The British Army in Northern Ireland 1975-77

by Ken Wharton

  On this day, there was also a narrow escape for a Catholic businessman and his family in Donegal Park Avenue in North Belfast when Loyalist paramilitaries fired automatic weapons at his house. A gang intent upon sectarian murder hijacked a car in the Loyalist Westland area and jumped out and began firing machine guns into the doors and windows. Fortunately, a family member had seen the car prowling around the area and had alerted the family who had time to escape before the shots began; there were no injuries.

  There was an accidental shooting, but no less tragic, in Andersonstown on the 4th, when John ‘Fingers’ McCartan (55), a father of seven, was killed by the Army. A routine foot patrol came under fire from a sniper as they walked along Andersonstown Road and returned fire. Tragically, the round hit Mr McCartan as he came outside the nearby Social Club and he was mortally wounded, dying at the scene. It was a tragic accident and one in which the precursor had been the irresponsibility of the PIRA gunman who opened fire on the soldiers whilst civilians were present. It was a feature of the Troubles that the Provisionals would frequently target the SF irrespective of the proximity of innocent civilians and then, should the actions have disastrous consequences, immediately attempt to shift the blame from themselves. They were content to accuse the Army and the RUC of systematic brutality and torture when at the same time they hypocritically used the very same insidious methods of which they had accused others. On this occasion, the Sinn Fein apologist was wheeled out to make a pious statement of regret about the seven fatherless McCartan children whilst demonising the soldiers; all of this was listened to, no doubt with a mixture of awe and sadness by the sycophantic American pressmen.

  On 9 August, a young Republican was killed by the Army in Springhill Avenue, Ballymurphy Estate in what Lost Lives almost inevitably described as ‘… controversial circumstances …’ Paul McWilliams (16) was a member of the Provisionals’ youth wing, the Fianna. He had previously been seen throwing petrol bombs at soldiers and police and was ‘known’ to the SF. A sergeant told a coroner’s inquest that he had observed the youth throwing petrol bombs and had called out: ‘Stop, hands up, stand still!’ but he had refused and was shot. Since 1971, the Army had warned that under ROE, petrol bombers could and would be shot. The sergeant duly did so and McWilliams was mortally wounded; he died en-route for hospital. There was a later unjustified claim that soldiers had deliberately delayed the ambulance. A soldier from the Light Infantry told the author: ‘Why would we do that? We relied on ambulances as well and we weren’t going to give the Micks an excuse to stop an ambulance with a wounded squaddie from reaching hospital.’

  Afterwards, his family claimed that he was innocent and that he was shot whilst crawling through a hole in a fence intending to ‘…go to the shops.’ He had recently escaped from a correctional facility where he had been sent for riotous behaviour. A later version was that he was trying to escape Army bullets. The Provisionals listed him as a volunteer and he is noted on their list of those killed on ‘active service.’ The IRA vowed publically that there would be reprisals and this would be quick and deadly.

  The author recently watched an interview with a Republican councillor, Charlene O’Hara, who said of Paul McWilliams: ‘He came from the Whiterock area of Belfast, a community which was torn apart by the British Army. He lived in a community which was under siege and as a result, he took up the struggle……the Republican struggle.’ She went on to say that that the killing was unjustified. The councillor does not appear to have even been a twinkle in her father’s eye at the time of the killing and much of her hatred of the Army can only have been passed on from her hate-filled relatives. A 1979 inquest into Paul’s death returned an open verdict and the death is currently under investigation by the Historical Enquiries Team (HET).

  The pious Provisionals quickly dispatched one of their top snipers from the Ballymurphy Estate and he immediately went to New Barnsley RUC station on the northern end of the ‘Murph and on the Springfield Road. The journey from where McWilliams was killed was a short one, as the RUC station was located over the Springfield Road at the top end of Springhill Avenue. Private Lewis Harrison (20) was guarding EOD personnel who were defusing a suspect device which had been planted outside the station. It is not known if this had been hurriedly left there by an IRA team as a ‘come on’ or whether it was unrelated and the shooting was a ‘target of opportunity.’ The sniper lined up his Armalite and fired one round which hit the young Yorkshireman in the chest and he was killed instantly. Private Harrison was from the former mining village of Streethouse, close to Normanton in West Yorkshire, although Lost Lives has placed it in Wales! It was the battalion’s third fatality in just a few weeks and was a major blow to the regiment whose motto is Aucto Splendore Resurgo – I Rise Again With Increased Splendour, Cede Nullis – Yield to None.

  New Barnsley PSNI. Fortified and still beleaguered. (Author’s photo)

  A spokesman – there are those who prefer the term ‘apologist’ – from Sinn Fein stated that the killing of the young Yorkshire soldier was in direct retaliation for the ‘murder’ of the McWilliams boy. The question one must ask of this statement which simply dripped with hypocrisy is, since when did the Republicans need a reason to kill a soldier or policeman?

  On Wednesday 10th, the IRA planted a small bomb in a garden on the campus of the New University of Ulster which was visited by the Queen as part of her jubilee celebrations. The bomb exploded after the Queen had left and it caused no injuries, nor was the Queen’s schedule affected. Later, in what was seen as a massive snub to the British Crown, members of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) refused to attend a reception in her honour.

  The Province, normally in a tinderbox state anyway, became even more volatile and more British soldiers would die as a consequence. In Crossmaglen, a massive car bomb exploded just 200 yards from the town’s RUC/Army base and although no SF members were injured, there was much structural damage as PIRA laid waste to the centre. Inside Crumlin Road jail, (or the ‘Crum’ as it was known to prisoners) a search of Republican remand prisoners’ cells revealed several more sticks of gelignite, clearly designed to assist a mass break out. The Provisionals then bombed a petrol filling station on the Stewartstown Road in Andersonstown; no-one was injured but the blast led to a huge fireball and a civilian was treated for shock. Bomb scares then disrupted the Belfast-Dublin rail line and all services were disrupted. On the 11th, whilst supervising the removal of a burned-out car on the Falls Road, a squad from the 1st Battalion, Gordon Highlanders came under fire. A 38-year old Major was hit in the chest and very badly wounded by one of the rounds from an American Armalite; he survived the wound.

  On the 11th, trouble again flared on a Province-wide basis as riots and protests by Nationalists against the Queen’s visit took place. In Belfast, an Army sniper on the OP at the top of the Divis Tower observed a man in the streets below carrying a weapon. When a second man appeared with what was possibly the same rifle, the soldier opened fire and hit the man. He was observed to stagger and was then dragged by sympathisers back into a house. Blood traces were found in a later follow-up but the wounded man had no doubt been whisked away to a friendly doctor for treatment, very likely in the Republic. Provisional Sinn Fein then organised a ‘Black Flag’ rally in order to protest against the presence of Queen Elizabeth II in Belfast. It ended with vicious rioting in the Castle Street area when protestors clashed with the RUC. The police had formed a cordon at Castle Street and King Street and violence erupted when the mob reached this barrier. Stones, broken bottles and petrol bombs (described as ‘gasoline’ bombs by the pro-NORAID reporters) were hurled at the police who responded with CS gas, baton rounds and then baton charges. There were several injuries on both sides. At Castlewellan, Co Down, a police officer and his family had a lucky escape when a PIRA bomb planted at his house failed to explode; it was defused by EOD. Finally, in Londonderry, PIRA or INLA gunmen opened fire on Rosemount RUC station and several shots were returned by police.
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  THE CLOSEST I EVER CAME TO SHOOTING AN IRISH GUY

  Erich Modrowics, Queen’s Own Hussars

  I was stationed in South Armagh in 1977 and the incident which springs to mind concerns something which had happened earlier in the day and came to our attention just as we were due to go out on foot patrol. News came in that a Land Rover had rolled over and one of the brick had been severely injured. It transpired that the person driving was not the designated driver and was driving too fast. One of the lads had been thrown out – my good friend Keith Champion – he had been dragged along the road with the Makralon part of the vehicle and had lost an eye. Poor lad was due to get married after the tour. I was gutted and angry that this had happened and proceeded to get drunk and even though we were only supposed to have two cans of beer a day I had many more.

  With each beer the anger got worse, eventually the anger turned to an intense desire for revenge. I committed the cardinal and unprofessional sin of going out on foot patrol whilst drunk! It was late evening and dark; the street lamps gave some dim light on the miserable streets of the low income estates. As we wound our way through the estates we happened upon a particularly annoying youth by the name of Charlie Magee who was sitting on the doorstep of the house he lived in. He was a regular pain-in-the-arse and well known to us; he abused patrols every day and that evening was no exception. We all had a real dislike of Charlie, who walked with a limp, the rumour being that some previous squaddies had set him up and somehow convinced the IRA that he was an informer and he was supposedly knee capped. I told him to shut up but that just made him start yelling more. I cocked my rifle, took aim, released the safety catch off and took first pressure on the trigger. I had lost it big style and the rage I felt because my friend had been so badly injured was overwhelming. The other lads in the rest of the brick pleaded with me not to do it and, thank goodness, I listened but upon attempting to extract the round from the chamber I ended up losing it on the road!

  Because it was so dark we almost missed it but fortunately we ended up finding it and that was the end the incident. Keith was medically discharged from the Army and that was the last I ever heard from him.

  The Royal Marines enjoy an unbroken period of service to the Crown of almost 260 years being formed as marine infantry for the Royal Navy. There is also a school of thought which refers to their ‘birth’ as 1664, when ‘the Duke of York and Albany’s maritime regiment of foot’ was first formed. Its motto is Per Mare, Per Terram (By Sea, By Land) and its lineage includes the Napoleonic and Crimean Wars and both World Wars and Korea. In August of 1977 a detachment from this famous Regiment was based in West Belfast and part of its TAOR was the nationalist Turf Lodge. On the 12th, a PIRA sniper had fired a shot at a mobile patrol and it hit one Marine in the head, then continued on and hit a following vehicle. The Marine was badly wounded, but survived after hospital treatment. The shooting was immediately followed up and a cordon established in order to prevent the gunman from escaping in the rabbit warren of houses which make up the Turf lodge. Marine Neil Bewley (19) was part of that follow up, and was on Norglen Drive when a single shot was fired by an IRA sniper concealed in a bedroom window of a nearby house. He was hit in the chest and mortally wounded, dying a short time later in hospital. Minutes afterwards, in Norglen Parade, a blast bomb was thrown at the Marines and two were seriously injured, including one who had his lower leg blown off.

  Locals described the later conduct of the Royal Marines as substantially increasing tension and setting back relations in the area. Whilst this author neither concedes that there was bad conduct nor justifies any future occurrence, he asks the reader this: had you been a soldier, professional or otherwise, how would you have reacted to the killing of a comrade, the shooting in the head of another and then witnessing the maiming of a third?

  The Royal Marines came under fire shortly afterwards a few hundred yards south of the previous incidents when one of their Land Rovers was fired upon in Gransha Park and the driver was lightly grazed in his head by the bullet. Troops searched houses in a follow up operation, and at an unoccupied property in Ardmonagh Parade found weapons, ammunition and two-way radios and later in Norglen Parade seized a sniper rifle and a sawn-off shotgun. Sporadic rioting continued most of the night in the Turf Lodge area.

  On the following Monday, two RUC officers had a lucky escape when INLA gunmen fired at their patrol car between Newmills and Stewartstown in the Coalisland area. Two shots smashed through the windscreen but both officers were unhurt. Fire was returned, but the gunmen escaped. On the 19th a massive firebomb blitz by the Provisionals virtually brought Belfast to a standstill. Virtually every commercial area was hit and in addition, hoax warnings stretched the emergency services to breaking point. Places hit were the Education and Library Board Services in Academy Street; Cavendish Woodhouse Furniture in Castle Place; Van Hallen Boutique and Moffett’s Furniture in Dunmurry and a fashion shop in Winetavern Street; Frazers in Castle Street and another boutique in Donegal Square. Finally, an incendiary bomb was thrown into Duberrys’ Bar in Queen’s Square. At one stage over 180 firemen were dealing with 26 simultaneous fires as the IRA tried to burn down Belfast.

  The ‘bad arse’ tower: Divis Street Flats. (Author’s photo)

  On the 22nd, the IRA burst into a house in St Joseph’s Place in Crossmaglen, South Armagh and abducted William Martin (62) and took him away to be tortured and interrogated. It was alleged that he was an informer for the RUC. He was taken to a field by the South Armagh ‘Nutting Squad’ and shot dead. His body was found dumped between Moybane and Concession Road. It was strongly denied by both his family and friends and, more importantly, by the RUC, that Mr Martin was an informer. In the climate of paranoia which ruled the Provisionals and who were looking for a ‘tout under every bed’ mistakes were bound to happen. In the dirty world which was the infiltration of the paramilitaries, agents would often implicate innocent people in order to divert attention away from themselves. The murder of this man was without justification and it is therefore highly unlikely that he was a ‘tout’. Thomas Passmore, Grand Master of the City of Belfast Orange Lodge said: ‘If this is IRA justice, heaven help the decent Roman Catholic community which has to live under it.’ In 1976 he was himself victim of a shooting by the IRA which killed his father.

  Two days later, the UFF tried to kill a leading member of Provisional Sinn Fein by posting a parcel containing a small but lethal amount of explosives to him. A family member intercepted the Loyalist ‘surprise’ which mimicked what the IRA had been doing to their enemies, but there were no injuries. Their reaction was one of outrage that their enemies had copied one of their own cowardly and murderous tactics. This incident alerted the RUC to the possibility of further devices and a major trawl of all Belfast’s sorting offices was undertaken. Several parcel bombs addressed to Sinn Féin members in North and West Belfast were discovered and all mail was cancelled whilst the packages were made safe and forensic evidence as to the senders was uncovered. However, in one incident an EOD soldier was badly injured whilst defusing one such device and his left hand was blown off.

  Two major incidents occurred the following day, when a member of EOD who was based at the Grand Central Hotel Army base in Belfast was badly injured defusing an IRA bomb in Tomb Street. Shortly afterwards, work on building a security wall at the RVH was suspended when the Provisionals threatened to shoot any workmen engaged in the repairs. There was a further worrying development, when it was revealed that the Provisionals had a ‘sleeping bomb’ which could lie inert for up to three years and then explode as programmed. Lt-Colonel Derek Patrick, head of Bomb Disposal at HQNI, revealed the deadly secret in an interview with Bob Rodwell.

  On the 26th, soldiers manning a VCP at Butcher’s Gate, Londonderry came under fire from an IRA gunman; one soldier was hit and badly wounded and rushed to hospital, after two men approached the checkpoint and shot the soldier from the Royal Artillery at point-blank range. They ran off, using a crowd of people as
cover and the soldiers were unable to fire at them. Two days later, on the Sunday, a foot patrol from the Gordon Highlanders was on the Ardoyne, in the Brompton Park area when it came under fire. Lance Corporal Jack Marshall (25), a married father of two, was hit and mortally wounded. He died very quickly after reaching hospital. He was from the Dundee area and was the second Gordon Highlander to be shot in a short period of time. A young child standing close by was injured as the round which killed the young Scot passed through his body and fragmented, hitting her.

  On the 29th, the Light Infantry, which had already lost three of its soldiers in a four week period, came close to losing another when a soldier was struck and wounded by a ricochet. His patrol was standing close to a Saracen armoured vehicle at the junction of Springfield Road and Divismore Crescent in West Belfast. Two rounds hit the Sarra’ and one of them then struck the soldier in his side and badly wounded him. There was a very lucky escape for two young children who were asleep at their house in Hornbeam Walk in the Dunmurry area of South Belfast. Loyalist gunmen sprayed their house with automatic fire in an attempt to kill their Catholic father. Five rounds actually entered their bedroom but they were both unhurt.

  On Tuesday 30, Jimmy Carter, then President of the USA, gave a keynote speech on Northern Ireland. In the speech he said that the American government would support any initiative that led to a form of government in Northern Ireland which had the support of both sections of the community. In particular the support would take the form of trying to create additional jobs in the region. He also called on Americans not to provide financial and other support for groups using violence in Northern Ireland. There were many at the time who muttered: ‘I won’t hold my breath, Mr President.’