MRF Shadow Troop

by Simon Cursey

  So, after a bit of discussion we agreed to cover his meeting for him, which was to be another bar off the Whiterock Road. This time, however, it was to be in her car, in the car park of the pub.

  It was a little misty and chilly that evening but fortunately we didn’t have any rain. It was 5:00 pm by the time we had finished our briefing, so we all drifted off to the canteen for a bite to eat and a pot of tea, and to discuss our plans for that night. There were a few other troops around in the canteen so we sat alone in the corner of the room away from everyone else.

  ‘I just heard a couple of those guys over there talking about us,’ Tug said with a smile, when he sat down. ‘They were asking each other who we were, and one of them said we must be some of those “Kitson’s Kids” or Squirrels.’

  We finished our ‘snap’ (food) and tea, and finalised our details before setting off to the pub car park to get ourselves into position before the major arrived. His meeting was set for 8:30 pm and five of us were staked out around the car park in cars and on foot by 7:30 pm. I was alone in car ‘Charlie’ while Mike arrived a few minutes later with the major in car ‘Delta’. We mingled our cars in with other vehicles around one side of the car park, but in a position where we could drive out easily enough if we had to. John, Bob, Dave and Ben were in ‘Foxtrot’, parked a few minutes away as backup if we needed them. Kev, Tug and Colin had quietly entered the area on foot and were positioned amongst the other cars in the shadows around the outer perimeter. No sooner had we taken up our positions than two other cars slowly pulled in, turning off their lights before they halted. The occupants just sat in their seats, waiting in the darkness.

  Immediately, the radios crackled into life. Mike was on the air with the words, ‘Stand by, stand by.’ We could make out that there was one man in each car and that they were just sitting doing nothing, but we couldn’t see any weapons at this time.

  Everyone had a radio but Mike was the only one supposed to break radio silence prior to any ‘contact’ and it surely looked as if we were about to have one. I noticed through the haze of the mist that Tug and Kev were moving back towards me, weaving slowly in and out of parked cars, crouching behind others briefly as they went. Although well out of view of the ‘players’, they had decided to work their way nearer to me because they knew that otherwise they would be caught on the far side of the car park, in the line of fire, if any shooting started. Colin was OK in his position, kneeling behind a black car a few metres off to my right side, so he had no need to move. We all knew that the signal to open fire would be Mike opening his car door and stepping out of the vehicle, after positively identifying armed gunmen in the process to attack. Kev and Colin had unsuppressed SMGs and they were set in good firing positions. The rest of us had our 9 millies in our hands and were ready to go.

  Just after Tug and Kev had taken up new positions around our side, both of the unknown men got out of their cars at once. They stood by their open doors for a few moments discussing something in voices too low for us to hear, and then went around the rear of one car and opened the boot.

  Soon the car boot slammed shut and the two men moved round to position themselves between their two cars, which were parked side by side a couple of metres apart. There they crouched and huddled close together. I definitely saw them carrying two long weapons which I thought were a couple of Thompson submachine guns (known in the 1930s as Chicago pianos) or perhaps M2s. They were in a crouched stance with weapons at the ‘ready’ preparing to fire, between the cars and we had a very clear field of view and fire, about eight to ten metres across the open central area of the car park. I knew Mike was about to open his door and start to get out at any moment. We had all been working together so closely for so long that by now we could read each other’s thoughts.

  The familiar sensations arrived: my chest started to feel tight and I noticed my breathing was getting shorter and fiercer. I was low in my seat in car ‘Charlie’ but I could see Kev in the aim, and also Colin ready to fire. I wasn’t able to see Tug but I knew he was aiming too. I could also clearly see, like the rest of our team that these two gunmen were in the aim and preparing to fire at someone. Perhaps they were waiting for our meeting to start or maybe for someone in the bar to come out. I glanced a little to my right and saw Mike’s door start to open. He with the rest of us had clearly identified armed gunmen aiming and waiting to launch their attack. Then the whole place burst into what was like an ‘in-your-face’ fireworks display. The two SMGs were laying down some hellish firepower on those two gunmen. The shooting had started before Mike managed to put his foot on the ground and I was out of my car and firing before Mike was. Within ten to 12 seconds it was all over. Both SMGs had fired about 8 to 10 rounds each in short automatic bursts of three to four rounds at a time. I had fired two rounds and Tug fired about six. Mike only managed to get off a couple of rounds I think, but he didn’t mind: the operation had gone off like clockwork and he was happy enough with that. I don’t think the two gunmen managed to discharge a single round between them; it had all happened so quickly they never even had a chance to turn around and run. They had been transfixed by bullets where they stood and now where they lay: for them the lights had simply gone out.

  Our backup car, ‘Foxtrot’, arrived within seconds and the guys took up positions around the car park in all-round defence to cordon off the area while we checked the victims, removed any weapons and reorganised ourselves. The major, still in Mike’s car, didn’t have much to say for himself and looked a little shaken up. His lady ‘press’ friend arrived in her car a few moments later as we were packing up to leave, and just before the Army unit we had called earlier to take over the situation from us and to clear up.

  The feeling I got from the major as we dropped him off at his location was that he would prefer in future to stick to uniformed duties.

  ‘Everything happened so quickly, it was over before I could catch my breath,’ he repeated.

  ‘It had to be that way,’ Mike said quietly. ‘We had to overwhelm them right from the start. They were ready and aiming and waiting for their unsuspecting victim to appear. To try and give some warning or challenge would put our lives in danger. Also, just firing a couple of rounds to frighten them isn’t always enough. It’s quite possible that an average gunman can be hit with a couple of 9 millies and still carry on firing for a few moments before going down. They had to be overwhelmed immediately, stopped in their tracks without allowing anyone a moment to fire back at us or anyone else around us. We also had to deny them the opportunity or time to detonate any bomb they might have placed nearby.

  We zoomed off back to our base to hand in our weapons and again fill out our reports for the SIB over a pot of tea. Later we signed our section ‘off duty’ and settled down for the rest of the evening to watch a new-ish cop film that Tug had told us was great. After that I had a beer at the NAAFI before a long hot shower and bed, curled up in my little Army-style bunk. I laid awake there for about half an hour in the dark, thinking and talking to the others about that night’s operation and the players involved. Then I slept soundly till 8:00 am. Next morning Kev, Tug, Colin and me got ourselves ready for our standby duty which began at 9:00 am and then spent our time checking some equipment until lunch.

  None of us in the section was ever greedy to be in the action. It didn’t matter to us if we were selected as backup for other members in our team. We were always in radio contact, so we were all involved to some extent. We didn’t care which of us did the shooting, we just wanted the operations to go well and for none of our guys to get hurt. Being in the backup team was always just as important because everything could easily change at a moment’s notice and we’d find ourselves in the thick of it anyway. We were all elated when ops went off OK, regardless of who did the shooting, and usually returned to base in amazing high spirits – probably part of the ‘coming down’ process after the adrenalin rush.

  We undertook quite a few operations such as those involving the two majo
rs, but most of the time they went off without any hitches or incidents. I retell here those that show what we were trained for and had to do when necessary. Our unit was far too small to attempt to make arrests, take prisoners or engage in any long term fire fight. The best we could do in situations such as this, was simply to hit extremely hard when it was required. We obviously challenged them or issue warnings if the circumstances allowed for that.

  Chapter Five – Blue on Blue

  We undertook many operations where we had to follow a subject or a target in order to gather information on known or suspected members of the IRA. These usually involved tracking people through very hard areas like the Ardoyne, Falls Road and Andersonstown – which is a large council housing estate on the western side of Belfast. We made notes and tried, whenever possible, to take covert photographs of the places they visited and the people they met.

  On foot surveillance, our team consisted of six to eight men, armed and in radio contact with each other. For mobile (vehicle) operations we used four or five cars. The procedure on both types of surveillance was constantly to change the lead position so as not to be compromised or noticed by the target. Team members driving at the rear or to the sides would be spread out, sometimes several hundreds of metres distant from the lead man, depending on the area and often the weather. At other times, we’d all be within fifty metres of the leader, which again depended on the situation, the area we were in and the weather conditions at the time. The rear members of the surveillance team would all be conducting a counter-surveillance operation to ensure that their lead elements were themselves not being followed or pursued.

  One calm, sunny September Sunday afternoon, we had tagged and were now shadowing a suspicious vehicle around the city centre. During this time Tug had been talking about the recent dockers’ industrial action on the UK main land: 42,000 of them had been on an all-out strike in the attempt to safeguard jobs.

  Kev just said in his dry way, ‘There’s always someone on strike and I’m fed up with it all. They should send them out here to give us a hand.’

  The streets at the time were quite busy and we had to stay close to stay with our target. He wasn’t doing very much, just casually cruising around the general area of central Belfast. However, after ‘calling it in’, the V-check that came back on the radio revealed the vehicle to be a ‘positive’ – a stolen car. Suddenly, after 20 minutes tracking him in and out of traffic through the streets, he twigged us following him and tried desperately to accelerate away, jumping red lights and dodging around the traffic in a vain attempt to shake us off. After a few hundred metres of flying around, turning up and down side streets, we ended up chasing him full-on around Belfast City Hall square. He was jumping the lights at every corner while two of our cars raced after him ‘on the pavement’ with pedestrians screaming and diving for cover all over the place. We managed to weave about, avoiding the civilians during the chase, and eventually cornered the suspect, stopping him in a back-street.

  Four of us surrounded his car while our two SMG men, Kev and Colin, covered us as we made our approach, pistols drawn. John and Tug wrenched his door open and dragged him out, forced him to the ground and searched him. Dave and me searched his car and found a variety of weapons and ammunition in the boot, plus some interesting maps in the glove box. In every circumstance like this, with a large ‘find’, we always called in some uniformed forces to make the arrest and take over the situation. We never arrested anyone; we just held them until some uniforms arrived. We didn’t want to have to make a court appearance which would complicate things and compromise us.

  Whilst out patrolling with Kev and John one drizzly evening a few weeks later, we picked-up on a stolen van at around 11:00 pm. We had spent most of the earlier part of the evening patrolling around Turf Lodge, Divis and Shore Road. However, after noticing and following the van for a while, waiting for the right opportunity and place, we stopped it on Waring Street, a quiet area just off the city centre near Victoria Street. As it happened, a local Army patrol was in the vicinity and thought we were a terrorist group hijacking the van. We almost had a problem of a ‘blue-on-blue’ situation – a disastrous occurrence involving opening fire on your own side. We had just overtaken the van, pulled it in and stopped it. Covered again by our two SMG men, we were in the process of dragging the occupants out to check and search them, when I noticed someone in Army uniform by a street corner about a hundred metres away.

  Fortunately for us, the young member of the patrol who watched me motionless as I pointed my pistol in the van driver’s face and dragged him to the floor, then held him face down with my knee in his back, decided to look the other way and disappeared round the corner. He probably felt that the situation was perhaps a little too hairy for him to deal with. We were very fortunate that night: things could have turned really bad for us. If he had opened fire on us, all we could have done was run for it – obviously we could have never fired back. Blue-on-blue situations were forever in the back of our minds and we were always very careful when and where we drew our weapons. And we never drew them if we didn’t intend to use them. Whenever we were on a specific operation in their area we always informed the local Army unit responsible. But if we were out and about on general surveillance we simply couldn’t, because we covered and patrolled many areas of the city during our ‘duty’ period.

  On this occasion we held the two van occupants until a uniformed patrol which we had called, arrived. This time it was a RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) patrol that turned up and took over the situation, leaving us once again to disappear into the night.

  Earlier that summer of 1972 there was a period during which for a few days we didn’t have any specific operations. Instead, I was on a general patrol with Kev around the central area of Belfast. It was July 21 and the weather was quite fine with light, high-level cloud. Kev was driving, with me next to him. We had been up looking around the Turf Lodge and Andersonstown area. It was drawing near lunch time and we were thinking of going over to the south side of the city to have a look around the Markets area and perhaps grab a sandwich on the way.

  Suddenly we felt the whole city shake under us: an enormous bomb had just exploded, we couldn’t see where but it was obviously close by. We carried on driving for a few minutes, trying to see where it was. Then another concussion rocked the car but still we couldn’t see where either the first or second blast originated. Then another blast came, and another, and we began to see smoke billowing in dark grey umbrellas, towering over the roofs of buildings, as we slowly carried on. Then, gradually, the whole city came to a standstill as everyone stopped their vehicles, far too afraid to carry on in case they drove slap into the next explosion. All we could do was to stop, too, hemmed in by stalled cars and trucks and buses; we were trapped with everyone else. We couldn’t move forwards or backwards in the gridlock, so we both hunkered down low in the seats and foot-wells of our car, taking cover and waiting. I sent a Sit Rep (situation report) back to base on the radio, warning the other members of our section what was going on around the central area of Belfast.

  During that hour-and-a-half of mayhem and destruction during which 22 bombs went off all around us, we sat there huddled down in the middle of the street. Nine people died that day and 130 were seriously injured, many around the Markets area where we were originally heading, and the city was crippled. This day was quickly named ‘Bloody Friday’ and was intended as retaliation for the chaotic confrontation of ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Londonderry some six months earlier.

  In the weeks leading up to this bombing spree, specifically on Monday 26 June, the IRA had called a bilateral truce as a prelude to secret talks with the British Government. The SDLP had made such a ceasefire possible when John Hume and Paddy Devlin held a meeting with members of the IRA in Londonderry on 14 June. At this meeting the IRA laid out their conditions for talks with the British Government, which included no restrictions on who represented the IRA; an independent witness at all meetings; no meet
ings to be held at Stormont; and political status to be granted to republican prisoners.

  In London the next day, 15 June, the SDLP met with William Whitelaw, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, to present the IRA’s conditions. Whitelaw accepted them and on 22 June the proposed ceasefire plan was announced.

  Gerry Adams, who had been released from prison for the purpose, was part of the delegation that travelled to London for the talks with Edward Heath’s Conservative government, on 7 July. However, the talks broke down, as did the IRA’s ceasefire, after disputes over the allocation of housing in the Suffolk area of Belfast, together with IRA-British Army gun battles in Horn Drive. The ‘Bloody Friday’ bombings were part of an attempt by the IRA to bring ordinary life in the city to an end.

  The first bomb exploded at 2:09 pm on a footbridge over the Belfast railway line at Windsor Park, with no injuries. At 2:36 pm a suitcase bomb exploded at the Brookvale Hotel, north Belfast. The area had been cleared and there were no injuries. More bomb warnings were being received by the police and Army every few minutes, some of them hoaxes. At 2:40 pm a car bomb went off at a branch of the Ulster Bank in Limestone Road, just a few hundred metres from the first bomb. This area had not been cleared in time and many motorists were caught up in jammed traffic and injured in this blast, together with a local Catholic woman who lost both legs. At 2:52 pm another car bomb exploded outside the railway station at Botanic Avenue but there were no serious injuries, and there were also none at 2:53 pm when a car bomb containing 160 pounds of explosives detonated without warning on the Queen Elizabeth Bridge, badly damaging it. At 3:02 pm a smaller car bomb exploded without warning in Agnes Street, again without serious casualties, and at the same time a device went off in the Liverpool Bar at Donegall Quay with the same result. Again at 3:02 pm a 30-pound bomb exploded on a bridge over the M2 at Bellevue, north Belfast, and there were no serious injuries. A minute later, at 3:03 pm, another suitcase bomb exploded at York Street Station before the station could be cleared and this time there were many horrific casualties. One minute after that, at 3:04 pm, a large car bomb exploded in Ormeau Avenue without warning but there were no serious injuries. At 3:05 pm another large car bomb of approximately 150 pounds of explosive detonated at Eastwood’s Garage, Donegall Road, but with few casualties. Then, at 3:10 pm, a very large car bomb in a VW exploded close by the Ulsterbus depot in Oxford Street. This explosion caused the greatest loss of life and most numerous mutilations of all. The area was being cleared but remained crowded when the device went off. Two British soldiers standing near the car were almost evaporated in the blast. Five minutes after that, at 3:15 pm, an apparently abandoned bomb in Stewartstown Road exploded but caused few casualties. At 3:20 pm a car bomb exploded next to some shops in Cavehill Road before the street could be cleared, killing three people and seriously injuring many others. After another five minutes, at 3:25 pm, a device exploded on the railway line near Lisburn Road with no injuries. Simultaneously, two more bombs went off at the Star Garage on the Crumlin Road, but there were no serious injuries. At 3.30pm a landmine was detonated on the road near Nutts Corner, West Belfast, narrowly missing a school bus which was passing at the time and was thought to have been mistaken for an Army vehicle. There were no serious casualties amongst the children. Also at 3.30pm another bomb exploded at the NI Carriers depot on the Grosvenor Road but with few casualties, and at the same time a bomb on the Sydenham flyover was defused by the Army. There were two other bombs at Garmoyle Street and in Salisbury Avenue with few casualties, but I’m not so sure of the exact times of these explosions.