by Ken Wharton
There was lots of chatter on the radio but happily the words ‘crash call’ had not been heard so no casualties. One stroke of luck was a snap VCP had stopped a vehicle containing two players and weapons were found in the boot. Unfortunately, not the machine gun, which would make its appearance several times in the future. Not long after, we were lifted off by a Saracen, which made sense at last. When it was all thrashed out back at Flax Street Mill, it appeared that a couple of shots had been fired at the cordon to distract their attention so that the gun team could get a good burst at the vehicles. Happily, their aim was shit and I believe only one round hit a vehicle.
So that was that; dodged the bullet once again. We got a ‘many thanks’ from the BC and BSM of 46 Battery, but as we were boarding our transport, I spotted this young Lance Jack standing in the car park looking a bit forlorn. I asked a lad who he was and it turned out he was the commander of the patrol that had been ambushed and he was the only one who got away unscathed. I wanted to go over and say hello to him but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I really wish I had and it’s something I regret not doing to this day.
Following the lucky escape of the aforementioned 53-year old UDR soldier, another UDR colleague was not so lucky and the Provisionals killed Stanley Adams (29), a lance-corporal who was a postman through the day and a soldier on a night-time. A parcel had been posted by an IRA sympathiser to a remote farmhouse at Altmore, near Pomeroy in Co Tyrone in the full knowledge that a part-time member of the SF would deliver it along a long and isolated footpath. Several gunmen lay in wait behind a farm wall and as he drew level with them, they opened fire and hit him several times; he died almost immediately. It is unknown if he was armed with his service revolver or even if he was reaching for it as he was gunned down. The Provisionals tried to kill another part-time UDR soldier the same night when they attacked Captain Ronald Bond as he walked home to Harding Street, Londonderry from work. Masked gunmen came up behind him as he reached his house and shot him a staggering 12 times in his back. He fell to the ground, fatally wounded; he died on the 7th of the following month.
In Martin Dillon’s book The Trigger Men and confirmed in his disturbing The Shankill Butchers (Mainstream Publishing, 2003 and Arrow Books, 1988, respectively) he speaks of the poignant death of Stephen McCann (21) who became yet another victim of Lenny Murphy’s psychopathic gang, the eponymous ‘Butchers.’ On the night of the 29th, the young student and his girlfriend Frances were walking back to their homes in North Belfast after attending a party at Queens. Neither could afford a taxi and Stephen was not prepared at such dangerous times to allow her to walk alone even though they lived in separate areas. They were not far from the city centre, when several men grabbed the two of them and threw her to the ground and bundled Stephen into a car belonging to one of the ‘Butchers’. The young man was beaten in the car but other than revealing that he was a Catholic, made no attempt to cry out. The car was driven to an address in Brookemount Street, where a knife was collected and used to torture Stephen by slashing at his neck and throat. They stopped in the Glencairn area, close to the Community Hall, just off the Crumlin Road where they tried to force him to lie down, but he refused and knelt instead. He was then shot and one of the gang sickeningly tried to remove his head with a butcher’s knife. His body was dumped in the street.
The following morning as baffled – and certainly overworked – RUC detectives in Belfast tried to piece together the horrific murder and both Frances Tohill and Mr McCann’s distraught family tried to come to terms with the loss of their loved one, the UVF struck again nearby. On that morning, two Catholic employees of the Belfast Telegraph were driving the newspaper’s delivery van along Crumlin Road. The two men were John Maguire (56), father of five and his colleague, Charles Corbett (20); on board also was the young son of Mr Maguire. As the van stopped to make a delivery, armed Loyalists forced the three into the back of the vehicle and hijacked it, driving to nearby Legann Street, just off the Crumlin Road. The location is only 1,200’ north of where a team of RUC detectives would be minutely examining the area around Stephen McCann’s cold and lifeless body for forensic evidence and displays the arrogance and apparent contempt the Loyalist murder gang felt. The rear doors were opened and in spite of the presence of an innocent nine year-old child, the gang sprayed inside with around 10 rounds. The two men died almost immediately and the Maguire boy was injured. He later recovered, but no doubt traumatised for life by this display of evil.
October had ground to a bloody halt and it had left 29 people dead, almost double the previous month. A total of six soldiers or former soldiers had been killed to a variety of causes and two policemen had been killed, either side of the border. Fifteen civilians had been killed, 12 Catholics and three Protestant with all but two being overtly sectarian. Five Republicans, including Sinn Fein leader Marie Drumm, had been killed and one Loyalist paramilitary also. Republicans were responsible for nine deaths and Loyalists, including the Shankill Butchers, for 11.
23
November
This month, winter would begin to grip and soldiers on ‘footsies’ would wrap their hands even deeper inside Army-issue gloves and try and keep warm; 12 of them – the worst month of the year – would die from a variety of causes. This month, the UDR would lose five of its members, killed not in the ubiquitous RTAs, but at home or work as they relaxed or earned their livings whilst off-duty. Another policeman would die at the hands of the IRA.
The local headlines in Northern Ireland on the first of the month screamed: ‘Belfast Goes on Red Alert.’ One read: ‘With Provisional Sinn Fein leaders from Eire expected to be in Belfast today for the military-style funeral of Mrs Marie Drumm, the police and Army will be bracing themselves for what appears to be a massive security headache,’ These prophetic, if not predictable, words were borne out as one of the IRA’s biggest ever send-offs brought major problems to West Belfast as thousands of mourners and supporters packed into Milltown Cemetery after an almost ‘state’ funeral at St Agnes Church. As many people as humanly possible, packed into the expanding Republican plot at Milltown and masked IRA gunmen fired a volley of shots over the tricolour-draped coffin. The funeral was led by 20 masked IRA men, complete with black berets, black glasses and black masks. Massive rioting broke out afterwards and there were dozens of injuries amongst soldiers and police and there were scores of arrests.
The following morning, an RUC detective was spotted by Republican dickers on the Falls Road in Belfast and an ambush was set up. The policeman stopped at the junction of Clonard Street, diagonally opposite Dunville Street. The terrorists were ready and one of the gunmen stepped out in front of the officer’s car as he set off and forced him to stop; the other gunman leaped on to the bonnet of the car and fired over half a dozen rounds into the car, hitting DC Noel McCabe (26) in the head and chest. The gunmen then ran off into the labyrinth-like side streets and disappeared. An ambulance was called for, but the young RUC man died en-route for the nearby RVH. Noel McCabe was later posthumously awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal. The medal was awarded to his grieving widow, Helen. Almost at the same time, the Provisionals attempted to kill another policeman, this time at Fintona, Co Tyrone, opening fire as he alighted his patrol car in the township’s Main Street. He was hit in the groin, being wounded by both a shotgun and an automatic weapon, possibly a Thompson. Their tactic of targeting policemen continued, and a booby-trapped device was planted inside the cab of a lorry belonging to an off-duty RUCR officer. The 52-year old had just climbed into his lorry when the explosive device tore the cab apart and seriously injured the man at Grange Park, Balleygawley. The RUCR man survived albeit with massive wounds. One policeman had died that day; it could so easily have been six.
In North Belfast, there were lucky escapes for three Catholics as a stolen car containing Loyalist gunmen made separate shooting attacks in the Ligoniel area. In the first instance in Legboy Road, two women were shot at and then moments later, a man was
shot at as he stood outside a Catholic church. This was followed by a spate of bombing attacks in the Co Londonderry area as PIRA stepped up their campaign against Protestant-owned business premises in the city and in the wider county.
On the 3rd, a young Catholic boy – Cornelius McCrory (17) – who was living in the Beechmounts, close to the Falls Road, had either wandered north to the Glencairn Park – about a mile away – or had been abducted and taken there. He found himself in the hands of a UDA/UFF murder gang and he was shot dead for purely sectarian reasons. His brother Patrick was also murdered by Loyalists in Ravenhill Road, Belfast in March 1972.
The whole of the Province braced itself for reprisals by the Republicans following this senseless murder and as inevitably as night follows day, two more Protestants died within hours of the death of Cornelius. Supporters of Loyalists will always argue that they began killing Catholics as a direct reaction against the slaughter of their own as a concerted ‘Protestant backlash’. However, the IRA has maintained that their killing of the other side’s community was a reflexive response to Loyalist sectarianism and repression since Partition. Historians have recorded that this type of murder has been prevalent for over 500 years and in all likelihood, even longer. Which of the warring factions is correct? Does either side have ‘right’ and morality on their side or is it, as this author maintains, that neither can claim the moral high ground? Which came first; the chicken or the egg?
On Wednesday 3rd, Protestant businessman, Samuel McConnell (59) answered a knock at his front door at his house in Dunrod, shortly after dinnertime. Dunrod is in Co Antrim, a small village which sits astride the B101, some seven miles to the west of Belfast and a short car journey from the Republican Hannahstown and Andersonstown. He was shot five times and collapsed, mortally wounded in his hallway; the gunmen then ran after his wife and fired several times, but she managed to escape through the back door. Mr McConnell was a former ‘B’ Special and it is possible that the killing was far from a random sectarian murder and his name may well have lain dormant in the Provisionals’ files awaiting the right moment to strike. Moments later, this time in the Tiger Bay area of North Belfast, a PIRA unit from the New Lodge called at a house in Hogarth Street and shot dead an already very ill woman as she relaxed and watched TV at home. Georgina Strain (50) had been poorly – and housebound – for quite some time and was totally defenceless as Republican murderers burst into her lounge and shot her dead. They escaped in the direction of the nearby Nationalist New Lodge.
On what is, for the British, traditionally ‘Bonfire Night’, 5 November, the Royal Artillery lost one of their soldiers in circumstances unknown. Gunner Stephen Nicholson (20) died in Northern Ireland; that is all that the author knows. On the 6th another soldier died, in circumstances which have not yet – officially at least – been explained. Sapper Gareth Wyne Griffiths (22) of the Royal Engineers died in circumstances unknown. He died the day after his 22nd birthday. The same night as Sapper Griffiths died, another sectarian murder took place at Newtownabbey in North Belfast, close to where the author stayed with friends on a trip to Northern Ireland in 2012. The UVF had gone to Jordanstown Inn to kill Eugene McDonagh (23) who worked at the bar on Shore Road, at the side of Belfast Lough. On the fatal night, he was on security duty and masked Loyalist gunmen shot him three times in the head before racing away on a stolen motorbike. Mr McDonagh died at the scene.
The Provisionals then made an attack in Newry, Co Down, and targeted a former RUC Sergeant who had resigned from the force but was employed as an office manager for them. A bombing unit had booby-trapped his garage door and when he opened it, it exploded, maiming him and causing the traumatic amputation of both legs. On the following evening, Carol McMenamy (15) was walking to a church disco and stopped to speak to her cousin and some friends close to the Antrim Road. Two youths from the UVF, armed with handguns, were waiting nearby, and fired 10 shots at the children, hitting young Carol three times in the head and neck; she died two days later in hospital. Another cousin – Michelle Osborne – was also killed by sectarian murderers in June 1974. The following is from the author’s Sir, They’re Taking The Kids Indoors:
On June 9, the UFF left a car packed with explosives, in a car park at Hannahstown, between Ligoniel and Belfast whilst a Kennel Club event was being held. Their exact motives are unclear, because although it was clearly a sectarian attack, designed to kill and maim Catholics, the club was non-sectarian and Protestants would have also been there. Michelle Osborne, a girl barely in her teens was with her father and sister and brother (aged six and 11) when the family car drove past the car bomb. It exploded, seriously wounding her father and siblings and mortally wounding her. Despite the prompt attentions of a British Army helicopter, the girl died.
Shortly afterwards, the Provisionals attacked Ballymena, Co Antrim again and left a large device at the Raglan Bar in Queen Street. A device estimated at 500lbs was left in a stolen car – taken from nearby Toomebridge – and left outside the bar by PIRA members who then escaped in a second car. Massive damage was caused by the explosion and although no-one was killed, almost 40 people were injured, some seriously. Also on that same day, a PIRA landmine, containing 500lbs of explosives detonated at Donagh, near Lisnaskea in Co Fermanagh. The explosion caught the second of two armoured vehicles in an Army mobile patrol and two soldiers were very seriously injured. Almost at the same time, a temporary post office in Derrylin, Co Fermanagh was hit by another PIRA device. An estimated 700lbs of explosives levelled the building.
Also on the 7th, Captain Ronald ‘Ronnie’ Bond (54) a UDR soldier died of the fatal wounds he had received 10 days earlier; see previous chapter. Two days later, UDR soldier Lance Corporal Jimmy Speers (46) was shot dead by PIRA gunmen as he worked off-duty at his garage in South Londonderry. He was busy with a car when two men walked in and asked him if he would help them as their car was broken. As he walked towards their car, slightly ahead of them, one of them produced a pistol and shot him in the back in typical, cowardly fashion. His murder left three children fatherless.
A soldier attached to the Royal Hampshire Regiment was accidentally shot dead in his unit’s base by a negligent discharge. Private Frank Fallows (19) of Burslem, on secondment to the Royal Hants died after the accidental shooting; he is buried in Stoke-on-Trent.
This author has written passim in relation to the Republican tendency to torture and execute without mercy, those whom they feel have informed – ‘touted’ – on them and those who have transgressed their legendary ‘Green Book.’ In the case of a former Quartermaster, Patrick Smyth (24) even though the PIRA Brigade internal affairs department was convinced that he had wilted under RUC interrogation, they exiled him rather than ‘executing’ him. However, the former Provo chose to ignore the order and remained in Belfast. On the night of the 11th, he was seen drinking in a bar in Newtownards Road, close to his local area of the Nationalist Short Strand. Two PIRA gunmen went upstairs to where he sat with friends and shot him, mortally wounding him; he died shortly afterwards.
Little Patrick Street, Belfast, close to IRA bomb attack on Begg’s Plumbing. (Mark ‘C’)
Seventy miles north of this ‘internal’ killing, another IRA unit lay in wait for an off-duty UDR Lance Corporal. Winston McCaughey (33), a father of two, had just returned to his house in Kilrea, near Coleraine, Co Londonderry with his wife and children. The soldier’s family had just entered the house and he was either locking his car or in the process of taking articles inside when two masked gunmen who had lain in wait, walked up behind him and shot him in the back. His distraught eight-year old son found his dying father lying in the road and managed to flag down a car to help him. Sadly, he died en-route to hospital.
On Saturday 13th, John Patch (34), who worked for the Belfast Telegraph, was walking to his home in Elimgrove Street in the Oldpark area of Belfast, with a neighbour. He was seized by armed UFF men, dragged into a car and driven out of the area. Mr Patch, who lived with his sister and elderly fat
her, was savagely beaten before being shot in the head. His body was later found dumped next to an electricity transformer in Alliance Road. Shortly after this sectarian murder, the Provisionals forced a 35-year old employee of the Ministry of Agriculture to drive his van, packed with explosives into Magherafelt, Co Londonderry. Under duress, he was forced to drive the 500lbs of explosives to the Co-op in Union Street. The Army was on hand to neutralise some of the explosives and when the remainder detonated, damage was severe but not as devastating as the Provisionals had planned,
On the Sunday morning, Lieutenant Robert William Glazebrook (21) of the Royal Hussars was killed in an RTA whilst on duty in the Province. He was from Ropley in Hampshire. The morning after, the IRA attacked Beggs’ Plumbing Supplies in Little Patrick Street in North Belfast, as part of their ongoing ‘economic warfare.’ Two masked men, armed with handguns burst into the premises and threatened staff, shouting out: ‘There’s a bomb for youse!’ The explosion set the building alight and as the full-time firemen in the UK were on strike, part-time firemen from Castlereagh and Hollywood were called for. It is to the shame of the strikers that they actually stood around, doing nothing, as the building blazed. At one stage, RUC officers and members of Beggs’ staff actually seized the equipment from the striking firemen and fought the blaze themselves. Just moments after this, in an incident entirely unconnected, the UFF attempted to kill a Catholic man at his home in Greysteel, Co Londonderry. Two masked gunmen knocked at the door of a house in Gortgar Cottages and shot the man three times in the stomach as he answered. He slumped in the hallway, badly wounded, and the men ran off as the wounded man’s wife and their two children confronted them. The man, James Loughrey (35), father of eight died of his wounds in Altnagelvin Hospital on the 25th.