The British Army in Northern Ireland 1975-77

by Ken Wharton

  A savage reprisal was not long in coming and PIRA member Seamus McCusker (40) was holding a press conference in the Sinn Fein ‘Incident Centre’ in the New Lodge area. Masked OIRA gunmen burst in and fired several shots, wounding five women and killing McCusker. PIRA retaliated immediately and attacked the GAA club in the Short Strand area of Belfast. Several shots were fired into the club and Thomas Berry (26) was hit as he stood outside. Not as bloody or as concerted as the later (1991) ‘night of the long knives’ it was nevertheless viewed by the Officials as a pogrom, aimed at wiping them out of existence. It left them reeling as they fought for their political and ‘military’ existence. Alan Simpson in his very descriptive Murder Madness (G&M Books, 1999) writes that: ‘… I … received word that a number of persons had been admitted into the casualty department from across the city.’ He confirms a total of 26 people had been admitted with gunshot wounds as a consequence of the feuding.

  October had taken its final life, and in all 34 people were killed. The British Army lost three and the RUC two, with the IRA responsible for four of those deaths. Nineteen innocent civilians were killed, including 13 Catholics and four Protestants. The Republicans lost four, all as a result of internal feuding and the Loyalists lost six. In total, the UVF was responsible for 18 deaths that month. Of the civilian deaths, 16 were overtly sectarian in nature.

  11

  November

  This author has discussed the tragedy of the ‘disappeared’ passim and does not intend a further detailed description. Suffice to say, the epithet is applied to those who were abducted by the Provisionals and who, following a ‘kangaroo court’ were taken away by ‘Internal Security’ or more commonly known as the ‘nutting squad’ and killed and their bodies disposed of. Occasionally, Sinn Fein reveals the location of a body or two but there are still several whose bodies have never been found. The two PIRA touts (or ‘Freds’ as their Army handlers referred to them) Seamus Wright and Kevin McKee who betrayed the Army’s undercover operation, the Four Square laundry in 1972, were part of the ‘disappeared.’ So too was Jean McConville who was abducted, it is alleged, on the orders of Gerry Adams and whose body was only recently discovered. Another of the disappeared was Columba McVeigh (17) who was abducted, most likely by PIRA between 22 October and 1 November. It is thought that the local IRA Brigade in Co Tyrone suspected him of touting for the Army and he was abducted from somewhere in Donaghmore and killed between those two dates; the author has no further information.

  On 3 November, the PIRA/OIRA feud sparked back into life and the Provisionals targeted James Fogarty (22) at his home in the Ballymurphy area of West Belfast. Fogarty had been interned in 1971 and was released from internment the following year. He was a member of the OIRA and was marked down for assassination by the rival wing of PIRA. His pregnant wife answered a knock at the door of their house, in Rock Grove and an armed gang burst past her and shot him dead.

  In the House of Commons, on 4 November, Merlyn Rees, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, announced that anyone convicted of terrorist crimes committed after 1 March 1976 would not be accorded special category status. The IRA had abandoned their so-called ‘ceasefire’ and the British Government now felt it was time to abandon their softly-softly approach and get tough with the Republicans.

  The following day, on what is traditionally ‘Guy Fawkes’ night in Britain, the nonsectarian Provisionals carried out a most obviously sectarian murder at an isolated farmhouse near Dungannon in Co Tyrone. Stanley Irwin (26) a Protestant, had no paramilitary links, nor known political opinions. His farm at Annagh is approximately 7 miles from the Irish border and as such, a ready-made escape route was available to his murderers. In the early evening, a PIRA murder gang opened fire on the house with a semi-automatic and a fully automatic and he was killed in the blaze of bullets.

  UNDERCOVER IN THE FALLS

  Mick ‘Benny’ Hill, Royal Anglians

  One of our COP [Close Observation Platoon] sections was in a covert OP ‘….. somewhere in the Falls area….’ They had dropped off bricks provided by the local roulemont battalion for that area, and set up their OP. This was in a derelict house, with a rubbish-tip for a garden, and an alley at the rear. Sometime later, for reasons I won’t go in to, the OP commander was concerned that they had been compromised. He made radio calls to the ‘Head Shed’ to express his concerns, and was ordered to prepare for a covert ‘Bug-out’. A short time later, in the early hours (between 0100 and 0200) a patrol came along the street the OP was in. On observing the patrol, they recognised that it was Mick, their Platoon Colour Sergeant, and members of their own platoon, wearing the head-dress of the local unit. Just then a transit van came around the corner, and was stopped by the Patrol. The van was pulled up at the end of the alley, slightly nose in on the kerb. The driver was made to get out, and subjected to the usual indignities, and the 2IC went to the side door and opened it and had a look inside, left the door open, and took up a position between the van and the wall.

  Just then, the call came: ‘Go, go, go!’ and the OP Party sneaked into the van, to be greeted by one of the Int Section. They noticed that the back of the cab had been boarded off, and that a false shelf obscured the back window. The driver, meanwhile, had been searched, and told to go on his way, very impolitely, and he replied, in a Belfast accent ‘Brit nastards’ or some other traditional pleasantries, shut the side door, and drove off. Not one of the lads realised at the time, but ‘Belfast accent’ was in fact, one of our undercover lads.

  The Int NCO in the back obviously knew where they were going, but didn’t see fit to enlighten the section; he merely said: ‘Smoking is OK; talking isn’t.’ Sometime later the van stopped, and the Int bloke held his finger to his lips for absolute silence, and they heard the driver talking to someone outside the van. The van then proceeded, for a few minutes, and came to a stop. The side door slid open, they noticed that they were in a hangar, or MT type shed, and a Pig was parked next to it, with the doors open and a driver and escort inside. They got in, and were driven back to Palace Barracks for a debrief. The Int NCO never mentioned the pick-up again, nor did the Pig driver and escort. This doesn’t sound very exciting, but at the time it was a bit hairy, and it showed how quickly the ‘Firm’ could react if they thought that you were in the shit, and how everyone worked to get you out of it. From ‘Information received’, it appears that the OP hadn’t been spotted, but in those days unnecessary risks weren’t worth taking, so a covert extraction was the best option.

  The IRA’s tactic of killing soft targets, i.e. off-duty UDR or RUC, continued with two SF deaths over the 96 hours of 6 and 10 November. Lance Corporal John Bell (57) was a plasterer by day and a soldier by night; he lived at Ballymoyer, Newtownhamilton in Co Armagh. PIRA intelligence-gathering was becoming more pronouncedly professional with each year, and they had observed the part-time soldier’s routine. For example, they were aware that he had to slow his car almost to a crawl, in order to negotiate an acute bend in a road leading to his house. As he did so on this occasion, an armed gang opened fire on his van with machine-guns and he was shot several times, dying almost immediately. His brother-in-law Robert Frazer, also a UDR soldier had been killed three months earlier (See Chapter 8) and another relative, Samuel Lundy was killed five years later.

  Before the next military death, the two wings of the IRA continued their deadly feud. Paul Best was not a PIRA member, despite his sympathies for the organisation. However on the 7th, he was en-route for a mission of mercy when he was attacked by OIRA gunmen and shot several times; he died in hospital the following February. John Kelly (19) of the OIRA was the next to die. He lived at Newington Avenue close to the Antrim Road in North Belfast and was en-route to his girlfriend’s house on the evening of the 9th. He was attacked by two gunmen from behind and wounded; despite his wounds, he attempted to escape but his murderers caught up with and shot him twice more as he lay helpless in the street. The following morning (10 November), the ‘incident centre�
�� in Londonderry was blown up in a bomb attack carried out by the Provisionals whose leadership in the city was opposed to the truce. Merlyn Rees announced the closure of the remaining incident centres which had been set up under the arrangements for the IRA truce.

  The life of a UDR soldier was never easy, especially those who had full-time jobs who then had to change into uniform, gather their service weapons and then go out for a night’s patrol before returning home to snatch a few hours’ sleep and then begin the whole working day routine again. On the evening of the 10th, Staff Sergeant Joseph Nesbitt (53) set off from his home in Armagh City, en-route for his local barracks for a night duty. A PIRA murder gang was waiting at the crossroads which he had to pass to reach Gough Barracks. As he slowed, armed men burst out of a hedgerow and shot the part-time soldier several times. The dying man managed to drive a few more hundred yards, but as his life’s blood drained away, he crashed into a tree where he was found shortly afterwards by an ex-RUC officer. The local Provisionals admitted the murder, but in what must be seen as the most pious, two-faced and utterly incredible statement, a spokesman claimed that the death was justified. Hardly able to keep a straight face, he accused the UDR of a ‘… selective campaign of harassment against the Nationalist community.’

  The day after the murder of the UDR NCO, the IRA feud continued and there were two more deaths. John Brown (25) lived in the Republican Markets area of Belfast and was a member of the OIRA. He answered a knock at his front door in Cooke Place and was immediately shot, but as he staggered back into his lounge, the gunmen – from PIRA – followed him and fired several more shots, wounding his teenage brother and leaving Brown dying. He was taken to hospital but died of his wounds shortly afterwards. Retaliation from the Officials was rapid, but tragic as they shot a Catholic dead after they had made an error in the location. A PIRA member was the intended target, but the armed gang burst into the wrong house on Grosvenor Place. Despite their quick acceptance of their error, they still shot Owen McVeigh (28) dead in front of his wife and young children; the author is not aware of any apologies being made by OIRA to the innocent man’s family.

  The day was not over and PIRA set out to kill another ‘Stickie’ as they derisively called the Officials. In the late afternoon, several gunmen turned up at a carpenter’s shop in Andersonstown and shot OIRA member Comgall Casey (18) as he prepared to finish his work for the night. Casey died in the ambulance en-route for hospital.

  One person was killed when the IRA threw a bomb into Scott’s Oyster Bar and Restaurant in Mount Street, Mayfair in London. A bombing team had clearly chosen Scott’s because of its prestigious clientele – the author could never afford to eat there when he worked in London – and because of the length of Mount Street, which runs parallel with Piccadilly. This affords many side streets and other bolt-holes with easy access to the London Tube. An IRA member threw the device through a large glass window at the front of the restaurant; it exploded several seconds afterwards and the resultant explosion killed one diner and badly injured around a dozen more. The man killed was John Batey (59) from England’s north-east area. Only a further six days would elapse before the England team attacked another restaurant. Many tourists began cancelling holidays in Britain or made a point of avoiding London. The author recalls that many of Hollywood’s so-called ‘tough guys’ were too frightened to travel to Britain and cancelled engagements in the country. This was mirrored in the refusal of the likes of Stallone et al who cancelled British commitments when London became a dangerous place in the wake of Libyan threats in the 90s and later the Islamic extremist bombing campaign in 2005.

  On 29 November of the previous year, in an incident covered by the same author in an earlier book (Sir, They’re taking The Kids Indoors) the UVF attacked McCardle’s pub in Crossmaglen, South Armagh. Given the location of the attack, in the very heart of what is the quintessential centre of ‘Bandit Country’ this attack was one of their most daring. The explosion, which also injured six people, fatally wounded Thomas McNamee (55). Almost 12 months to the day, later, on 14 November, he died following complications with the injuries which he had received. His death left seven children fatherless. Earlier that day, Margaret Thatcher, then leader of the British Conservative Party, and Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition paid a fact-finding visit to Northern Ireland. She became Britain’s first woman Prime Minister in April 1979 and immediately took a hardline attitude against the IRA; how much of this was due to what she saw some three and a half years earlier, or the murder of her friend and colleague Airey Neave MP by the INLA is open to conjecture.

  On the evening of the Thatcher visit, no doubt after she was safely back in Whitehall, a UDA/UFF mob had attacked and badly damaged two bars in the city which were frequented by the UVF and several members had been injured. Retaliation – a word synonymous with all paramilitary action in the Province – was swift in coming. The next day – Saturday, 15th – during a disturbance involving members of the UDA/UFF and the UVF at the Park Bar in Tiger’s Bay, Belfast, a Protestant civilian was accidentally shot dead. The fracas was part of an ongoing feud between the UDA and the UVF. Tiger Bay, as the area is unofficially known, is a Protestant area north of the Duncairns and south of the Limestones; it is also a volatile sectarian interface with the Catholic New Lodge. It was also the scene of the aforementioned clash between rival Loyalist paramilitaries. During the fighting, Thomas Haddock (50) an innocent drinker was shot and died in hospital some hours later. Apparently, shots had been fired from outside and those shots were returned from inside.

  On that same day, a hoax telephone call to the police had five RUC officers speeding their way towards a ‘fire’ at Cloghfin, Co Tyrone. As they reached Sixmilecross, a PIRA landmine, containing 400lbs of explosives was detonated by a hidden PIRA team. The Land Rover was shattered and four of the officers were seriously injured; one of them – Joseph Clements (48) was mortally wounded and died in hospital the next day. Sixmilecross is approximately six miles north of the Irish border and in the aftermath and confusion, it would have been relatively simple for the bombing team to scuttle back across the border.

  Less than a week after the fatal bomb attack at Scott’s in Mayfair, PIRA’s England team attacked another restaurant in London, this time at Chelsea, around half a mile from this first attack. The device this time was packed with ball-bearings which, as any explosives device will attest, is designed to achieve maximum casualties and also maximise the damage to body tissue of even those wounded on the periphery of the blast. As with Scott’s, the bombers threw the bomb through the window and it exploded within seconds after hitting a table and giving one of the diners time to shout: ‘My God; it’s a bomb!’ Seventeen people were injured, some dreadfully, but Audrey Edgson (44) whose lungs collapsed due to her proximity to the blast died at the scene and her husband, whose birthday they were celebrating, was badly injured. Another diner, Theodore Williams (49) from nearby Paddington was badly wounded in the heart and died very soon afterwards.

  The Yellow Card issued to soldiers. (via Author)

  Three days after the fatal attack on Walton’s, the UDR’s 7th Battalion lost one of their soldiers in one of the ubiquitous road traffic accidents which took the lives of so many UDR men. Private David Mosgrove (22) died in an RTA for which the author has no further information.

  The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers suffered a major double tragedy over a terrible 24 hours in the South Armagh area on the 21st/22nd of the month to add to the earlier loss of Corporal Gleeson. Forkhill, South Armagh was a highly important and strategic Army base during the Troubles. It was located less than a mile from the Irish border and troops could be rushed to border incidents in a matter of minutes. Forkhill was a fortified RUC station and every unit of the Army which served in the Province would have spent time at this base at some time or other. The hilltop base at Forkhill in South Armagh was one of a series of military posts which once dominated the skyline. During the day, an abandoned vehicle had been set ablaze on the
border and a patrol of the RRF which included Sergeant John Francis (29) was dispatched to deal with the incident. It is very easy for this author, with the benefit of both his own time in the Province, and the British Army’s vast experience gained in the Troubles to realise that this was clearly an IRA ‘come on.’ Hindsight is however, the most powerful weapon in the world. As the patrol approached the burning car, Sergeant Francis noticed some unused rounds and then spotted a rifle by the side of the road. Tragically the rifle was booby-trapped and as he picked it up, it exploded. He was killed instantly. He is buried at Colchester cemetery in Essex.

  On the 22nd at Drumuckvall, Co Armagh, scene of an earlier tragedy which claimed the lives of two Royal Marines, a four man team from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers (RRF) was dug in, in a hidden OP near the border. Tragically for the four-man team, they had been observed during insertion and a PIRA unit had also dug in over the border but in a higher point which overlooked the OP. The RRF position came under heavy and sustained attack from an unusually large party of gunmen. Bizarrely, an IRA gunman called upon the soldiers to surrender; the soldiers refused and three were killed whilst a fourth, badly wounded, managed to crawl away for help. An IRA spokesman the following day made a series of statements – bizarre in the extreme – confirming that they had wanted the men to surrender. The fate of their ‘POWs’ does not bear thinking about. The three to die were: Fusilier James Duncan (19) from Oldham, Fusilier Peter McDonald (19) from Manchester and Fusilier Michael Sampson (20) from the Isle of Man. A fourth member of the team, though wounded, managed to escape and was rescued the following morning by comrades.