somehow, as he was getting back into the vehicle, he had caught the base of his magazine on something which ripped it off and 18 rounds of 7.62 plus spring and base plate were scattered all over the road. I will not repeat what I called him. The road was as dark as a pit and the torch batteries were about done so there was nothing for it but to turn the Land Rover about and use the headlights. To make things worse, our parallel mobile turned up, and after a good bit of slagging, they used their headlights and luckily for my lad, we recovered all the missing rounds. No prizes for who was making the egg banjos when we got back to the mill.
A sad postscript to this was that just over three weeks later, we heard that Gunner Maurice Murphy had died of his wounds; another sad day for the Gunners. Rest in Peace Gunners Abbot and Murphy; we will remember them.
Forty-eight hours later, the IRA targeted an off-duty UDR officer and, having ascertained where he worked, his working pattern and hours of attendance, walked into the supermarket where he worked and shot him dead. A year earlier, the IRA had shot and wounded Lieutenant Joseph Wilson (55) and had now returned to finish off their murderous task. The part-time soldier worked in a supermarket in Armagh City and was serving customers when the attack took place. He had turned away to retrieve an item for a customer when the Republican murder gang shot him several times in the back and then ran off, leaving him dying by the counter. Eight years later, PIRA also killed his son-in-law, Herbert Burrows, who was also a member of the UDR.
Later, the IRA planted a device in the Moyla Lodge Restaurant in Castledawson close to Magherafelt, Co Londonderry. A warning was shouted and the diners were able to safely evacuate and there was major structural damage in the explosion. Shortly afterwards, the IRA threw two blast bombs over the wall of Strand Road RUC station and a further device was thrown at an RUCR Land Rover as it approached the station from Lawrence Hill; no injuries were reported. Elsewhere in Londonderry, Rosemount RUC station was also hit, the following day and again there were no injuries. On this day, the Royal Pioneer Corps lost one of their soldiers to causes ‘unknown.’ Private Leslie Rothwell (22) died and a CVO was despatched to the English mainland; other than that the author has no further details.
Máire Drumm was the vice president of Sinn Féin and a leading figure in the women’s IRA: Cumann na mBan. Born in Newry, Co Down to a staunchly Republican family, most of her life was given to the cause of a United Ireland. She was jailed twice and after she was released from Armagh Prison, she agitated against the Army and the Unionist Government and once famously bragged that she would take on the British Army and close down West Belfast. In late 1976, her health and eyesight began to fail and she was admitted to the Mater Hospital, on the Crumlin Road, Belfast for an eye operation. In what is considered a rarity – a combined UVF/UFF operation, Loyalists dressed in doctors’ white coats, entered the private ward on which she was recuperating, prior to leaving to convalesce in Dublin. She had just left her bed and was walking towards a cupboard. The Loyalists fired 12 rounds at her, hitting in the head and chest at least five times. She was mortally wounded and died within 10 minutes of them running off. She had famously bragged of ‘… sending British soldiers home in coffins…’ and it is highly unlikely that many in the Army would have mourned her murder.
Anderstown RUC station, 28 October 1976 - the soldier to the right, being struck, writes, “This was at the Andy Town RUC station after a search in which I arrested the mother of the girl who is hitting me, at 0400 that morning. It was 28th October 1976 on our 76/77 tour of Turf Lodge. I lost one of my brick, Andy Crocker, by a sniper, and was ambushed two weeks before coming home – the lad in the photo (left) was shot in the leg, another in the back on an anti-mortar patrol, mobile.” (Ewen Burn)
Cumann na mBan supported the Provisional wing in the 1969/70 split in the IRA and Sinn Féin. In Northern Ireland Cumann na mBan was integrated into the mainstream Irish Republican Army during the conflict, although they continued to exist as a separate organisation in the South of Ireland. In 1986, the Cumann na mBan opposed the decision by the IRA and Sinn Féin to drop the policy of abstentionism and aligned itself with Republican Sinn Féin and the Continuity IRA. In 1995, RSF general secretary and Cumann na mBan member Josephine Hayden was jailed for six years on charges relating to the possession of a shotgun and a revolver.
A Sinn Fein spokesman bewailed the ‘cold-blooded murder’ and condemned the shooting down of a woman in her hospital bed. They had conveniently forgotten how many times they had gunned people down in hospital, in or out of hospital wards. They had also conveniently overlooked the fact that when it came to cowardly murders, they had few contemporaries. If all war is hypocritical, then the Provisionals had mastered hypocrisy into an art form. To echo the eloquent words of Martin Dillon, this ‘… was more than ironic coming from an organisation which advocates the summary execution of all members of the security forces and does not believe in issuing challenges to any of its victims.’ (The Dirty War, Arrow Books, 1990). Seamus Mallon, SDLP politician wrote of the Provisional IRA: ‘… who claim for themselves the right of a fair trial while denying others the most basic civil right of all: the right to life.’
The killing was claimed by the Red Hand Commando and UFF and later a UVF member – a former soldier who worked as a security officer at the hospital – was among a number of men jailed for the killing of the retired Sinn Fein leader. Retaliation however, was swift and the IRA targeted another off-duty UDR soldier as he arrived home from work in Harding Street, Londonderry. The private, aged 53, was just about to enter his house, when masked IRA gunmen thought to be from the Nationalist Bogside opened fire on him. At least five shots were fired from the doorway of a neighbour’s house and he was hit in the stomach and badly wounded; he survived the murder attempt.
ARDOYNE PART TWO
Michael Sangster, Royal Artillery
We were on secondment at Flax Street Mill and we spent a couple of days of ops and guard duties which passed by without incident. At first the lads of 46 Battery had been a bit distant which was understandable; dead man’s shoes and all the rest of it, but by coincidence, one of their full screws had the same surname as me which is not a common one. We were not related and he was English but it helped break the ice a bit and pretty soon we were accepted as part of the Battery.
Thursday morning, we started foot patrols. I was more at home doing footsies as you had more control of your lads and you could see and do a lot more on foot. It was the usual hard patrol around the Ardoyne carrying out any tasks the Int had set you and stopping and ‘P’ checking any local ‘Herbert’ who I didn’t like the look of. I can’t remember what time it was, but we were on the Crumlin Road when word came over the radio of a shooting incident at the Mater hospital which was a few hundred metres down the road from us. I gave my lads the hurry up but by the time we got there, the RUC were in attendance already, which I thought strange at the time. They were not usually so keen to enter Republican areas unescorted by the Army. We soon got the good news. The vice president of Sinn Fein, Máire Drumm, and so called commander of the female PIRA, Cumann na mBan, had been shot dead. She had been admitted to the Mater hospital for eye surgery and a Loyalist hit team, dressed as doctors, had gained entrance and shot her dead.
I have to admit at the time I had no sympathy for her or her kin. That bitch had been a thorn in our side for years and just recently, she had led a gang of harpies in disrupting a Peace Women’s march in West Belfast. It wasn’t long before the graveside humour for which squaddies are famous surfaced; ‘the Sinn Fein band has cancelled all appearances because their
drum was full of holes etc’. We expected a bit of a backlash from the locals but the whole area was strangely subdued and the next 24 hours passed without incident.
We were on standby now and apart from a couple of escort jobs, it was getting boring. Then about 9 o’clock that night, we got crashed out. A foot patrol was in a bit of bother with a gang of locals up by the Ardoyne shops. As we pulled up, we could see a bit of help was needed so we steamed in. At the same time, another Land Rover appeared and this tall officer got out and proceeded to act like a total [censored]. Well his surname rhymed with the missing word. He inflamed the situation and got his just deserts as this harridan stepped out of the crowd and smacked him round the side of the skull with her bag. His head went one way and his beret the other. We were laughing like fuck but he didn’t see the funny side and started screeching: ‘Arrest her. Arrest that woman; she assaulted me!’ So me and one of my lads grabbed her quickly and shoved her into the back of the wagon. I got on the radio and relayed what had happened and was told to take her to North Queen Street RUC station. What a bloody waste of time. Our ‘prisoner’ had gone from a screaming witch to a whimpering mouse. She was about five feet tall, aged mid thirties and weighed about six stone soaking wet and she was sobbing that she had lost her hand bag which had all her money in it. I felt a right bully and when we got to the RUC station, I had words with the duty sergeant along the lines of if the Rodney didn’t show in the next 15 minutes, we would deny witnessing anything and he could give her a police caution. The walk home to the Ardoyne in the rain would be punishment enough. Unfortunately for her, the pest did show up and insisted on her being charged with assault and naming us as witnesses. Another bloody court case I’d have to attend.
The following morning, I was told that replacements had arrived from NITAT in Ballykinler and our job was almost done. I say almost because a big search operation was due to go in and we were tasked as part of the cordon. It was mid-morning by the time the cordon was in place and the locals were out in force. We were positioned in a back alley near the junction of Berwick Road and opposite were call sign 22F. After about an hour, I was starting to get a bit edgy and was bollocking my lads for acting slack, telling them to watch their arcs etc. It became very noticeable that the kids and locals had melted away, all the signs that something was going to happen. Sure as fate, two high velocity rounds cracked overhead and as I was looking for the fire position, a long loud burst of automatic fire erupted. My immediate thought was ‘GPMG’ and as there were no cracks it was not at us. I reported: ‘22Echo contact, wait out,’ and as I looked across the road, I could see the other call sign hopping about a bit and pointing down their alley so I radioed: ‘Go on Foxtrot, we’ll cover you,’ and they took off down the alley. Ah well, lead from the front Jock, and a couple of deep breaths, I legged it across Berwick road like a greyhound, took up a fire position and covered another one over. I nearly burst out laughing. His eyes were like saucers.