The British Army in Northern Ireland 1975-77

by Ken Wharton

  PIRA’s indifference to the suffering of their own community was again apparent on the 19th when one of their snipers fired at a joint RUC/Army foot patrol on the mainly Nationalist Suffolk Estate in West Belfast. The patrol was passing the local Primary School when the gunman opened fire. His shot missed, but several of the under-11s were treated for shock. Whether or not this man was reprimanded by his Brigade or Company Commander is open to debate. The thin gossamer thread of fate played a hand; yet again. Although Suffolk is mainly Nationalist, there was/is a small Loyalist enclave close to what is now Woodbourne PSNI station.

  A former Royal Marine who had served in the Province and then returned to join the RUCR was killed by the Provisionals on the 20th. Robert North (52) had joined the RUC Reserve and earned his living as a school bus driver. He was returning an empty bus to Benburb, Co Tyrone, and had just turned into Drumlee Road, Benburb, when masked IRA gunmen opened fire on him. He was hit and mortally wounded, but had the instinct to drive to his sister’s house which was nearby; as he reached it, he passed out and the bus careered into a hedge. He died at the scene and later investigation found that the bus had sustained 15 hits. He was a widower with four grown-up children.

  Later that night, Daniel McCooey (20) from the Beechmount area of the Falls Road died in hospital following an unsavoury incident with an Army foot patrol in Belfast City Centre. A scuffle which may have started with a shouted insult by a soldier to two Catholic civilians led to the fatal injury of Mr McCooey; he was taken to hospital where he died from a collapsed stomach and internal bleeding after being hit with the butt of an SLR. This author was not at the scene and therefore has to make an opinion based on the evidence of both sides. The soldier who hit Mr McCooey states that he was intervening to stop an assault on a comrade; the friend of the dead man states that the soldiers provoked the incident and used unnecessary force to end it. The truth generally lies between two extremes and this author regrets the death of an innocent civilian, sadly caught up in the tension of the Troubles. Whatever the cause, there is another West Belfast family who holds hatred in their hearts for the British Army. In Keady, Co Armagh, an RUC officer driving to work at the town RUC station was ambushed close to his place of work by an IRA gunman hiding near a house. Several shots were fired at his car but fortunately the policeman received only cuts and bruises. Within hours one of his colleagues on a mobile patrol in the Andersonstown area of Belfast had a similar lucky escape. Several shots were fired at the RUC Land Rover in which he was travelling but all he received was grazing to his lower leg. Shots were returned at the gunmen but no hits were recorded.

  The following day, an un-named paramilitary group bombed the Midland Hotel in Belfast; two devices were left in the reception area, and set the entire ground floor alight when they detonated. No staff or guests were hurt, but even five fire crews were unable to prevent the historic building from being gutted. Like other attacks at this specific time, it is impossible to determine if it was part of PIRA’s economic war, or the Loyalists retaliating against selected businesses which had remained open during the recent strike. On that same day there was a similar conundrum for the police investigators, when a former RUC officer Christopher Shaw (63) was shot dead at his home in Belfast. He had retired in 1967, two full years before the commencement of the Troubles – although that was unlikely to have cut any ice with PIRA – and was working in HR. However, it later transpired that his company had defied the strike and he may have been killed by Loyalists in retaliation. The masked gunmen burst into his house in Fitzwilliam Street and shot him in the head and chest; he died almost instantly.

  Two days later, the UFF raided a social club in the Crumlin Road area in order, apparently, to take monies owed to the paramilitary organisation. Masked gunmen had forced the customers to lie on the floor, whilst they rifled the tills. However, blissfully unaware of this, a private meeting was taking place in an adjoining room and the gunmen fired several shots through a portioning wall, hitting one man. Rowland Hill (66) was fatally wounded, and died on the 29th. Earlier that day – the 23rd – the IRA had carried out a gun and bomb attack on a PO’s house in Whitewell Road, close to the Antrim Road in North Belfast. The officer who worked at Crumlin Road Jail and his wife and children were shaken but not hurt in the attack. There was no warning and extensive damage was caused to the house.

  In Andersonstown on the 24th, PIRA’s irresponsible insistence on turning the streets of their community into a battleground almost cost the life of a local woman. An IRA gunman fired a shot at a passing Army foot patrol in Glassmullan Gardens which missed and entered the woman’s house and struck the table, inches from where she was eating a meal.

  On the 26th a soldier whom this author is proud to call a friend was on duty in the RVH in Belfast. As Lance Corporal ‘Tiny’ Rose of the Royal Anglians was patrolling a corridor, an INLA gunman came up behind him and fired five shots at him, hitting him in the back and stomach and also wounding a male nurse who was standing nearby. Lance Corporal Rose takes up the story:

  ROYAL VICTORIA HOSPITAL, BELFAST: 1977

  Lance Corporal ‘Tiny’ Rose – 2 Royal Anglian Regiment

  I was stationed in Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast as Intelligence Unit, visiting the casualty department to see gunshot wound patients or anyone else who might be of interest. Funnily enough I should not have done this tour of duty but was assured that I was being sent on a safe job!

  On 26 May at around mid-day, I was walking along the corridor in the hospital to collect lunches, and thought it strange that the corridor was empty at this time of day as it was usually busy with people going back and forwards for lunch. I passed an open door, checked and there was nobody about outside and was about 15 metres past the door; the next thing I knew was that I was being shot at. As the first shot hit me in the left shoulder, it sent me tumbling to the ground and spun me round so that I was looking at the person shooting, whereupon he fired two more shots at me, one of which hit me in the left leg, near the hip joint and the third one hit me on the right side ending close to the spine.

  Each shot felt as though I had been kicked in the balls and the two which hit me after I had gone onto the deck actually lifted my body off the ground. The pain was terrible. As I fell to the floor the gunman was still shooting at me, and I tried to fire my Browning 9 mm but it had jumped out the holster and was laid under me. When I got the weapon in my hand and went to fire, all I got was ‘click’ and realised that the mag had jumped out with the impact of hitting the floor. By the time I had resolved the problem with one hand – as my left side was useless – the gunman had fled out the door, leaving a knife on the floor and rounds of live ammunition. After I was removed from the scene, several further bullets were removed from the wall.

  The brave lance-corporal eventually recovered, but has subsequently endured a lifetime of pain from the INLA bullets which are still lodged inside him. The author had the pleasure of meeting both ‘Tiny’ and his lovely wife June at their home in Lincolnshire. In addition to the pain, he has been shabbily treated by both the Army and the MOD. The full story and x-ray photos of ‘Tiny’ can be found in A Long Long War by the same author.

  On the 27th, an RUC mobile patrol which had just left the barracks at Springfield Road came under machine-gun fire from the IRA. Several shots hit the lead vehicle and one officer was hit by flying glass and later treated for cuts. At the same time, the Provisionals launched an ambush mortar attack on Warrenpoint docks from across Carlingford Lough. Gardaí found the base plates at Omeath, near Drummallagh inside the Republic. The target area was 4,000’ away and all the missiles landed in the Lough and sank to the bottom.

  PREDICTING INCIDENTS

  ‘Johnny’, Army Intelligence

  Being a 24/7 operation the junior members of the Int cell worked shifts and being a night person I quite enjoyed those times as unless there was a specific Op on they were quiet. On these night shifts, after the routine collation stuff was out of the way, I would ta
ke out the files of the major incidents and read the after-action reports. Some regiments had good tours with few losses, some had a number of deaths, and I wondered why, just luck? I looked at the large incident map on the wall now covered in a new clear piece of talc as the plastic sheet covering it was called. Our talc was the current sheet and the previous regiment’s became the historical sheet and was still in place underneath marked with numbered stickers. However, other regiments where still in situ now rolled up above the map so one night I unfurled them all and cleaned off the years of accumulated dust. Each major incident was marked by a coloured coded small sticker. Shootings, bombings, finds, hides etc. would all have a different coloured sticker. Having looked at all these older coverings it did not take a genius to realise that the same places were used time and time again, areas close to the border, Cullyhanna, Crossmaglen, Derrybeg Estate, Forkhill, Newtown Hamilton, Silverbridge, etc., etc. That if a tactic against the Security Forces been successful in the past it was improved upon and used again in future engagements. Not always on the next regiment’s three month tour, maybe not even the one after that but definitely at some stage. Sometimes even years later it would be repeated, if we sadly reverted to a pattern used before, until we changed our tactics again. Over the nights I read every one of the major incident files where soldiers or civilians had been killed and became somewhat of an expert on these historical incidents so much so that on one occasion I remember the IO asking me to give a briefing to some ‘special’ soldiers (J Troop) who had an Op on in the Battalion’s area.

  It’s now no secret that even in South Armagh the security forces had human sources of intelligence; not just covert and electronic surveillance. In the early hours of one morning I got a call from one. The SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) for such an occurrence was not to take specific information as the security of the source was the main priority; I suppose soldiers are replaceable, sources far more difficult. Only the IO and Int sergeant could have such direct communication. The source was obviously drunk and I could detect the fear in their voice. I explained that I would inform the boss of their call first thing in the morning. We talked for a while about nothing in particular, for them it must have been a very lonely and frightening existence. On occasions the Regiment ‘lifted’ a suspect by helicopter in the early hours of the morning and brought them to the screening centre for a chat with the IO or Int sergeant.

  The rule was they could be held for four hours before they had to be released. I got to listen in to some screenings at Bessbrook and can truthfully say suspects arrived there plasti-cuffed but not head-bagged. They would then be photographed and interviewed but I heard no sounds of beating, nor witnessed any ‘white noise’ incidents. [White noise torture is a type of psychological torture that includes extreme sensory deprivation and isolation.] Carrying out this type of torture makes the detainee lose personal identity through long periods of isolation. Generally after four hours they were re-arrested by the RUC and then taken to Castlereagh for further screening, as the interrogations were called. What happened there I have no knowledge of but information gained would be passed back to the Battalion in an edited form for collation into the paper files.

  Having been told to expect six killed I considered the Regiment was lucky on that first tour to only have one lad badly injured; sadly, he was blinded in a bomb explosion. I now believe that could have been avoided if the colour sergeant straight back from the depot had not taken a very inexperienced and hastily thrown together brick past a PIRA bomber’s house and had problems tuning in the radio. From sources, the Int cell knew that there were at least four bombs in the vicinity. I was so very angry when I heard the news of the contact and the injuries sustained. In later tours I understood things were sometimes allowed to happen to protect these sources but I was never happy about the consequences.

  After my five months on a three-month tour I returned home. Later on the TV news I was watching the aftermath of the mortaring of Forkhill base and saw an RUC sergeant, one who had briefed me on the local area, climb into the cab of the flatbed vehicle used as the mortar base plate. I felt sick as I remember shouting at the TV screen: ‘No!’ and seconds later the booby-trap bomb blew his legs off; another casualty of the Troubles.

  Northern Ireland was a large part of my service life. Captain Robert Nairac, the hunger strikers, the lads killed in Lisburn after the fun run, the Ballygawley Bus Bomb, Enniskillen, the Warrington, Manchester and London bombings, Loughall and the Signals corporals’ deaths; I remember them all. I drove through Germany and Holland with Black BFG [military plates which identify servicemen and women] plates thinking this is not a good idea and been in the square where the Australian tourists were shot by mistake because the IRA thought they were soldiers. I am convinced that one day I was actually being lined up for a shooting after setting up a pattern of going for a Sunday paper nearly every week at the same time.

  On the penultimate day of the month, the Provisionals attempted to shoot a part-time UDR soldier at his place of work in College Square North, Belfast where he worked in an office. The soldier – an un-named major – was alerted by a screamed warning from his secretary as armed men burst into the building. Thanks to this warning he was able to barricade his door but the gunmen fired through and hit him several times in the stomach; critically wounding him. He later recovered in hospital. However, one of his colleagues came down the stairs and the gunmen then turned their attention to him and fired twice, mortally wounding him before dashing out. Malachy Gregory (39) lay dying and as his secretary tried to comfort him, he slipped away, whispering prayers. This callous coldblooded murder by cowardly terrorists who thought that killing an innocent, unarmed man might advance their dream of a united Ireland left eight children fatherless.

  On the final day of the month the RAOC – the famed ‘blanket stackers’ – lost their second soldier in May. Lance Corporal Michael Dearney (28) was killed in a tragic RTA in the Province. At Hatton Drive, close to Woodstock Road in East Belfast, the Provisionals attempted to kill a PO and his family as they lay sleeping. The police were alerted and RUC officers were clearing the area when the device exploded; three of them were later treated for shock after an incredible near miss. There was another near miss at Mount Pottinger RUC station in Belfast, when a PIRA bomb exploded on the roof; one officer was treated for shock also. The month ended with a relatively major gun battle between an Army border patrol and several PIRA gunmen at a spot close to the border, some three miles from Newtownhamilton, Co Armagh. Over 100 rounds were fired, but there were no casualties on either side.

  May, although eventful with the murder of Captain Nairac, the shooting of a soldier in the RVH and the bloody Loyalist strike, had seen deaths remain below 20 again. Altogether 16 people died this month. The Army lost four and the RUC lost one more officer. A total of ten civilians were killed, three Catholic and seven Protestant; only one was overtly sectarian in nature. The Loyalists lost two paramilitaries, both killed in an ‘own goal’ fire. Republicans killed eight and Loyalists were responsible for six deaths.

  30

  June

  June was one of the quietest months of the Troubles and the overall death toll was down to 11 but tragically this included four soldiers, three policemen and a prison officer.

  The RUC was awarded a collective George Cross in 2000 for its combined bravery, resolution and devotion to duty. Its motto is ‘integrity is not negotiable.’ According to official sources, 314 officers were killed and over 9,000 were injured during the history of the RUC; all but 12 of the dead were killed in the period 1969 to 1998, of whom 277 were killed in attacks by Irish Republicans. However, 302 active RUC officers were killed and 18 ex-RUC officers, which would total 320 fatalities during the Troubles. The worst day in its history occurred in the early evening of 28 February 1985, when nine mortar bombs were launched from the back of a Ford lorry that had been hijacked in Crossmaglen. Eight overshot the RUC station in Corry Square, but one 50-lb mortar landed dir
ectly on a portacabin containing a temporary canteen; nine police officers were killed. On 2 June, 1977, a smaller number of officers were killed, but it was no less a tragedy.

  An RUC mobile patrol – in a Ford Escort – was in the Ardboe, Co Tyrone area on the morning of the 2nd and was driving along a narrow country lane along the western shore of Lough Neagh. At least three PIRA gunmen were hiding in bushes alongside the road and jumped out as the car approached. Using American-made Armalites, they poured a hail of bullets into the car, which was not armoured. There were three officers in the car, which crashed immediately as the driver had been amongst the first to be hit. All three were wounded, and one had been thrown clear into the middle of the road. The PIRA men walked over to the scene of carnage and cold-bloodedly sprayed the wounded men with at least 20 more rounds. As calmly as they had commenced the ambush, so they walked away with equal calmness. A passing motorist saw the wreckage and found RUCR Constable Hugh Martin lying in the middle of the road, mortally wounded. The other two officers, Constable Kenneth Lynch and Constable Samuel Davison, were still in the car and clearly dying. Samuel Davison (24), Hugh Martin (58), father of seven and Kenneth Lynch (22) all died before an ambulance could reach them. It was amongst the worst days of the Troubles for the beleaguered RUC.