The Nemesis File - The True Story of an SAS Execution Squad

by Paul Bruce

  Throughout those first two weeks in Belfast, we would often be wakened by the sound of rifle fire at odd times during the night. Sometimes the gunfire sounded really close but, to our knowledge, the Sydenham Docks complex was never the target of any direct fire. On occasions, of course, we also heard the unmistakable sound of a bomb going off, and we would try to judge how much gelignite had been used in each explosion.

  It seemed that the call for us to continue our part of the plan to wipe out the gunmen would never come. Each morning we expected Don to be called into the Lisburn headquarters for our orders. We waited in vain.

  On Monday, 18 October, we were surprised to hear that we had been ordered to hold another meeting with Yvonne, the woman informant we had met a couple of days after our arrival. This time, chatting in a pub in Lisburn, the woman told us of an IRA gunman who was staying in a safe house near Malone Road, South Belfast. Yvonne said bluntly, ‘He needs to be killed. He has committed terrible atrocities.’

  We wondered what made Yvonne tick. We had been told that she had once been an ardent IRA supporter but now worked for British intelligence. We wondered why she had agreed to turn traitor and now talked about her own side with such venom. She told us she had been informed that the gunman was staying in the house of known IRA sympathisers. She encouraged us to take the house by storm, at night or at dawn but Don didn’t like the idea and told her so, saying, ‘If we hit that house, we would have to take out everyone in the place. We couldn’t risk trying to find the one suspect we would be looking for. And that’s stupid.’

  Yvonne appeared to know the gunman really well because she admitted that he fancied her and wanted to go to bed with her. She suggested that she would take him to a pub on the Wednesday – two days away – get him pissed and then we could grab him when they were on their way home.

  We agreed in principle to go along with her plan but, without informing her, we changed the operation. We knew that shortly after 11pm in Belfast, with the pubs emptying, the streets would be full of people as well as troops and police watching out for trouble. The last thing we wanted was to be caught in the middle of a gun battle with police and troops having no idea of our true identity.

  We arrived in our blue Marina shortly after 7pm and parked in Malone Road, about 100 yards from the terraced house. We saw Yvonne and the man walk into Malone Road and move towards the pub about 200 yards further down the road. I was driving, with Don next to me in the passenger seat and Benny and JR in the back.

  I drove past and stopped about twenty yards or so in front of them. As they drew level with the car, JR and Benny leaped out and Benny took out his pistol, thrust it into the gunman’s face and told Yvonne, ‘Fuck off. Get the hell out of it.’

  JR quickly searched the bloke who made no attempt to fight or make a run for it. JR found a .38 Smith and Wesson, the old British Army-style revolver, in the man’s waistband. They forced him into the back of the car and off we drove.

  We knew where we were going – to the spot where we had met our grave digger a fortnight earlier. We had only driven a few hundred yards when our man, recovering from the shock of being kidnapped, said, ‘What are you Protestant bastards doing with me?’

  Don, who was in the passenger seat, turned round and, looking him straight in the face, said, ‘Look here, you little republican shit. We’re not Protestant bastards; we’re just taking you for a little ride.’

  The man tried to start a conversation several times during the thirty-minute drive, but every time he opened his mouth we would tell him to shut up and keep quiet. In an effort not to frighten him, however, Don told him nonchalantly that he was being taken to someone who wanted to ask him a few questions. That helped to settle him and he remained quiet for most of the journey.

  It was dusk when we finally arrived at our map reference off the Lurgan–Dromore Road. We drove down the lane and parked on the scrubland off the road. He looked at us and we could see the fear in his eyes.

  We told him to get out of the car but he refused. ‘I’m not getting out anywhere,’ he said, ‘and certainly not here miles from civilisation.’

  JR and Benny looked at each other. Benny knew what he had to do and told the man, ‘Get out here and now, otherwise I will fucking shoot you while you’re sitting in the car.’

  The man wasn’t sure what to do. He began to get out and then sat back in the car again. In the end Benny half-pulled, half-dragged him from the car. He clung on grimly to the car door, refusing to let go.

  Benny kicked him hard in the leg and ripped him away from the car door, sending him sprawling. As JR dragged the man to his feet, he turned to see that Benny had a pistol in one hand. He turned to JR who was now standing by him holding two guns, a pistol in one hand and a .38 revolver in the other.

  The man must have known that he was about to be killed and refused point blank to walk. Benny kicked him repeatedly in the legs, shouting at him, ‘Walk, you fucking bastard, walk, or I’ll fucking kill you here and now.’

  But the man refused, falling to the ground and screaming for help as Benny repeatedly kicked him in his efforts to make him get to his feet and walk where he was told.

  ‘I’m not going,’ he shouted, ‘I’m not fucking moving. I’m staying here.’

  Benny became agitated and began shouting, fucking and blinding at the man, not sure what to do. He had completely lost his cool and was in no mood to allow the man to argue with him. It seemed that the man would not agree to walk anywhere, despite the kickings. Benny knew what he had to do.

  In the same split second, both Benny and JR aimed their weapons at the man on the ground and opened fire, hitting him in the back. Benny fired three shots, hitting him in the back and the head. His body jerked forward as the rounds hit home and he slumped to the ground.

  I looked around, positive that someone must have heard all the noise and commotion. At that time our weapons had no silencers and Benny and JR had fired four shots between them, sending the birds in the trees chirping and squawking. I knew we were on the edge of a wood and a long way from any houses, but it seemed that the whole neighbourhood for miles around must have heard what was going on.

  After all the noise, the shouting and the screaming, the wood seemed to go instantly silent. We looked at each other, not sure how to respond. Someone said, ‘Quick, let’s get this fucking over as fast as possible.’

  We all grabbed hold of an arm or a leg and carried the body towards the trench in a hurry. Without ceremony, we threw him in, turned and walked back to the car.

  As we drove back to Belfast, Don turned to JR. ‘Where’s the gun?’

  ‘What gun?’ he said.

  ‘His gun, the one you took off him.’

  ‘I’ve got it here. I thought I’d keep it as a souvenir.’

  ‘No, you fucking won’t,’ replied Don. ‘Clean it, get rid of all the fingerprints and throw it.’

  Five minutes later, we stopped by the side of the road and JR threw the gun as hard as he could into a hedgerow. The operation was over.

  The following morning, we had a chat about the previous night’s work. We all realised it had been a fuck-up; it hadn’t gone well and we had made far too much noise removing the man from the car and dragging him along before killing him. If we were going to continue taking out people and disposing of them we had to think of a better way of keeping them quiet before killing them.

  We hoped we would not be asked to continue picking IRA gunmen off the streets. We had been led to understand that our task would be more clandestine; this work was more like cops picking up some poor sod off the streets rather than SAS work.

  Benny could not be consoled. All day he went around like a bear with a sore head, blaming himself for the mess-up and refusing to listen to our advice. We knew that it wasn’t Benny’s fault; it was the actions of the man that had determined how the operation went. It was simply Benny’s bad luck that his man had played up in such a manner, making his task that much more difficult.

&nb
sp; Later that day Don went off to the Lisburn headquarters. He was determined to get us out of Sydenham Docks and into more secure billeting and, more important, he knew that we needed another Q-car. We had now used the Marina on two operations as well as being seen around the town in it – the same four men in the same blue Marina. It had to go.

  He returned a few hours later with a dark-blue Ford Corona Mark II and told us we would be moving on Saturday. He said, ‘You may not believe this but we are moving to Silver City.’

  ‘Silver City?’ we replied in unison, unable to believe that we would be billeted in Northern Ireland’s biggest top-security jail. Silver City was the name given to the infamous Long Kesh Prison, where all the senior IRA officers were kept, as well as the great majority of men picked up and interned under the Special Powers Act. Long Kesh earned its name of Silver City because, in the early 1970s, the corrugated iron walls shone like silver in the sunlight.

  We wondered what life would be like there and felt sure we would miss the good food we had enjoyed at the REME canteen.

  After a farewell drink with a couple of REME blokes on the Friday, we moved the following morning, managing to squash all our gear in the boot of the Corona. We carried no ID cards, of course, but the officer in charge of the Long Kesh guard house knew to expect us.

  We drove through the gates and about 120 yards along the road, before turning right into a road lined with Portakabins. It looked more like a holiday caravan park than Ireland’s biggest jail.

  This Portakabin was more spacious and more luxurious than the one at Sydenham Docks. Although we now had much more room and four single beds, we still had to walk from the Portakabin to the showers and loos, about six yards away. In the bitter cold of winter, those eighteen feet seemed more like half a mile.

  At that time, Long Kesh seemed to house soldiers from every other regiment in the British Army. There were one or two infantry regiments and detachments from REME, the Royal Engineers, MPs, cooks and medical staff as well as scores of prison officers.

  It seemed ironic that we had been moved to Long Kesh which now housed hundreds of IRA suspects. Earlier that week, Prime Minister Edward Heath, after holding talks with Opposition Leader Harold Wilson, had agreed to set up an inquiry, under Sir Edmund Compton, to examine allegations of brutality and the torture of internees as well as others arrested under the Special Powers Act. Following the announcement of this inquiry, fierce debates raged in the House of Commons, Stormont and the Irish Dáil as critics blamed Britain for the situation in Northern Ireland – for neglecting the situation in the north for fifty years; for introducing internment; for blowing up border roads; and for permitting the torture of internees.

  At the same time, Cardinal Conway, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, denounced the British and Stormont Governments for using torture to obtain information. We read about all these allegations in the newspapers and wondered what the hell would happen if the part we were playing in the troubles ever became known – that we were secretly killing known IRA gunmen on orders handed down by the British Army’s senior officers in Northern Ireland’s headquarters. We believed those officers would have received their orders from the Ministry of Defence in London.

  We also recognised that the actions we were ordered to undertake would have had to be authorised at the highest level. It seemed unlikely that senior civil servants and ministers at the Ministry of Defence would not have known about the missions we had been ordered to undertake. We believed the policy of picking up IRA gunmen and shooting them in cold blood could only have been approved in London.

  We wondered how many more people we would be ordered to get rid of.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  That weekend the fury of the Catholic backlash erupted in Newry. Not since the policy of internment had been introduced in August, three months earlier, had the mass of the Catholic population made their feelings known in such a violent way.

  The spark that ignited the whole town occurred when a local businessman strolled towards a bank in Newry town centre to deposit his day’s takings in the night safe. As he approached the bank, three men rushed him and tried to snatch the bag holding the takings.

  The man screamed for help, refusing to hand over the money. With great determination and courage, he held on to the bag as the three hit and kicked him in an effort to force the bag out of his hand.

  Overlooking the bank, however, a British Army marksman had been placed on duty to watch for just such an attack. Alerted by the man shouting for help, he saw what was happening and, as the three men ran from the scene, he shouted at them to stop. They continued running and the soldier opened fire, killing all three.

  Within an hour, the centre of Newry became filled with angry Catholics demanding that the soldier be strung up for killing innocent men. Two hours later, more than 10,000 chanting, angry, rioting Catholics would not be calmed by the army’s loudspeaker appeals for order.

  Determined to avenge their dead friends and get even with their Protestant foes, other Catholics torched shops, homes and government buildings in and around the town. Fire brigades from towns twenty miles away were called in to deal with the flames that threatened, at one point, to race through the entire centre of Newry. Army reinforcements were called in from Belfast as the rioters stormed around the town far into the night.

  Not since the troubles began had the Catholic minority in one town reacted with such venom and such determination to burn down every building they targeted as belonging to the enemy. The strength of feeling manifested itself three days later when more than 15,000 people attended the funerals of the three men.

  It seemed to us in our Portakabin at Long Kesh that the IRA was far from being on the edge of defeat. From that one incident, it seemed likely that they would win over a few thousand more recruits to their cause. What we had hoped would be a quick tour of duty in Northern Ireland now threatened to stretch into months, if not longer. I wondered how many more people we would be ordered to kill.

  During that same weekend of 23–24 October, we were also surprised to read that the security forces had shot dead four men and two women who had been planting bombs in Belfast. The six had been an IRA squad intent on bombing the city centre’s premier hotel, The Europa, and the famous Celebrity Club in Donegall Place. Those killings would also be roundly condemned because not one of the six people shot dead had been carrying a weapon.

  It was the first time that we had read of women taking such an active role in terrorist activities. Until that moment, we had believed the women actively supporting the IRA had taken a back seat, leaving the men to carry out the shootings, beatings and bombings. I wondered if I would ever be able to kill a woman if ordered to do so. I doubted it.

  On the morning of Monday, 25 October 1971, Don told us that we would be starting the next phase of our task and he would have to visit Lisburn headquarters to pick up a new shooter. This one, however, would be fitted with a sophisticated silencer.

  While he was away, all hell broke loose in the Long Kesh jail, hidden from our view by a ten-foot-high corrugated iron wall but only a few hundred yards from our billet. We had been alerted by a helicopter hovering above the jail and we could see flames shooting up above the jail and plumes of smoke drifting into the sky. On the ground, there was non-stop activity, with people shouting orders.

  On the television news later that day, we heard the reason for the commotion. Two hours before the trouble, the British Government had announced their decision not to set up a semi-permanent commission of inquiry into allegations of torture of Long Kesh internees by the security forces. It had also been intended that the commission would investigate allegations of the shootings of civilians by British troops. As we sat in our billet watching the BBC news, we looked at each other. No one said a word.

  We heard later that four prison warders had been taken hostage and held for two hours; the recreation hall had been set on fire and the inmates had wrecked their accommodation and barricaded th
emselves inside with their hostages.

  Troops were called in to restore order, armed with pickaxe handles and CS gas.

  Two days later, the Irish newspapers reported that the IRA had smuggled out a note from Long Kesh, detailing what had happened during the riot. The note claimed that, after the internees had set fire to the prison canteen and barricaded themselves inside one part of the jail, British soldiers had fought their way in after firing CS gas canisters into the black for fifteen minutes.

  The note claimed that only when all was quiet, with some internees barely conscious, did the 300 troops storm the building with their pickaxe handles. The IRA note claimed that the prisoners were beaten on their heads, faces, shoulders and arms, some suffering serious injuries. A number were admitted to the military wing of Musgrove Hospital with broken arms, jaws and noses and seventeen were detained. Allegedly, after the riot had been put down, a number of inmates were taken away for intensive questioning. Before the questions began, however, they alleged that soldiers had beaten them. For two days, the note claimed, soldiers looted and wrecked the H-block huts, taking whatever they wanted.

  The Northern Ireland Office issued a statement to the effect that troops had fought their way into the prison and some slight injuries had been sustained by the rioters. But the Northern Ireland Catholics’ allegations against the British Army and the RUC had been gaining credence. For the first time a group of Catholic priests in the diocese of Armagh issued a statement ‘condemning the cynicism of the Northern Ireland Irish Home Affairs Office in stating that only a small number of inmates had been slightly injured in the riot’.

  When Don returned with the new 9mm Browning pistol and the silencer, we asked him why he always went alone to the Lisburn headquarters, suggesting that it would be safer for him to be accompanied by one of us, just in case.