The British Army in Northern Ireland 1975-77

by Ken Wharton

  The relevant section of the Geneva Convention states that each power ‘… shall afford relief and assistance to the wounded, sick and shipwrecked of the belligerents independently of their nationality.’ This author consequently supports the notion of compassion on the battlefield but can equally understand the feelings of individuals involved; for that reason, the following contribution is published without comment.

  Graham Wiggs, Royal Artillery

  Musgrave Park Hospital Military Wing

  I was recovering from my wounds in the military wing at the MPH along with other lads from my unit. The wards were full of injured soldiers from most of the units that were over there at the time, infantry, artillery, engineers and paras, some had been shot, some injured in the rioting, some injured by nail bombs. In a side ward was a lad from the Green Jackets who had been shot in the chest; sadly, it wasn’t thought that he would make it; they had flown his wife over from Germany and his parents over from England.

  However, the IRA were never far away on the outside, and when I was there, located in a secure ward with armed soldiers outside, they were on the inside too! Being treated with us were the enemy; IRA gunmen who had been shot but only wounded by poor marksmen. Please forgive my cynical remark, but we hated the cowardly murderers. Their ward didn’t have enough wall plugs for all the equipment needed to treat them so the nurses had run extension cables out into the main ward. In the two beds opposite me were a couple of Paras; like me their injuries were not life threatening. After the docs had been round, we were allowed to get out of bed but were told not to walk around too much. However, we were soon over at the Green Jacket’s ward talking to him and his family. His mum and dad were beside themselves with worry and his wife was in pieces, emotionally. This is the side of Army life which the public don’t see and the Army recruiting posters, for obvious reasons, don’t show.

  Like all soldiers, we felt their pain and were doing our best to put their minds at rest; telling her that he would be fine and he was in the best place to get better. The father of the wounded Jacket resented the fact that the enemy were being treated in the same place as us and the fact that they had to walk past the ward of the murdering scumbags every time they came to visit their son. We weren’t too pleased about it ourselves, because as far as we were concerned the scum should all be dead, not being treated by doctors and nurses from the British Army. One morning not long after breakfast all hell broke loose, with lots of medical staff running into the secure ward. One of the nurses came back into our ward went over to the wall plug where the enemy’s extension was plugged in and found that it had been switched off. I looked over at the Para who was sitting on his bed with a big smile on his face.

  Scottish troops in the Falls Road area. (Mark ‘C’)

  All of us that were able to walk were questioned about how the plug had been switched off; for some strange reason they thought that one of us had done it; as if! I think the ward orderly took the blame for it. A few days later most of us were sent back to the mainland to be treated and discharged from hospital. I am not sure if the Green Jacket lad recovered; I hope that he did and he is reading this.

  UPHOLDING THE GENEVA CONVENTION

  Michael Sangster, Royal Artillery

  I had the ‘pleasure’ of being in the Musgrave Park ward myself for a few days back in the 70s. The terrorists were kept in a side ward right next door to ours. Naturally, we had to be kept apart, and there was a steel plate erected separating the military ward from the rest of the hospital and an armed guard was kept there 24 hours a day. At night, the steel gate was locked and the UDR took over the guard, but as far as security went, it sucked, as from out of the windows, you had a nice view of West Belfast.

  During meal times, all the serving and cleaning up was done by military patients who could get about and this included serving meals to the terrorist wounded. No, we didn’t spit in their plates despite the temptation. During my time, there were two wounded IRA men. One had a gunshot wound to the thigh and he had his whole leg encased in plaster. The other – I think his name was O’Neil – got his love handles trimmed by a 7.62mm round. Although it was against the rules, O’Neil was quite chatty with us, especially if the guard was a UDR bloke. The UDR were not all that worldly-wise in those days and were easily misled. The other IRA man was a right whingeing twat; always complaining about this and that. Both of them got daily visits from priests and nuns who’d brought them in a brand new colour TV. We had to make do with a battered old thing that kept conking out.

  The ward I was in had a right old mixture. The lad on one side of me had shot himself in the foot, running across a road during a contact. The lad on the other side had been shot by an ND (negligent discharge); it had cost him his spleen. Opposite was a sergeant from the REs who fell off a ladder and next to him was an infantry guy who got blood poisoning from some rusty wire or the like. The other side of the partition were a couple of KOSB lads who were gunshot in an ambush on the Springfield Road and an RUC lad who had been shot in the back. He’d lost a kidney and the other was failing, poor sod; I can’t remember the others, sadly.

  The night before I was due for discharge, the RE sergeant and I got our heads together and planned a bit of mischief. We waited until the UDR ‘guard’, who looked about 90 years old, had fallen asleep as normal. Meanwhile, I ‘borrowed’ the night sister’s red pen, and when the coast was clear, we sneaked into the side ward. The complaining fucker with the full length plaster had one of those cage things over his leg, so access to the plaster cast was simple and as I kept watch, my partner in crime wrote: ‘FUCK THE POPE’ in big red letters on the cast. Then just for good measure, we opened up the back of the TV, removed a couple of the working parts, and dumped them in the swill bin. I gave the pen a good wipe and replaced it.

  In the morning, somehow, our artistry had not been noticed, that was, until Father Murphy and his acolytes turned up. The shit well and truly hit the fan. We of course, all swore on a stack of bibles that we were innocent and diverted the suspicion onto the UDR. No evidence; no proof. The row was still going on when I was released but I would like to have seen their faces when they tried to switch on the TV. Not anything life threatening like in Graham’s story, but it was worth a couple of pints in the mess years later when I felt it safe to tell it.

  Between the 23rd and the 27th, the IRA’s ‘England Team’ was busy again and struck twice with bombs designed to disrupt Britain’s economy and public services. Two days after the attacks in Belfast, the IRA placed a large time bomb at the Woodford waterworks pumping station in north London. Three people were injured in the explosion and there was substantial damage, causing a major interruption of water supply to the north London area Four days later, terrorists planted seven time bombs at locations across London. At 18:30 a bomb exploded at Gieves, the military outfitters, in Old Bond Street. At 21:30 bombs exploded at the Moreson chemical plant in Ponders End and a disused gas works in Enfield. Only minimal damage was caused by these two bombs. Two further bombs exploded in Kensington High Street and Victoria Street where two civilians were injured. A warning was given of a bomb in Putney High Street and a British Army bomb-disposal officer was able to defuse the device. A warning was also given for a bomb in Hampstead and it was defused. On the same day, some 200 miles further north, the IRA also exploded a bomb in Manchester which injured 26 people.

  On the 28th and 29th respectively, two soldiers were killed in circumstances unknown. The reader may consider this odd that in the late 20th century, there is little known about the deaths of so many soldiers, but often requests for help from the MOD are generally met with a polite ‘death by violent or unnatural causes’. Full stop! UDR Private David Armstrong (25) and RMP Corporal John Booth (22) were killed on successive days, probably in duty-related accidents. Private Armstrong was buried at Roselawn Cemetery in Northern Ireland; Corporal Booth’s funeral was held in Morton, Scotland.

  As the month of January drew to an end, the Loyalist murder gang
s emerged from their short slumber and targeted a young Catholic apprentice joiner as he stopped for lunch at his place of work in Great Victoria Street, near the Boyne Bridge in central Belfast. A murder gang from the UFF entered bomb-damaged buildings which a local firm was helping repair. They singled out Robert McCullough (17) and forced him to kneel before shooting him in the head at point-blank range. The murderers were caught and subsequently jailed, telling the court that they thought the young lad was a PIRA member. Both the RUC and this author are convinced that the murdered boy had no paramilitary connections.

  On the day after this cowardly murder by Protestants, the IRA attempted to kill four police officers at Donaghmore in Co Tyrone. Whilst on a routine protection patrol at the home of a local politician, an armed gang sprayed the RUC car with automatic machine gun fire in a very carefully prepared ambush. The senior RUC man in the car, Sergeant George Coulter (43) and on the day before his 44th birthday courageously threw himself across a young female Constable, taking the full brunt of the attack thus saving her life. The driver was hit in the chest and seriously wounded, but managed to accelerate away to fetch help. Sergeant Coulter, however, had been hit in the head and died instantly; the first RUC man to be killed in 1975. The estimable Lost Lives also pointed out that the assault rifle used to kill the policeman and up to 19 other security force members, was auctioned by NORAID amongst its Irish-American supporters for some £30,000, several years later. This speaks volumes for the Brit-haters amongst that belligerent section of United States society.

  Isolated away from the daily violence of Northern Ireland during that troubled period, the Gardiner commission met to discuss human rights and civil liberties. On the last Wednesday of the month, its report was published. The report recommended that special category status for paramilitary prisoners should be ended. The report also recommended that detention without trial be maintained but under the control of the Secretary of State.

  The first month of the New Year had ended, and 10 people had died; of these, four were British soldiers; two were innocent civilians, both Catholics. Four IRA men were also killed.

  1 *The IRA Green Book is a training and induction manual issued to new volunteers. It was used by the post-Irish Civil War IRA and Cumann na mBan (League of Women), along with offspring groupings such as the Provisionals. It includes a statement of military objectives, tactics and conditions for military victory against the British Army and their allies. In the IRA’s and PIRA’s understanding this military victory was to be achieved as part of ‘the ongoing liberation of Ireland from foreign occupiers.’ The Green Book has acted as a manual of conduct and induction to the organisation since at least the 1950s. The Green Book is issued to IRA volunteers as part of their training and is considered a secret document which should not be revealed to, or discussed with non-IRA members. In order to protect the organisation, disclosure of its training material and any other training documents including the Green Book, would most likely carry stiff penalties up to and including Court Martial. Once issued, each volunteer is expected to study and learn from his/her copy of the manual, to apply the rules given in it, and to apply lessons learnt from it. While the manual is clearly not all the training a volunteer could expect, it gave a broad overview meant to go some way to preparing the volunteer for active duty with the organisation.

  Each volunteer is coached and tested on the book, which has been typified in some quarters as a terrorist’s rules and regs. It warns: ‘The Army as an organisation claims and expects your total allegiance without reservation. It enters into every aspect of your life. It invades the privacy of your home life, it fragments your family and friends, in other words claims your total allegiance. All potential volunteers must realise that the threat of capture and of long jail sentences are a very real danger and a shadow which hangs over every volunteer.’

  2 It was a tradition in the Green Jackets’ 1st Battalion that Sergeant was often spelt with a ‘j’ and indeed, the Regiment as a whole never refer to bayonets as such but as ‘swords.’ There is a follow up to this fine account by Martin Wells to be found in Chapter 2.

  2

  February

  On the 5th, at a meeting in London, the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) published a discussion paper on power-sharing, titled ‘The Government of Northern Ireland: A Society Divided.’ This was the third discussion paper published in advance of the Northern Ireland Constitutional Convention. Secretary of State Merlyn Rees announced his intention that new ‘H’ style prison blocks were to be built at the Maze Prison whilst waiting for a new prison at Maghaberry, County Antrim, to be completed.

  The bloodletting which had seen a pause of just six days recommenced with the murder of a former member of the Women’s Royal Army Corps (WRAC) in Larne, Co Antrim. Colette Brown (31) and the mother of four young children was alleged to be a member or sympathiser of the IRA and as such, was said to have passed ‘classified’ information to them. Quite what a divorced mum of four who had had a relatively minor military role was able to find of any significance, is beyond the limited comprehension of this author. It was enough that there was a suspicion, however tenuous, and she was lured out of a wedding reception – for her younger brother – near Killyglen Road, Larne. Taken to a nearby field, the Catholic was shot dead and her body was dumped where it fell. In 1973, another brother, James Kelly, had been murdered by a Loyalist murder gang.

  On the same day as the murder of Mrs Brown, the 15/19 Hussars – motto ‘Merebimur’: We shall be Worthy – were involved in a firefight on the Border with Co Fermanagh. A patrol of the Hussars confronted an IRA gun team at Mullan and firing broke out. Sergeant William Robson (23) whose family lived in Glasgow was hit twice, and fatally wounded. He was rushed, gravely ill, to a hospital in Enniskillen and major efforts to rush his young bride and his parents to his bedside were made by the Army. A combination of delays and bad weather contrived to ensure that, tragically, they arrived after he had passed away, the day after the shooting. His funeral took place in Bishop Auckland, Co Durham.

  Loyalist murder gangs were then heavily involved during the course of the next few bloody days, and on the same day that Sergeant Robson’s grieving family prepared to accompany their fallen soldier home to the mainland, UVF gunmen raided a home in Ligoniel, north of Belfast, intent on murder. James Sullivan (29) and his wife, both Catholics, were relaxing at their home when gunmen burst in and opened fire on both people. Sullivan was hit and fell to the ground and his UVF assassins fired as he lay helpless. His wife tried to intervene and she too was hit and slightly wounded. Although he was an ex-internee, the motive was thought by the RUC to be purely sectarian.

  Less than 24 hours later, three Catholics were shot by the UFF, as they left St Brigit’s Catholic Church, Malone, Belfast. Two young friends, Gerard Kiely and Kevin Ballantine (both 18) and a 54-year old man had just left the church and were standing at the entrance, when UFF gunman walked up to them and opened fire. Both boys were killed and the older man injured as he attacked the murderers and tried to save the two younger men. Pandemonium broke out amongst the congregation of the packed church and the priest who had earlier conducted mass found himself covered in blood as he gave the last rites to the murdered teenagers. Gerard Kiely’s sister, some 23 years later wrote a treatise on suffering. Amongst her many poignant words she said: ‘Our small close family had been shattered one Sunday evening and for the three of us, there was a large painful hole where Gerard had been.’ She had been 11 when she witnessed her brother’s murder. The death of the two Catholic boys was a, random, senseless killing; like so many other random, senseless killings in Ulster.

  A soldier makes himself a hard target on a footsie in Belfast. (Mark ‘C’)

  JUST ANOTHER BOMB!

  Peter Jojic, Royal Artillery

  We were based at the Grand Central Hotel (GCH), in Belfast during our ’75 tour. It may have been a hotel famed for its splendour and opulence many years previously, but it was now a run down city centre est
ablishment, commandeered by the Army.

  I was out on a footsie, in College Square about 23.30 and we were on our way back to the GCH. We stopped and set up a VCP, not on the basis of any hard evidence or hunches as to what we might find, just really to kill a little time before our patrol ended. Me and another lad were acting as anti-sniper and our brick commander was doing a vehicle check; at the same time, our fourth member was searching a car which we had just pulled over. Anyway, after a while, we let the car go and headed back to the GCH and as we did so, another car went past. Just minutes later, a moped pulled up alongside us and the rider blurted out that the occupants of the car that had just passed us had planted what he thought was a bomb in his factory!

  Naturally, off we roared after them and we came across a mobile VCP in the distance, with PIGs manned by the Royal Anglians. There was no sign and the boys there hadn’t seen the car, so it was obvious that the bombers had chosen an easier escape route. An ATO (Ammunition Technical Officer) sorted the device out with us in close proximity and we finally made it back to the GCH, three long hours later!

  We got back to base and made ourselves a cuppa and an egg banjo each, and it was then we had time to reflect on what had happened. We realised how close we had been to having casualties in our patrol. I must confess that after that, we didn’t take things so lightly; indeed, I was a little bit shaken up by it. But at the end of the day that’s what we were paid for, so we just got on with it. You tell any civilian that and they just look and stare at you, as if to say ‘….so what?’

  The Grand Central Hotel, was located on Royal Avenue in Belfast, and was opened in 1893. The building existed as a hotel until 1972, when it was taken over by the Army as a military base with a TAOR of the city centre. The hotel contained around 200 guest bedrooms and was, over its lifetime able to boast guests such as the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the 1960s.