by Ken Wharton
This book is dedicated to all of those members of the Security Forces who served and fell in Northern Ireland and in towns and cities away from that country. It is dedicated also to the Catholics and Protestants of Northern Ireland who had no say in the near destruction of their country by terrorists from 1969-98.
Ken M Wharton, Gold Coast, Australia, 25 September 2011
A Very Necessary Remark
I have long been at odds with the ‘officially’ recognised casualty figures which the MOD has published over the years. Figures vary from the ridiculous statement of Daily Mirror reporter Victoria Ward2, who foolishly and insultingly claimed that the toll was 518 to the ‘official’ 745. Both the Northern Ireland Veterans Association (NIVA) and myself have, through extensive and sometimes, heartbreaking research placed the figure at between c.1,305 and c.1,400. The following words are from a multi-contributor, a Northern Ireland veteran and a friend of mine, Mike Sangster. His words are far more eloquent and poignant than this author could ever hope to achieve.
Various published accounts refer to an ‘officially recognised fatality’ and I argue that is my way of saying that the MOD did not recognise that the 21 lads who lost their lives prior to the death of Curtis as ‘conflict casualties.’ They seek to dismiss them as losses typically incurred during any deployment. This attitude by the MOD means that there are hundreds of service personnel who do NOT have a tree at the National Memorial Arboretum and whose names will never appear on council war memorials. Yet there was no such distinction made about fatalities suffered during the Falklands, Gulf 1, Iraq or Afghanistan. What was it we did that was so wrong for them to treat those lads and lasses with so much disdain?
Mike Sangster, Royal Artillery
1 Based on the location or the direction in which the victim was heading.
2 Ms Ward was e-mailed on at least five occasions seeking clarification; no response was received.
Abbreviations
2IC
Second in Command
3LI
Third Battalion Light Infantry
AAC
Army Air Corps
ADU
Army Dog Handling Unit
APC
Armoured Personnel Carrier
APNI
Alliance Party of Northern Ireland
ASU
Active Service Unit
ATO
Ammunition Technical Officer
AWOL
Absent Without Leave
BFBS
British Forces Broadcasting Service
Bn HQ
Battalion Headquarters
BOI
Board of Inquiry
CESA
Catholic Ex-serviceman’s Association
CO
Commanding Officer
CS
Tear Gas
CVO
Casualty Visiting Officers
DC
Detective Constable
DERR
Duke of Edinburgh’s Royal Regiment
DOE
Department of the Environment
DoW
Died of Wounds
DOWR
Duke of Wellington’s Regiment
DUP
Democratic Unionist Party
DWR
Duke of Wellington’s Regiment
EOD
Explosive Ordnance Disposal
ETA
Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque Separatist Terrorist group)
FOI
Freedom of Information
FRG
Federal Riot Guns
GAA
Gaelic Athletic Association (Irish: Cumann Lúthchleas Gael)
GC
George Cross
GHQ
General Head Quarters
GPMG
General Purpose Machine Gun
GPO
General Post Office
HET
Historical Enquiries Team
HQNI
Head Quarters Northern Ireland
IJLB
Infantry Junior Leaders Battalion
INLA
Irish National Liberation Army
Int
Intelligence
IRA
Irish Republican Army
IRSP
Irish Republican Socialist Party
KIA
Killed in Action
KOSB
King’s Own Scottish Borderers
LSL
Landing Ship Logistics
MO
Medical Officer
MoD
Ministry of Defence
NAAFI
Navy, Army and Air Force Institute
NCND
neither confirm nor deny
NCO
Non-Commissioned Officer
NG
Negligent Discharge
NI
Northern Ireland
NIVA
Northern Ireland Veteran’s Association
NMA
National Memorial Arboretum
NORAID
Northern Aid Committee
NTH
Newtownhamilton
ODC
Ordinary decent criminals
OP
Observation Post
OTR
On the Run
Pig
Armoured Vehicle (named as such due to its pig-like appearance)
PIRA
Provisional Irish Republican Army
PLA
People’s Liberation Army
POA
Prison Officers’ Association
POW
Prisoner of War
PRO
Public Relations Officer
PSNI
Police Service Northern Ireland
QLR
Queen’s Lancashire Regiment
QOH
Queen’s Own Highlander’s
QRF
Quick Reaction Force
RAF
Royal Air Force
RSF
Republican Sinn Féin
RCT
Royal Corps of Transport
RE
Royal Engineers
REHQ
Royal Engineers Headquarters
REME
Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers
RGJ
Royal Green Jackets
RIRA
Real Irish Republican Army
RMP
Royal Military Police
RAOC
Royal Army Ordnance Corps
ROE
Rules of Engagement
RPG-7
Rocket Propelled Grenade
RRF
Royal Regiment of Fusiliers
RRW
Royal Regiment of Wales
RSM
Regimental Sergeant Major
RTA
Road Traffic Accident
RUC
Royal Ulster Constabulary
RUCR
Royal Ulster Constabulary Reserve
RVH
Royal Victoria Hospital
SB
Special Branch
SDLP
Social Democratic and Labour Party
SF
Security Forces
SIB
Special Investigation Branch
SLR
Self Loading Rifle
SOP
Standard Operating Procedure
SUIT
Sight Unit Infantry Trilux
TA
Territorial Army
TD
Teachta Dála (Member of the Irish Parliament)
TAOR
Tactical Area of Responsibility
UDA
Ulster Defence Association
UDR
Ulster Defence Regiment
UFF
Ulster Freedom Fighters
USC
Ulster Special Constabulary
UTV
Ulste
r Television
UUP
Ulster Unionist Party
UVBT
Under vehicle booby trap
UWC
Ulster Worker’s Council
VCP
Vehicle Check Point
WOII
Warrant Officer Second Class
WRAC
Women’s Royal Army Corps
After a soldier was killed
Shortly after news broke of another pointless death on the streets or in border country, a sad, but clinical procedure took place. Two NCOs would go to the man’s locker, with two mattress covers, one for military kit, the other for any civilian clothes or civvie possessions. Using bolt-cutters, the lockers were forced open and with the tender care that squaddies show for fallen comrades, the fallen man’s effects were placed into the mattress covers. All other effects such as letters, photographs and money were placed in an envelope. Money was counted and sealed and the envelope was signed by both NCOs. All kit was taken to a secure place and processed for sending on to next of kin. It was an unpleasant task and one which I had to do, thankfully, just once. As you invaded the man’s personal space, albeit for a sacred process, you saw photos of him in happier times. And when the unit returned to the mainland, the empty bed space acted as a bitingly poignant memorial to a lost friend.
Marcus Townley, Welsh Guards
Maps
Northern Ireland
Londonderry
Belfast
South Armagh (‘bandit country’)
Introduction
As the New Year of 1975 dawned, as party revellers drank their first drink of the year and as they linked arms and sang – albeit drunkenly – the traditional song Auld Lang Syne the men of evil were preparing to take Northern Ireland into its seventh year of terror. Since the dawn of 1970, well over 1,300 people – soldiers, policemen, civilians and paramilitaries – had been killed. Indeed, when Rifleman Michael Gibson of the Royal Green Jackets died of his wounds on 29 December, just two days before New Year’s Eve, he became the 448th British soldier to die in the Troubles.
A good translation of the Celtic words ‘auld lang syne’ is ‘times gone by,’ and the song tells of taking a ‘cup of kindness.’ There would be very little celebrating, let alone cups of kindness in the Gibson family home in the south-eastern London suburb of Deptford. This would be just one of 322 households throughout the UK which had lost family members in the previous 12 months; there would be little celebrating in any of them. As with the years since 1969, some families would blame the IRA, some would blame the Loyalists and some would blame the Police or the Army.
Throughout the period under review, just over one thousand people would lose their lives. The toll of civilians, soldiers and policemen would grow alarmingly and although the charnel house which was 1972 would never again be repeated, the loss in both human and economic terms was simply a tragedy. In a country of approximately 1.5 million people, 566 people had lost their lives in or as a consequence of the Troubles during that bloody year. The IRA and the newly emerged INLA1 would continue to exact their toll and care little about the collateral damage which would inevitably ensue as a consequence of turning their areas into battle fields. The Loyalists too, would continue their senseless sectarian slaughter of Catholics or anyone deemed to be a Catholic and the murderous ‘tit-for-tat’ would continue.
For this author in particular and for the vast majority of decent people – participants and observers alike – there were several ‘seminal’ moments during those terrible three decades of violence. The abduction and murder of three unarmed and off-duty soldiers at Ligoniel in March 1971; the Abercorn restaurant bomb in March 1972; ‘Bloody Friday’ and Claudy in July of that same year; The Kingsmills Massacre and the Miami Showband Massacre in 1975 and the public lynching and murder of the two Signals Corporals following an IRA funeral in April, 1988. This author, although by 1988 no longer a serving soldier, watched in horror at the public lynching of Corporals Wood and Howes in the Andersonstown/Turf Lodge area following an IRA funeral. ‘Seminal’ is a possibly overused expression, but should one choose to use that expression, then the aforementioned were truly seminal moments in the Troubles. This book will cover two of those most seminal moments; at Kingsmills where PIRA slaughtered 10 men and at a field near Buskhill, Co Down when young, innocent Irish musicians whose only crime was to bring musical pleasure on both sides of the sectarian divide, were cruelly cut down by Loyalist murderers.
The first killing of 1975 took place on Friday 10 January, when John Green (27) an IRA member was killed by Loyalists (in all probability the UVF) in Co Monaghan in the Irish Republic. The last killing of 1979 took place on New Year’s Eve when gunmen, almost certainly Loyalists, shot and killed Sean Cairns (19) in the Clonards area of Belfast. This volume and the volume which follows it will hopefully link those two deaths, separated by 1,816 days of violence.
1 The INLA were known for quite some time as the Peoples’ Liberation Army (PLA) and it is thought that this cover name was the idea of Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) founder member Seamus Costello. For the purposes of this study of the 1975-7 period, the author employs the acronym INLA from its first involvement in the period.
Part One
1975
During this first year under study – and the seventh of the Troubles – some 44 soldiers or former soldiers would die in or as a direct consequence of the Troubles. The figures showed a reduction from the previous year, but it still meant that, on their own doorstep, and in the thirtieth anniversary year of the ending of the Second World War and at a time of supposed peace, the British Army was losing almost a soldier a week.
1
January
The Provisional IRA had declared their ‘festive’ ceasefire a few days prior to the start of the New Year and this was, as usual, treated with contempt by the Loyalists, and suspicion and caution by the Army. However, on the second day of the year, an IRA press conference announced that the current ceasefire would be extended, not indefinitely as observers had hoped, but until 17 January. It was, however, a longer extension than had been expected and talks between the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) and the Republicans continued in secret.
In the new-found spirit of talks, representatives of some of the leading Ulster Unionist parties met to discuss matters with Merlyn Rees, Labour’s Northern Ireland Secretary. They were deeply suspicious of the IRA’s motives and mistrustful of any contact between their enemies and the Security Forces. An allegation at the time that there had been clandestine contact between the British Government and Republicans was later confirmed and the Loyalists’ paranoia of a British pull-out were greatly heightened during this period of regular contact.
CEASEFIRE SURREALISM
Major Andrew MacDonald, King’s Own Border (now the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment)
My third tour of NI took place over the years 1974/5 as a platoon commander in the Lower Falls (if I recall correctly from November to February). We were stationed in Mulhouse Mill with other company bases in the inner West Belfast area including the Shankill. One of the abiding memories of that tour is the Christmas ‘ceasefire.’ My use of inverted commas is done advisedly because it created a somewhat surreal atmosphere whereby we had to patrol with rifles slung and operate in a ‘non-confrontational’ manner. We had to be careful to avoid activity which might attract displeasure and so be reported to the various ‘Incident Centres,’ one of which one was at the top end of our patch on the Falls Road/Dunville Park corner; more of that later.
[The IRA ceasefire began in late 1974 and lasted until the following January. This was also a period in which leading IRA members under their guise of Sinn Fein politicians were allowed to legally carry weapons for personal protection. This greatly angered their sectarian rivals in the UVF and UFF who were not allowed the same privileges. Suffice to say, they also possessed large armouries but to their chagrin, theirs were not ‘legal.’]
Quite what our top leve
l people were thinking this would achieve, by this measure is hard to fathom out, because to us at street level, it was clear that the so called ceasefire was just an excuse to allow both PIRA and OIRA (as well as INLA and other mad dog dangerous groups on both sides of the sectarian divide) to regroup, and to get on with the inter-factional scrapping. To be fair to the policy and decision-makers, this conflict was all still very new to the British Army. Our last pieces of action were both tactically and politically far removed from our previous experiences, and we were only four years into a totally different type of campaign. Little did we know that Op Banner would last for nearly three decades.
Early days of the Troubles; welcome to the Falls Road. (Mark ‘C’)
