Down Among the Weeds

by Harry Beaves

  Our time in Belfast was at last drawing to a close. My final find was in the familiar area of MacAlpine’s Yard, behind 29-31 Riverdale Park South, where, following the smell of almonds for one last time, I found a box of micro switches, intended for bomb-making, hidden under a sheet of tin. There were about forty in all, made up from doorbell pushes. We thought they were another part of Tony Rooney’s kit and ‘Felix’ was delighted because they were a design that he hadn’t seen before.

  At midday on 14th November 28 Battery officially handed over our area of responsibility to 2RGJ who would oversee it until the KOSB arrived the following day. The Q Staff had been packing the Battery’s stores for several days, but only then could we start packing our own bags for the long-awaited return to Germany. At 1030 on 15th November our convoy of Saracens left Casement Park for the last time and we joined the Regiment at MPH. Spirits were soaring with a very robust ‘end-of-term’ feeling as green Army buses took us on to the terminal at Aldergrove airport for the last time.

  Another group of Gunners had just arrived at Aldergrove to start their four-month emergency tour in a different part of Ireland. They came out of the building and stood looking around nervously, all dressed in clean neat combat clothing, with each man wearing a canary yellow neck scarf. It was common practice at that time for the Royal Artillery to wear coloured scarves to identify individual batteries; at one time 28 Battery had worn powder blue.

  Crash Self was chatting to our Senior NCOs as we waited outside the building for our baggage to arrive by four-tonner. He walked across to greet the newcomers in his normal breezy manner and held out an enormous hand.

  ‘Hello, there. You boys just arrived…’

  Then, pointing at a yellow scarf, an astonished, ‘Oh my Lord, you ain’t gonna wear them are you? Give the Provos somethin’ to aim at. You’ll all get shot in the neck.’

  He turned away and returned to his group of Senior NCOs. The veterans of four months in Andersonstown smiled knowingly and the newcomers were left not wanting to believe him, but wondering if the grizzled old soldier might just be telling the truth. As always, Crash had the last laugh.

  By dinner time the same day we were back in Dortmund and safe, at last.

  Chapter 19

  Louis Hammond

  Over the years, whenever I found information about people or events relating to my Northern Ireland tour in 1972 I added it to my scrapbook and diary.

  In April 1973 I was enjoying a bachelor Sunday morning, reading the papers, when my eye was taken by a headline about an IRA informer who had been found shot in Belfast. The story in the Sunday Times was written by Chris Ryder and Paul Eddy and as I read it I became convinced it was our favourite ‘Fred Basset’, so I added the story to my scrapbook.

  I also had a cutting from the Sunday Times by the same two journalists dated 13th May 1973, this time about the alleged misappropriation of the proceeds of robberies, by members of the IRA. The article particularly interested me because it involved E Company who operated in Riverdale and it named Tommy Gorman as one of those involved, which supported our opinion that many of the IRA ‘heroes’ were as much thugs and criminals as political idealists.

  I re-read the articles when I was preparing Chapter 20 of this book and checked facts on the internet. I found myself following a fascinating trail of intrigue surrounding the activities of a shadowy organisation known as the Military Reaction Force (MRF), an informer named Louis Hammond and an elaborate sting operation by British intelligence. My internet research led me to read Martin Dillon’s book The Dirty War which tells the story behind the two newspaper cuttings. Dillon includes in his book a photograph of Louis Hammond who I can positively recognise as our favourite ‘Fred’.

  The MRF was a covert intelligence-gathering unit of the British Army, based at Palace Barracks, Holywood between 1971 and 1973, conducting plain-clothes patrols around the city, running agents and debriefing informants. The ‘Fred Basset’ informer network was one of their operations. The MRF was always controversial and although it contributed much valuable information to the intelligence picture there is little in the open about those who served in the unit or the events with which they were involved. Today the MRF is a largely discredited organisation, mainly because much of what it did is believed to have fallen well outside the British Army’s Rules of Engagement at that time.

  I knew four senior NCOs from 19 Regiment who returned to Ireland and served with the MRF after our 1972 tour. The first, who I knew particularly well, told me that he had worked with Louis Hammond during that time. He also confirmed in broad detail that the MRF had operated hit squads, essentially assassinating known IRA offenders, the kind of unlawful activity of which they have often been accused. The second of the SNCOs from 19 Regiment was returned to unit not long after his arrival as, I believe, he was involved in an incident which threatened the security of the whole organisation. The other two stayed on and did several tours of duty with the MRF or other covert units until, eventually, they just ‘disappeared’ from the Army organisation and probably became formally employed in one of the national intelligence gathering bodies, probably MI5.

  Louis Hammond’s story is full of controversy and contradiction. There is the British Military version, the Provisional IRA version and areas in between that have been clouded by misinformation and disinformation. This is what I have been able to piece together.

  Louis Hammond was born in 1954, grew up in Andersonstown and joined the British Army in 1970, serving with the Royal Irish Rangers. When he was sent home on leave in 1972 he failed to return and was posted ‘absent’, as is the normal practice. Some months later he was picked up on one of the barricades protecting the Republican ‘no-go’ areas. He was arrested and faced a lengthy spell in prison not just as a deserter, but also as an IRA activist. Instead he was told that nothing more would be said, provided he gave British Military Intelligence information about the IRA in his area. He seemed happy to do what was asked and, once he had accepted and become an informer, there was no turning back. One of the newspaper articles by Ryder and Eddy gave him credit for putting a huge number of wanted IRA men behind bars and seriously reducing the effectiveness of the IRA in West Belfast. It is fair to assume that it was his activities on Fred Basset patrols with units like 28 Battery that achieved this.

  * * *

  The Four Square Laundry was one of the well-known operations mounted by the MRF. ‘Four Square’ offered a laundry service to the Catholic estates with energetic promotions undercutting the local opposition. A box-bodied van would visit twice a week to collect and deliver laundry, driven by a young man, accompanied by a young woman. Both were plain-clothes soldiers. In the void above the cab of the laundry van a third soldier was concealed so that he could take photographs through slits in the vehicle. Clothes collected by the Four Square Laundry vehicles were taken back and forensically checked for traces of explosives, as well as blood or firearms residue, then processed through the standard military laundry service. They were also compared with previous laundry loads from the same house – the sudden presence of different-sized clothes could indicate that the house was harbouring an IRA member, for example. It had become an extremely valuable intelligence-gathering operation.

  The IRA had become suspicious of one of the ‘Freds’ named Seamus Wright and apprehended him for questioning. Wright tried to buy his life by giving the IRA information on the MRF and also naming Kevin McKee, another ‘Fred’. When questioned by the IRA, McKee revealed the activities of the Four Square Laundry and other MRF operations. On 2nd October 1972 a Four Square Laundry van was ambushed in the Twinbrooks estate and the plain-clothes military driver was killed. Twinbrooks was the responsibility of 5 Battery and, despite bordering 28 Battery’s Riverdale area, had been relatively quiet until then.

  The time at which the Four Square Laundry was ambushed coincides roughly with the time in my log when we noticed that our favourite ‘Fred Basset’ had his hair cut short and was becoming very ju
mpy. Despite the constraints, occasional conversations with him and his handler did happen and I remember the handler telling me how untrustworthy the ‘Freds’ were and how one had tried to set him up with the IRA. On another occasion I remember Louis Hammond talking about how another ‘Fred’ had been discovered by the MRF trying to pass information to the IRA and had since disappeared, I believe this was Seamus Wright.

  All of this fits loosely with stories I have read of that time. I suspect Louis Hammond felt very vulnerable lest he was betrayed by someone else in the informer network, which would help to explain his nervous state during his last patrols with us. He probably outlived his usefulness as an informer and, if he was not ‘retired’, I suspect that he was stood down for a while and probably sent to a safe house in England while the dust settled.

  Kevin McKee and Seamus Wright had hoped to buy their lives by becoming double agents for the IRA, but they were never seen again. They IRA have admitted that they were executed as informers in accordance with IRA rules, it is said, by Jim Bryson and Thomas Tolan (both now dead), but their bodies have not been found. They are listed among the ‘Disappeared of Northern Ireland’, those who are believed to have been abducted, killed and buried in unmarked graves by Republican paramilitaries. Their story was told on the BBC4 documentary The Disappeared by Darragh MacIntyre on 5th November 2013.

  Afternote. The bodies of Wright and McKee were found in a bog in County Meath in June 2015, forty-three years after their disappearance.

  * * *

  In his book The Dirty War Martin Dillon claims, in a fascinating story, that that Ryder and Eddy’s article in the Sunday Times on 13th May 1973 concerning the misappropriation of robbery money was a clever and very successful psy-ops operation on the part of the British Intelligence Services.

  The IRA had historically committed robberies to obtain money to buy weapons and otherwise fund their activities and it had long been suspected by both the IRA and the security forces that not all of the stolen money was being handed to the IRA hierarchy. The security forces had helped increase suspicion within the IRA by, on occasions, by deliberately inflating the sums stolen when issuing press releases on robberies.

  The sting itself claimed that a secret document, purported to be from a senior IRA member being held in Long Kesh, had been intercepted by the security forces. It was addressed to the IRA’s Belfast Commander, Seamus Twomey, and named IRA members who had been misappropriating funds. The security forces leaked details of the document to the two journalists, Chris Ryder and Paul Eddy.

  Now Louis Hammond comes into the story. Ryder and Eddy had been approached separately by Hammond who told them that he had once been the Intelligence Officer of E Company in Riverdale, but was at that time acting as a British informer. They spoke to Hammond several times, initially seeking information on Wright and McKee and the MRF. When they pressed him for information on IRA embezzlement Hammond corroborated the facts contained in the alleged intercepted document, claiming that he was doing so because he had become disillusioned by what had been going on. The suspicion is that Hammond was brought out of retirement as a ‘Fred’ and deliberately used by the security forces to feed Ryder and Eddy information to support the sting operation concerning the misappropriated robbery proceeds.

  Such information from Hammond, an IRA insider, seemed to confirm the credibility of the story so Ryder and Eddy went ahead and published the article in the Sunday Times quoting as their source an unnamed ‘former Intelligence Officer from E Company’. From this the IRA were in no doubt who had betrayed them and the article led to the eventual shooting of Hammond.

  The Sunday Times article told that in 1971–72 there were 1,368 armed robberies in Ulster, the majority of these committed by E and F Companies of Belfast’s 1st Battalion, who specialised in staging bank robberies to raise funds for the IRA. It was alleged that at least £150,000 had been siphoned off by senior members of the 1st Battalion. The article named seven prominent members of the IRA who were being accused of misappropriating IRA funds. In consequence, the Provisionals’ High Command suspended military activities by E (Riverdale) and F Companies because of these financial irregularities.

  The publication of the article in the Sunday Times caused chaos within the ranks of the Provisional IRA and caused immense damage to the organisation. There was enough truth in the story to fuel the suspicions and make the additional ‘embroidery’ and downright lies so plausible that the accusations could not be ignored. However, few of the accusations could be substantiated as the original document was purported to have been smuggled out of Long Kesh and intercepted by the security forces before it reached its destination, so, probably, only the author knew the contents and the author himself (if he existed) was unknown. There was paranoia within the IRA over who the author might be and what the actual contents were. The hierarchy suspended a large part of the Provisionals’ active membership for some time whilst investigations were made. Distrust and suspicion were so strong that it resulted in a split between the ‘old guard’, who were close to accepting a negotiated political settlement, and a group (including Adams and McGuinness) who were willing to pursue a protracted war in which the military and political campaigns were fought side by side. Key to the whole operation had been Louis Hammond, our favourite ‘Fred Basset’.

  At some stage Hammond was taken back to Liverpool by one of the Senior NCOs with whom I had served in 19 Regiment and told to lay low, but he was homesick and could not settle. The IRA had been watching out for Hammond and picked him up when he returned to his father’s house in Belfast. Hammond’s bullet-ridden body was found in an alley near the Ormeau Road. He was shot several times in the head and in the body, but miraculously survived. In the book Stakeknife: Britain’s Secret Agents in Ireland, Greg Harkin and Martin Ingram claim that his attacker was Brendon Davidson, himself an IRA informer who was subsequently murdered by Protestant paramilitaries. Gerry Adams was a pall bearer at Davidson’s funeral.

  Hammond’s name appears in a number of publications on the Troubles, but, except for his activities as a ‘Fred’ his true role is unclear. From these stories, I believe the following is likely: he and the IRA claim that he was a double agent passing information to the IRA. At the time when Wright and McKee were informing the IRA of the Four Square Laundry etc, it is probable that Hammond was interviewed by the IRA. He may or may not have offered information, but he did not feel under threat from them and when he was ‘pensioned off’ by the British security services, he felt relatively safe from both the British and the IRA.

  Unfortunately, he had outlived his usefulness for the British because, through his association with Wright and McKee, he could no longer be trusted. When he was used to support the embezzlement sting the British saw him as expendable. British intelligence would have known that revealing in the press that information had come from a ‘former Intelligence Officer from E Company’ identified Hammond to the IRA and effectively signed his death warrant.

  The story of my connection with Louis Hammond had an interesting postscript. In 1975 I was part of the Royal Artillery force serving in Oman during the Dhofar Campaign, deployed for weeks on end in Observation Posts in the jebel about two miles north of RAF Salalah. (See Chapter 25). One lunchtime a group of officers were in the bar of the Officers’ Mess of RAF Salalah seriously ‘re-hydrating’ after a particularly difficult and dangerous spell of operations. One of them, a tall slim man wearing the uniform of a Captain in the Sultan’s Armed Forces, seemed strangely familiar. We exchanged glances and a few minutes later he walked up to me, a bottle of Heineken in his hand.

  ‘We’ve met before,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied.

  ‘Casement Park ’72. We were always pleased to go out with you.’

  It was Fred Basset’s silent minder, then serving on secondment to the Sultan’s Armed Forces. He returned to his friends and I was buoyed by the compliment, wishing he was free to answer my many questions, in particular, about Louis Hammon
d, of whom, at the time, I knew nothing.

  Some weeks later he was involved in the Shershitti Caves operation, one of the major concluding conflicts of the Dhofar campaign. He showed great bravery rescuing several men under intense enemy fire and was awarded a Sultan’s award for bravery. A remarkable person.

  The same man features as one of the lead characters in Ranulph Fiennes’s book The Feather Men, which was made into the film Killer Elite, starring Robert de Niro.

  Chapter 20

  Northern Ireland Evaluation and Epilogue

  In the period of conflict in Northern Ireland that began around 1968 and ended in 1998 with the Good Friday Agreement, 1972 is generally considered the busiest year. When 28 Battery arrived the Troubles were at their height with the barricades making the housing estates ‘no-go’ areas and the IRA operating freely within them. Operation Motorman put an end to this with the removal of the barricades and a massive increase in troop numbers.

  Because of the significance of Casement Park to both the Catholic community and the Republican cause, its occupation by us was one of the most provocative acts of the period, so it was hardly surprising that we should be faced with intense ill-feeling and rioting, particularly during our first few weeks. In part, the period of rioting served as a distraction while the hardline activists reassessed the situation and began to plan the next phase of their operations. It is noticeable that, although the feeling of bitterness caused by our presence never decreased and hardly a week went by without some sort of march or demonstration at our gates, the numbers involved dropped dramatically over the four months.