The British Army in Northern Ireland 1975-77

by Ken Wharton

  SOUTH ARMAGH, 1977

  ‘Johnny’, Army Intelligence

  My real name is unimportant, those that know me, know me, or at least they think they do. Others call me Johnny; some call me a pain in the backside. In July 1977 I did my first patrol in Northern Ireland, around the square of Crossmaglen, XMG, in the ‘Bandit Country’ of South Armagh. All told I completed over six years in what some called the ‘Emerald Toilet.’ Some twenty years later, after another two-year tour, in July 1997 I finally left NI for good. Did peace finally breakout that year? At the time I sincerely hoped so but it did not look so good at the time, as once more bombs and hijackings were taking place. Personally it cost me two wives and it must be at least thirty other relationships. In my last unit divorce was almost compulsory, for others it cost so much more. For some it was their physical and mental health and for over 1,600 RUC, UDR/RIR, Navy, Army and Air Force personnel, they paid the ultimate sacrifice with their lives. However, for me at the time it was like a boy’s own adventure, exiting. It could be dangerous, interesting, beautiful, frustrating and also very, very boring. It was ten years after I left the Army, at the Op Banner Service in St Paul’s Cathedral that I realised what a deadly game I had been playing. There I had hoped to meet those lads who I had served with and supported and reminisce about the good and bad times and the camaraderie under difficult conditions. Instead I started to meet the families of those service personal and civilians who had not come back.

  I, like so many others, have patrolled Northern Ireland’s cities, its villages and countryside, from the ground and the air. Flying over most of it in Gazelle and Lynx helicopters I have photographed all of it from the Islander fixed wing plane. Northern Ireland gave me the opportunity to shoot; 9mm and .38 pistols, the SMG, the SLR and the L42 sniper rifle, the L79 grenade launcher and the Riot Gun, later still the HK53, and fly, what fun! As a Gazelle observer, I caught some joy riders and got to fly through the aftermath of a van bomb over Belfast. The warning of the blast from a controlled explosion from Felix, the ATO, was only transmitted on the battalion radio net, not on the company’s net to the multiple bricks I was working with. Believe me it’s no fun flying through the debris of an explosion in a single engine helicopter. With others in Lynx helicopters, I got to show the South Armagh PIRA it was not a good idea to shoot at army helicopters, they shoot back! What does not kill you makes you stronger, so they say.

  In 1977, on that first tour, while my old mates went to Wigan Casino, danced to Northern Soul Music, met friendly people, had lives, I put my life in the hands of soldiers I had never met before. I wore a borrowed beret and with them on my first patrols I got to see the sights of Crossmaglen, Newry, Forkhill and Newtownhamilton. As a small cog in the battalion’s intelligence section, those first patrols were designed to familiarise myself and the rest of the battalion’s Int cell to the major towns, villages and countryside of the regiment’s TAOR (Tactical Area of Responsibility) before the main body arrived for a three-month tour. Being on the pre, pre, pre advance party, the Intelligence Section started our tour before some soldiers of the Regiment we were relieving had even had their R&R (Rest and Recuperation)!

  In one of the briefings before deployment, I recall being told we should expect at least six casualties; how do you prepare for the death of a comrade? The training started months earlier and luckily we had officers and senior NCOs who had done tours in 1971, 1972 and 1973; some of the bloodiest years of the Troubles. The Regiment had killed and in turn, had had soldiers killed; by snipers, rocket attacks and one lad had been shot in the head after being left behind when a patrol returned to base. As the regiment’s previous posting had been a two-year tour at Ballykinler, we also had soldiers with more recent experience of the Province. Those men, mostly young lads like me, were used to pass on knowledge of Northern Ireland operations to us new guys. In some ways there was a buzz in the Regiment that we were going to South Armagh. I know I enjoyed the training, getting fit, Hythe and Lydd ranges with the shooting and patrolling but I was a little apprehensive.

  Prior to this training, I attended the Intelligence Collation Course, at The Joint School of Service Intelligence, Army Intelligence Wing, Ashford; on the course we wore plain clothes. Afterwards, I began to feel like a spook, the IO [Intelligence Officer] a captain, became the ‘boss’ and was always referred to him as such; never ‘Sir’. From then on, even back in camp, we only wore civvies and only short first or nicknames were used and never rank so as not to compromise each other later in the Province. We were allowed to grow our hair long; moustaches if we wanted and all issued with 9mm Browning Pistols along with the then personal weapon of an infantry soldier, the 7.62mm SLR. COP (Close Observation Platoon) as the recce platoon of the support company became known for Northern Ireland tours, were given the .38in to use due to the shortage of 9mm Brownings. During that first tour one of our storemen was playing a form of Russian roulette with one of the Webleys when it went off, sending the bullet through the wall of the store and into one of the adjacent welfare telephone boxes. Luckily only the receiver of the phone was hit and not the lad using it! If this seems a farfetched story I can honestly say the hole in the wall was still there some years later when I went back on another tour working out of Bessbrook with the Army Air Corps.

  We had some riot training and instructions from Royal Engineers search teams who taught us where and what to look for when searching for hides, searching houses or vehicles for weapons, components of bombs or other terrorist material. We were shown and handled various captured weapons, then heard how they sounded when fired, both low and high velocity calibre weapons. In those days they were mostly American weapons, such as AR15, AR18 and M16 Armalites, M1 Garand and M1 Carbines, Thompson sub-machine guns and the infamous AK47. We were also shown pictures of what these weapons and the effects of explosions could do to human bodies; not a pretty sight.

  When the training was over we deployed to Belfast and from there down to ‘bandit country.’ It was there that we started our familiarisation of South Armagh. The Intelligence Sergeant, two other privates and myself were strapped into a Gazelle helicopter in slow time at Bessbrook and the pilot flew solo to land us on the Gaelic hockey pitch outside Crossmaglen Police Station, known to all soldiers as XMG; it was there that the fun began.

  On the 9th, the body of William ‘Jackie’ Hutchinson (33) was discovered in a shallow grave at the Old Glencairn Road, North Belfast. He was a former PO and also a member of the UFF. He had been abducted four days earlier and tortured and interrogated by the Loyalists as they believed that he had been an informer for the RUC Special Branch. Fellow Loyalists had lured him into a car before he was taken away and tortured and then killed. At the trial of one of his killers, it was stated that he had been beaten with an axe before being shot in the head. A grave had already been dug by his abductors.

  The Loyalist marching season, the ‘Glorious Twelfth’, was almost upon the Province and the atmosphere of hatred was almost tangible. As a pre-Twelfth gift, the Provisionals planted a 400lb landmine at Lisnaskea, Co Tyrone into four milk churns. The Army discovered the devices and successfully defused them, after they had spotted wires leading into a culvert under a road which they regularly patrolled. The Army were later on called upon to defuse a PIRA car bomb in Enniskillen. On the actual day, Loyalist thugs gathered around one of the massive bonfires which celebrate the Protestant William Prince of Orange’s victory over the Catholic King James in 1690 and attacked RUC officers. Six policemen were injured by a 50-strong mob hurling bricks and other objects and who charged the outnumbered RUC men. In several parts of Belfast, PIRA gunmen opened fire on at least five Army foot patrols; there were no injuries. A bus was hijacked and burned and rival Republican thugs clashed with Loyalist gangs on the peace line at Cupar Way, Belfast. Soldiers based at the nearby North Howard Street Mill were ‘crashed out’ to break up the rioting. In Londonderry, a Republican organisation thought to be INLA left a small explosive device on the route of a
Loyalist parade. The device, in a duffle bag, was left outside an Orange Lodge at the commencement point of a planned parade. It weighed 12lbs and had been left near a wall close to the city’s historic City Walls; it failed to explode.

  The Queen was celebrating her Jubilee year and it had been announced that she would visit Londonderry as part of her celebrations on 9 August. The Provisionals chose the 12th in order to state that they would cause violent and massive disruptions to that visit. This could only result in more headaches for the security forces.

  A LOT OF WASTED BOTTLES

  Erich Modrowics, Queen’s Own Hussars

  The colonel decided that we would go out on a mobile patrol in the late evening around the time of the internment anniversary riots. I was his driver and was in the lead Rover with the RSM behind; naturally we took helmets but wore berets. For some reason it seemed darker than usual that night as we left the relative safety of the camp at Fort Monagh. We drove down to the first roundabout and then turned onto the Andersonstown Road. It was eerily quiet, the streets were deserted but there was the smell of burning in the air. We drove past a burning car – and the usual detritus of the urban battleground which was Belfast – and approached a pedestrian crossing which changed to red as we neared it. There was no one there, so we drove through it and then a little further the colonel told me to turn left. I did so and started to turn left down a side street, the name of which I don’t know but as we turned there was a telegraph pole burning across the road.

  We stopped and were getting out of the rover, and I recall I was one of the last to get out and as my foot touched the road a glass bottle landed a foot or two away and smashed. The calm had become the storm and more bottles started raining down around us; the colonel told us to get back in and turn around, which we did with haste! The journey back along the Andersonstown Road was alive with bottles raining down from both sides of the street yet there was no one to be seen. I assume they were hiding behind the hedges of the houses but it was a surreal experience, and it seemed like everyone had donned their helmets by this time. However, as I couldn’t get to mine as I was driving, I was forced to use my gloved hand to protect my head. We were almost back at the camp and about to turn up to the driveway to the back gate when a frantic voice sounded on the radio. We were urgently informed that there was an impending ambush close to the back gate! I did a quick turn over the grass and we went to the front gate where we were able to get in without incident; just another mobile patrol in West Belfast!

  The contributor writes about a waste of bottles and whilst not strictly germane, this puts the author in mind of one of his boyhood heroes, one Freddie Trueman, the Yorkshire cricketer. Whilst this may be somewhat apocryphal, the following took place on the cricket tour of the West Indies in 1953/4. At Georgetown, volatile sections of the crowd began hurling bottles on to the pitch, putting players and umpires at risk and quite naturally, the players left the pitch. All that is, with the exception of one Freddie Trueman who was seen collecting bottles with a nonchalant alacrity. When questioned as to his sanity by the riot police, Trueman is rumoured to have stated: ‘Eh, lad, where ah come from, there’s threpence each back on these bottles!’

  The Provisionals attempted to bomb Andersonstown RUC station again on the 15th but a holdall containing a 10lb device was discovered and defused by EOD. On this occasion, the cost to the SF was time and energy but even the nuisance value of a hoax or defused bomb was still putting a tremendous strain on Army resources as well as the personal pressure on individual personnel. In the afternoon, IRA gunmen hijacked a van on the Ballynahinch to Newcastle Road in Co Down and then abandoned the vehicle leaving a box with several wires leading from it. It was another hoax, but again it took men and resources and time to ensure that it was actually harmless.

  On the 16th, the IRA came close to killing another off-duty UDR soldier, this time in Armoy, Co Antrim. The soldier was a part-time member of the UDR and was visiting a friend’s house in the village. He had been watched by PIRA members, and as he walked outside of the house, masked gunmen came out of hiding and fired five shots, wounding him in the shoulder. The assailants raced away in a stolen car. The UVF also struck on that same day, when a gang fired several shots through the windows of a house in Cliftondene Gardens in the Oldpark area and an elderly Catholic couple narrowly escaped death.

  On the 19th and 20th, armed PIRA gunmen made attacks on Hastings Street RUC station and an RUC station in Strabane. There was damage but no casualties in either incident. Hastings Street RUC is no longer there and instead a modern commercial building occupies the spot. During the Troubles, it was located only a few hundred yards from the infamous Divis Tower and the maze of maisonette-type flats known to soldiers as the ‘Zanussi.’ Whilst never as beleaguered as say Springfield Road police station or the RUC base at Crossmaglen, it was nevertheless under more or less constant pressure from both the Provisionals and the Republican thugs who lived close by. Also at that time, the RUC raided an ‘empty’ flat at Forthriver Drive in the Glencairn area and discovered a massive amount of medical supplies including bandages, pain-killers and even surgical knives. The supplies there were enough to equip a small field hospital for Loyalist wounded. Whereas the IRA/INLA had sympathetic doctors over the Irish border, the Loyalists had to visit MDs in Loyalist areas whom they could intimidate into treating their injured, rather than take them to hospital. Once in hospital of course, the Army/RUC would be sent for and arrests were inevitable. In several earlier incidents, a struck-off and alcoholic doctor was used and a Loyalist gunman died of Septicaemia as a consequence of being treated by a ‘quack.’

  The following day, there was a similar but smaller find of medical supplies in the Sandy Row Orange Hall in Belfast. Later on that day, a soldier from the 3rd Battalion, Light Infantry was shot and seriously wounded by an IRA sniper on the Ballymurphy Estate. A routine foot patrol was walking along Ballymurphy Drive when a single shot rang out and the young soldier slumped to the ground. He was rushed to hospital and fortunately after a long period of treatment recovered from his wound. The Light Infantry had lost two soldiers in the previous month and lost a total of 35 members over the long and bloody path of the Troubles; the following month in the same area, they would lose Private Lewis Harrison.

  On the 22nd, another PO was killed by the Provisionals as he relaxed in a pub after finishing his duty for the day. Thomas Fenton (20) worked at Magilligan Prison near Limavady, Co Londonderry and was from Cloughmills, Co Antrim. Along with several friends he was drinking in Molloy’s public house when several masked gunmen pulled up in a car outside. One gunman stood guard at the door and the other using an automatic weapon fired nine rounds at the group of drinkers. Mr Fenton was hit four times and died almost straight away and a friend was hit and badly wounded. The murderers calmly walked outside and drove away.

  Mr Fenton’s colleagues naturally reacted to this, the fifth murder of a PO and took action to show their sympathy, upsetting even the UVF. A spokesman for the Loyalist UVF and Red Hand Commando then announced that they would take what they termed ‘drastic action’ against prison officers in the Maze for what they alleged was ill-treatment of Loyalist prisoners. They announced that their policy of no conflict with POs was now in jeopardy. As quoted by Paul Eccleston in the Belfast Telegraph, the UVF Camp Council stated: ‘We solemnly warn the Prison Officers’ Association and their superiors that their illegal acts will no longer be met with submissiveness within the prisons should we have to bring these injustices sensationally onto the national press headlines.’ The problems arose from the temporary banning of food parcels and recreational facilities as POs marked the death of their colleague Thomas Fenton with a day-long protest. Although the murder was the work of the Provisionals, the protests affected all prisoners in the Maze. The UVF warned that they would react violently if such a protest was repeated; action by the POs ended after 24 hours.

  A routine mobile patrol by the RMP (Royal Military Police) in the Nationalist
Short Strand area of East Belfast came under gun attack by the IRA on the same day as Mr Fenton was killed. Altogether, six rounds hit the RMP Land Rover and one NCO was hit several times in his legs. At Greysteel, Midway between Londonderry and Limavady, the UFF’s Londonderry Brigade bombed a Catholic church. Extensive damage was caused to the Sea Church by a 50lb device, but there were no injuries. Greysteel experienced a mass shooting on the evening of 30 October 1993, when three members of the UFF attacked a crowded pub with machine guns, killing eight Catholic civilians and wounding 13. Greysteel would be forever associated with the massacre.

  The following day, a Republican murder gang, thought to have been INLA, drove past a shop on the Shankill Parade where five Protestant women were standing. Without warning several shots were fired at the women, who dived to the floor for cover. Several were wounded, one badly, and the gunmen’s car drove away towards the Oldpark area. It was a blatant sectarian attack and the women were lucky to escape with their lives. On the same day, it is thought that a small explosion at Silent Valley Orange Hall, Kilkeel, was also caused by INLA.

  A cowardly attack by the Provisionals in Lurgan, Co Armagh on policemen doing their lawful duty led to the death of one officer and the wounding of two more. Inspector James Harold Cobb (38), father of three, was killed by an IRA gang at Church Place, Lurgan, as he and three colleagues were opening security gates in its centre. As the previous contributor writes, he was with two RUC reservists who were both badly wounded but survived. Two IRA members were subsequently jailed for life for the attack, but one of them later became a political advisor to a leading Sinn Fein politician, on release from jail in 2000. He was also among the 1981 Hunger Strikers but renounced his fasting after several deaths.