by Ken Wharton
It might be useful at this point to let a wounded soldier describe the effects of an injury caused by a petrol bomb:
The first thing is the blast which causes such an intense flash and then instant fucking pain. When I was hit near Springfield Road police station, it hit me in the face and upper arms; my face was on fire and I could feel my sleeves burning, right down to the bare skin. The little bastards put sugar into the petrol so that when it burned, it turned to molten jelly and continued to burn right through the skin, muscle and bone. I was lucky as one of the lads threw a coat or something onto my face to smother the flames and someone else just poured the contents of his water bottle into my face to ease the pain. He could have pissed all over me as far as I am concerned; just anything to take away that horrible burning and the stench of burned eyebrows and my moustache. I needed a lot of treatment and was sent to a Burns Unit in London before I was well enough to come back.
The scene then switched further along the Springfield Road in the direction of central Belfast. It is thought highly unlikely that a bomb attack on Mackie’s Factory that took place during the day was a planned PIRA or OIRA operation, but more likely an opportunist revenge attack by unknown Republicans that involved an attempt to also burn the factory down. Several men smashed a window at the rear of the building, before prising metal bars from the frame. One of the gang threw a primed nail bomb into the building, which exploded very close to William Atwell (40), a father of two, who was employed as a security guard. The blast drove a huge nail into his head, killing him almost instantly. Both PIRA and OIRA have always denied responsibility for the act.
Seventy miles further north, in Londonderry’s Bogside Estate, there was another death. Soldiers manning an observation post (OP) in Bishop Street came under fire from gunmen near Longtower Primary School and returned fire at a figure there. The man was Hugh Herron (31), a father of two from the Shantallow area of the city; he was hit in the head and died instantly. Soldiers and police were very quickly on the scene, where they discovered a pistol close by his body. It was later shown under forensic examination that he had handled at least one weapon. That he was not claimed as a martyr by either PIRA or OIRA is meaningless; it may have been another Republican ruse to cast the Army as killers of innocent people, thus shifting the responsibility away from them, yet again helping their image as ‘defenders of the community’. There is no evidence to suggest that he was a paramilitary, other than the damning presence of a weapon close to where his body was found. It was the first and only killing in Londonderry on Internment Day.
The day was almost over, but violence still came to the south-west of the country, to the Co. Tyrone border with the Irish Republic. Before Internment Day on 9 August 1971, only two members of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) had died: two in 1970, one in an RTA and one who had collapsed while on duty. Before this day was out, one more of their soldiers would be dead – the first to be killed by the Provisionals. All 3,000 of its members, full- and part-time, were called up on a 24/7 basis for a two-week emergency operation. The 6th Battalion was based in and around Clady, tasked with routine patrolling as well as snap VCPs. Shortly before midnight, PIRA gunmen operating inside the Republic opened fire on the VCP, but there were no hits. The soldiers of 6 UDR were aware that it was strictly forbidden to fire into the Republic, so consequently held their ground without returning fire. It has not been recorded if there was any radio contact with either the Irish Army or An Gardaí Siochana, but in the following ten or so minutes there was no Irish SF presence whatsoever in the area.
The lack of interference on the Irish side had simply allowed the terrorists to move closer, finding better firing positions to attack the VCP. Suddenly, a burst of around thirty rounds was fired at the patrol from an old IRA favourite, a Thompson sub-machine gun. There were several injuries, but Private Winston Donnell (22) was hit in the head, dying instantly. Just how close the lack of Irish border ‘security’ allowed them to get is evidenced by a perusal of the weapon’s operating guide. It has an effective range of less than 450ft (150m) with a muzzle velocity of 935ft (285m) per second. They were allowed to get to 100–150m from the UDR soldiers, who were powerless to fire back.
The day was over; fourteen people were dead; two were soldiers, ten were civilians and two were paramilitaries (or at least one who was suspected of being so). In addition to the millions of pounds of damage to property, a staggering thirty-one children were left without a mother or a father. It was a colossal price to pay for an ill-conceived, poorly planned and badly timed operation that netted so little; far from driving the Provisionals from the streets, it simply made them stronger. Tragically, the moderate Catholics were driven straight into the arms of the very people whom internment was intended to destroy.
It also resulted in the final Protestants still living in the Ardoyne abandoning their homes in and around Farringdon Gardens; the desperate residents torched their homes to deny them to Catholic families, taking all that they could manage on lorries and in vans and on handcarts. Similar scenes were taking place across the Springfield Road between Springfield and Springmartin. The final act of sectarianism had engulfed parts of Belfast that were hitherto mixed. Berlinisation was coming and when it came, unlike the wall built to divide East and West Berlin in 1961, this ‘wall’ was here to stay.
One believes that internment, a concept that can only be remotely successful when based on sound intel, failed badly when used by the British Government, and in particular failed the soldiers ordered in to enforce such an ill-judged policy. No major ‘fish’ were speared and it increased resentment to such an extent that ‘hearts and minds’ were never going to be won over. A US general once squeaked, ‘Grab their balls, and their hearts and minds will soon follow.’ This approach clearly didn’t work on those August days of violence; it was cataclysmic, a major turning point in the history of the Troubles. If ever there was a boost in recruiting for the Provisional IRA, this futile exercise was it. Had the operation captured high-ranking Republicans such as Bell, Twomey, Keenan, Adams, McGuinness and the like, and had far fewer people been killed in those first forty-eight hours of the raids, then internment could have been deemed a success. Instead, it further eroded the British Government’s credibility, it undermined the morale of the troops there in a peacekeeping role and it presented the Provisional IRA as the defenders and vanguard of the Nationalist communities; in short, it drove an ever-widening wedge between the SF and the Catholic population, setting in motion a division that was irreparable.
Michael Sangster, Royal Artillery:
It was a political act forced upon the Army by Faulkner and his cronies. Totally useless because it had no support from the Republic of Ireland. I’m also convinced that RUC SB deliberately withheld information on Loyalist terrorists, and deliberately passed on out of date intelligence about Republicans. They were still upset about the Army being given primacy over them and at that time, the soldiers didn’t trust any of the police over there, so any info they had, which was very poor to be honest, was kept in-house.
The following day, a further six people died in the continued rioting and firefights between the Army and both wings of the IRA; Loyalist paramilitaries were very heavily involved. A soldier and five civilians died, taking the total deaths for the first forty-eight hours of internment to twenty. The Army was responsible for four of the deaths on the 10th, with the Provisionals being responsible for the other two.
Cataclysmic or catastrophic, this author believes that it was both for the innocent civilians and for the soldiers caught up in it all like ‘piggy in the middle’.
POSTSCRIPT
At the time of writing – May 2018 – the author learned that the UVF had, forty-seven years after that terrible forty-eight-hour period, claimed that they had carried out some of the killings in the Ballymurphy area. A group* calling itself ‘UVF Veterans’ made an announcement in May 2018, stating that some of the killings had been from shots aimed by their members from Springma
rtin into the ’Murph. It is perhaps no coincidence that they deliberately timed their announcement to ‘muddy the waters’ in the light of the Belfast Coroner’s Court demanding that the Ministry of Defence reveal the names of soldiers who were stationed in the Springmartin over the two days of internment. Is this possibly a tactic designed to deflect what is considered by many as a ‘witch-hunt’ against soldiers, or are the UVF being truthful? A spokesman for the Ballymurphy families, John Teggart, son of one of the dead men – Danny Teggart – said, ‘The evidence that we have put forward to the coroner’s court is that the paratroopers shot our loved ones and that’s where the focus needs to go back on.’ Very tellingly, he also said, ‘It’s a paramilitary force, so anything they have said is going to be dubious.’ Presumably this applies equally to anything that Republican paramilitaries say and do.
When Mr Teggart made this comment about paramilitaries, one wonders if in the back of his mind he had memories of his brother, Bernard, who was murdered by the Provisionals on 13 November 1973. Bernard was 15 at the time of his death. He and his twin brother, Gerry, had been present at an incident where Republicans were attempting to hold up a beer tanker at gunpoint; he had called out to the men just moments before soldiers arrived and arrested the criminals. In the eyes of the IRA, he was an informer, and he was abducted later from St Patrick’s Training School on the Glen Road. The boys’ abduction was not reported to either the RUC or the Army by the staff at the school. Gerry was deemed ‘innocent’, given money for his bus fare home and sent on his way. Bernard was taken to the zoological gardens on the Antrim Road, where he was shot dead. The young man’s body was found by a UDR patrol with a note pinned to his chest, bearing a single word: ‘tout’. In October 2004, a spokesman for Sinn Féin publicly admitted their error in murdering the boy. Mr Teggart’s family suffered grievously at the hands of the paramilitaries, both Loyalist and Republican.
This author maintains, as he always has, that soldiers responded to incoming rounds fired from the direction of the Nationalist Ballymurphy. While one concedes that the Parachute Regiment has often been considered a little ‘gung-ho’, they are nevertheless disciplined and incredibly well trained in fire control. I believe that their shots were aimed at specific targets; it is highly likely the Loyalist paramilitaries were content to hit anyone, especially those whom they considered to be Catholic. There was another twist to the story, when, on 4 May 2018, a Belfast legal firm – Reavey & Co. – handed in documents to the Coroner that named a member of the UVF as the man responsible for at least some of the deaths on the Ballymurphy Estate on the days in question. Thomas Johnston West, a former British soldier who died in 1980, was named as the sniper, along with another man who acted as a spotter. Solicitor John Greer said, ‘This is significant and sensitive material being given to the coroner in relation to the Ballymurphy shootings.’ The Belfast Telegraph of 4 May 2018 reported, ‘Information was also provided on the rifle allegedly used, along with its subsequent seizure by the authorities.’
Johnston was known in UVF circles as ‘Tommy’, and at one stage was part of an internal coup against the leadership, the result of which saw him ‘crowned’ Chief of Staff. He was regarded as a moderate – quite a feat for a sniper who was allegedly responsible for several murders in August 1971 – who overthrew the more militant hawks in the movement in October 1975. The coup was staged at a time when sectarian murders of Catholics was occurring with a disturbing frequency. The killings were purely random, whereas West and his co-conspirators preferred the direct targeting of known Republicans. Gusty Spence endorsed the move from behind his prison bars, where many UVF members had joined him thanks to sterling work by both the Army and the RUC. West was replaced the following year by a man alleged to be John ‘Bunter’ Graham.
Then, within days, the UVF source named Derek Menice as a second sniper, responsible for some of the deaths. It was further revealed that their Springmartin unit were using at least two Austrian-manufactured Steyr AUGs, modified to fire a 7.62mm round, identical to one used by the British Army at the time. Menice died in 2010, after turning his back on his former paramilitary life some time earlier.
Internment was a disaster in virtually every definition of the word: it trawled in very few worthwhile players; it virtually ignored the increasingly threatening Loyalists; it destroyed any possible relationship with the Nationalist community, vital in counteracting the growing threat from the Provisional IRA; and finally, it made the British Government look like a Central American military junta. Heath was badly advised by the political leaders of Northern Ireland; history would judge him very poorly.
________________
* Costello was shot dead in October 1977 by OIRA gunman Jim Flynn.
* Then located at the junction of South Audley Street and Curzon Street.
* Also described as a ‘lieutenant’ in PIRA’s third battalion in Lost Lives.
* www.newsletter.co.uk/news/ballymurphy-families-sceptical-at-uvf-move-to-admitrole-in-shootings-1-8484562.
CHAPTER 6
THE BLOODIEST YEAR: 1972
In 1969, twenty people died; this was followed by forty in 1970, and the death toll topped the 200 mark at the end of 1971 – the year of internment. Few could have expected the terrifying events of 1972, immortalised as ‘the bloodiest year’, when 566 people lost their lives, including 172 British military personnel and seventeen police officers. Republican terrorists were responsible for a total of 280 deaths in this year as well as for a string of atrocities.
The year 1971 had ended in appalling circumstances with the no-warning UVF bomb at McGurk’s bar in North Queen Street; fifteen civilians were killed, as was a soldier, shot by the Provisionals as he guarded rescue workers digging for survivors.
The following year began badly: on the first Monday of the New Year, the Provisionals detonated a no-warning car bomb in Callendar Street, Belfast, only several score yards from Belfast City Council’s offices; sixty people were injured, but thankfully, none were killed. The ‘economic war’ so favoured by the Provisional IRA was on; this year it would only grow in intensity. The avowed intention of the Provos was to make the North ungovernable; in this objective, they were very close to achieving success. They continued their terror campaign on the 5th, with the death of Private Keith Bryan (18); he was killed in a gun battle between the Glosters and the Provisional IRA in Ardmoulin Street, close to the Divis complex. A PIRA gunman was also fatally wounded in the same gun battle, dying on the 7th in the Mater Hospital.
On the 30th of the month, a shocking and seemingly unavoidable event took place in Londonderry on the last Sunday of that cold month. This particular moment would define the Troubles, as well as stiffen the backbone of the Provisional IRA; it coloured – unfairly – the world’s attitude towards both the British state in general and to the soldiers of the British Army specifically.
A demonstration organised by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) was scheduled to march from the Creggan estate in the westernmost part of Londonderry, to the Bogside and then into the city centre. The mainly Protestant businesses in the centre had been bombed by the IRA, boycotted by Catholics and vandalised by the so-called ‘Derry Youth’. It was in a dire economic state, and all it would take was any deviation by marchers from their intended route to cause further severe damage. In the days leading up to the march, the Londonderry Chamber of Commerce had put severe pressure on the Ulster Prime Minister, Brian Faulkner, to have the march banned. He in turn had complained to the then Prime Minister of the UK, Edward Heath; he himself was in a beleaguered state, facing backbench revolts, a crippling strike by the miners and subsequent three-day weeks that were ruining the country. It is no secret that he passed these fears to senior Army chiefs, who in turn put pressure on HQNI.
The Parachute Regiment, a fearsome fighting organisation with a reputation for no-nonsense shock-and-awe tactics, had based their second battalion in Belfast, 70 miles south of Londonderry. They were ordered to the ci
ty to help police the march and ensure that the businesses in the heart of Londonderry were protected. That decision led to the deaths of thirteen unarmed Catholic civilians, with a fourteenth dying sometime later from his wounds.
