by Paul Bruce
We immediately cleaned and oiled our weapons and the ‘border special’, and set off shortly after midday. We also took with us a couple of lengths of parachute cord. They would prove very useful.
We drove at some speed towards the area, not far from the Protestant part of Sandy Row. JR cruised past the Victorian terraced house, which had a dark-green front door, and parked the car round the next corner, about a hundred yards away. We synchronised watches.
Don sent Benny and me round the back of the house to guard the rear door, as he intended to break down the front door himself, with JR as his back-up. Benny and I walked along the row of terraced houses and dodged down the alleyway that ran from the street to the yards at the back. We had counted the houses and knew precisely which one the man would be resting in.
We checked the windows of the house and then took cover behind a brick wall at the end of the tiny yard, waiting for the seconds to tick away. On the stroke of 1pm, we went through the back gate, our pistols drawn. I went to the back door, hoping to hear what was happening inside while Benny watched the windows for any sign of life.
I heard the crash of splintered wood as Don took a running leap at the front door, crashing his shoulder into it and smashing the lock. Behind him, JR, pistol at the ready, watched the windows. I tried the door and, unbelievably, it was open. I went straight into the kitchen as Benny gave cover.
As I moved through the kitchen, I could hear Don halfway up the stairs. He had obviously checked the front room and, finding no one there, had decided that he had to get to the man before he could get to his gun. We knew he would be armed. We hoped he had only a .38 revolver and no machine gun.
I raced up the stairs behind Don, leaving Benny and JR below in case of any trouble from neighbours or IRA gunmen who might have returned to the house. I was only halfway up the single flight of stairs when a bedroom door above was thrown open and a man came hurtling out.
In his hand I saw a revolver and thanked God the man hadn’t a Thompson SMG with him. He crashed into Don who went sprawling. Somehow, the man stayed on his feet and I hit him with a rugby tackle as he took off, trying to jump over me from the top of the stairs.
Together we crashed down the stairs and, thank God, as we fell, his revolver flew out of his hand. As we landed in a heap at the bottom, I saw Benny grab our man and hit him twice across the head with the butt of his pistol. He didn’t hit him too hard because we wanted him conscious and able to walk. By the time the man came to, Benny had him in an arm lock; he couldn’t move.
After checking the other bedrooms, Don came down the stairs and told JR to collect the car and bring it to the front door. Benny and I had our man sitting on the floor with his hands tied tightly behind him with the parachute cord. Don looked at him. He said, ‘It’s him all right.’
‘Who the fuck are you?’ said our man.
‘Shut up,’ said Don. ‘If you utter another word, I’ll blow your fucking brains out.’
‘You don’t frighten me,’ our man replied.
‘We soon will,’ said Don, ‘because you’re the fucking rat who did for Private Willy Best, down in Derry.’
For a split second the man seemed stunned. ‘Bullshit,’ he said.
‘So you know the name then,’ said Don.
‘’Course I do, everyone knows that fucker’s name,’ he said.
Don picked him up roughly from the floor and told him to start walking towards the front door. The man tried to sit down, not wanting to leave what he believed was his safe haven.
‘If you don’t move, I’ll fucking shoot you here and now,’ said Don, putting his pistol to the man’s head. He moved.
Don and Benny put the man into the back of the car and I took the passenger seat.
‘What’s it like to beat someone senseless?’ Don asked. ‘Is that how you get your kicks?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he replied.
‘Well, you soon will,’ Don said. ‘We’re going to do to you everything you did to that poor soldier. If you treat soldiers like that, I can tell you that we will find you and deal with you in exactly the same way.’
The man began to stutter, struggling to find the right words to convince us that he knew nothing about Private Best, denying he had ever lived in Londonderry.
‘Shut up,’ said Don. ‘I know you’re the guilty man because I’ve seen your picture. We got it from one of your IRA mates. They want you done in because you are a homicidal maniac, a fucking liability. Now do you understand?’
The man began to look worried.
‘I’m going to tell you what we’re going to do with you.’
‘Fuck off,’ said the man. ‘Just fuck off.’
‘Yeah, we will fuck off,’Don said, ‘but only after we have shot you in the legs a few times, working slowly up the body till we put a couple of rounds into your balls. Then we’ll ask you if you tortured and shot Willy Best. And if you deny it we’ll start to put a few rounds in your arms until you do confess.’
The man began to shake and his voice dropped to a quiet, almost inaudible, murmur, his bravado at an end.
Later, as we drove towards the clearing in Tardree Forest, he tried to speak again, to protest his innocence.
‘Shut up,’ said Don. ‘All I want is your confession that you shot Willy Best.’
The man fell silent again, his head bowed, looking at the floor of the car.
Thirty minutes later, we arrived at the clearing and Don and Benny pulled him out of the car. Our grave digger was at work, moving logs with his JCB. JR went over and told him to disappear for half an hour.
We made our man walk the hundred yards to the trench. Don told him to kneel down on the mound of earth, looking down into the trench. ‘You’ve got one last chance,’ Don told him. ‘If you don’t confess to killing Willy Best, I’m going to start shooting you in the legs.’
There was silence.
‘I’ll count to five,’ Don said. ‘It’s up to you. One, two, three …’
‘All right, all right … it was me,’ he said. ‘But I had to do it,’ he said, beginning to sob. ‘They made me do it.’
They would be the last words he ever uttered. Don pulled the trigger of the ‘border special’, shooting the man in the back of the head. He fell forward into the trench and disappeared from our view. We turned and walked away, happy that we had avenged Best’s dreadful murder.
That night on television, we saw Colonel Gaddafi of Libya saying in a recorded interview that he had decided to supply the IRA with whatever arms and ammunition they wanted. He told how he wanted to help the Irish in their struggle for liberation from the British Army.
‘Well, at least Gaddafi’s honest,’ I said. ‘It’s a pity the British Government couldn’t be honest, then we wouldn’t have to play all this cloak and dagger crap and we could get out there and fight the IRA properly. Then we would see how much fight they had in them.’
Throughout most of June, we were sent out searching for victims to hit on the streets of Belfast but more often than not we would return to Long Kesh without finding a suitable target. We would never make a hit if there were too many possible witnesses around; we would never target someone if they were accompanied by a woman or a child; we would never make a hit if there were any children about; and we would only target those Catholics who would have been of military age.
From all we read in the newspapers, perhaps our work had proved of some use in causing some strife and doubt in the ranks of the Provisional IRA. Ever since the Official IRA had announced their ceasefire in May, Secretary of State William Whitelaw had initiated a policy of conciliation, releasing members of the Official IRA from detention. By 6 June, Whitelaw had released 470 of the 936 who had been held without trial. Nearly all were Officials.
Of course, this policy caused greater strife between the Provos and the Officials. Intelligence sources discovered that unexplained deaths on the streets of Belfast were sometimes blamed on both factions, no one certa
in who was responsible for the random killings.
They also knew that the Provisionals had determined on a campaign of sectarian violence against the Protestants as well as keeping up the pressure on the British Army by persuading young people to riot constantly against British troops, while IRA snipers on rooftops tried to take advantage of finding soldiers in their gun sights. Barely a week would pass at this time without a soldier being killed by sniper fire.
The Provisionals also increased the tempo of violence, trying to bomb Belfast and Londonderry into a state of chaos, trying to ruin the economy of the Province. The Provos aimed to put as many businesses as possible out of action.
There was precious little the authorities could do to counter such destructive action. A meeting of the Joint Security Committee, consisting of all intelligence chiefs, senior army officers and police, and headed by William Whitelaw, did all in their power to stop the bombers, banning all unattended vehicles throughout the city centres seven days a week and implementing searches of everyone and everything moving in and out of the city centres.
Anyone visiting Londonderry in June 1972 would have believed they were in some Central European city immediately after the Second World War, what with all the bomb and fire damage and the check points. Anyone driving through Londonderry at that time would have to negotiate seven separate check points, two guarded by the IRA, three by the British Army and two more by the loyalists. All check points were guarded by armed men and all of them seemingly held absolute authority.
The IRA’s bombing campaign put great pressure on the Northern Ireland people and they responded with remarkable courage, understanding and patience. They realised full well that the only way to defeat the bombers was with patience and diligence. Body searches would be carried out at every store and building; women’s handbags and shopping baskets were searched at every entrance; men’s briefcases inspected.
Day and night, cars, buses and trucks would be searched at check points and during random police and army alerts. The people responded with grit and determination as the mayhem and violence continued. Throughout Northern Ireland, virtually every family had been touched by death or injury but their spirit of endurance had somehow survived throughout more than twenty years of troubles.
Believing that their campaign of violence and wanton destruction was winning the war, the Provisional IRA sought a secret meeting with William Whitelaw after proposing a ceasefire. Their demands, however, proved totally unacceptable to the British Government, although Whitelaw informed the IRA that he would return with an answer from the Cabinet a week later.
The Provisionals did not wait for a formal reply. With no announcement, they unleashed a new campaign of violence, bombings and shootings, killing six civilians, including a thirteen-year-old girl and a Roman Catholic priest on the first day. Later the same day, bomb explosions rocked both Belfast and Londonderry.
The Heath Government decided to take a tougher line with the Provisionals. William Whitelaw personally ordered 600 troops to attack IRA gunmen in Andersonstown after three soldiers had been killed during a four-day attack by the IRA on the Lenadoon Avenue army post. The IRA fired 400 rounds at the post before the army went on to the offensive.
Whitelaw announced that the attack on the IRA gunmen was the start of a government offensive, a new policy of ‘an eye for an eye’ in which any IRA ferocity would be repaid by army ferocity. As a result, fierce gun battles raged for hours on end.
Outgunned by the army, the IRA resorted to bombings. In one hour on Friday, 21 July, eleven people were killed and 130 injured when twenty huge bombs exploded across Belfast, the IRA selecting the most vulnerable targets by bombing bus shelters, the railway station and a hotel.
It would prove to be one of the most gruesome and violent IRA bombing sprees. It also proved highly embarrassing for William Whitelaw and the government, as the bombs exploded only a matter of hours after Whitelaw had announced to the House of Commons that stringent new security measures had been introduced during the previous few days in both Belfast and Londonderry, which ‘would thwart the bombers’.
The Lower Falls area of Belfast was the one area we kept well away from. As we drove down Grosvenor Road, we could see the IRA hitmen on guard duty in the side streets, most wearing balaclavas and nearly all carrying American Armalite rifles or Thompson sub-machine guns. We also knew those streets would always have snipers on the rooftops, keeping watch. To have dared to drive into that area would have resulted in an instant fire fight. We might have escaped with our lives but we also knew that there would be every chance of innocent victims being hit in cross-fire or by ricochets.
More important, we had never been given orders to indulge in random fire fights or to put ourselves in a position where we could be shot, killed or kidnapped, as then the SAS involvement in undercover operations would have been blown. We would not have been popular at Lisburn or back at Hereford.
One night at the end of June, we thought we had bought it.
We had driven around for nearly half an hour before we found a likely target, a man who appeared to be in his late thirties, walking towards us on the near side. He really looked like an IRA hitman – a squat, powerfully built man dressed in jeans and a dark-blue donkey jacket.
‘That’s one,’ Don said.
Seconds later, Don pulled the trigger of his SMG, letting go half a dozen rounds. He must have been only six feet from the victim when he opened fire. The man looked surprised, then open-mouthed as he was catapulted backwards by the force of the shots hitting him.
‘Go,’ said Don to JR, ‘but slowly.’
Ten minutes later, as we were driving back to base, relaxing and looking forward to a coffee, we rounded a corner to be confronted with a blazing barricade only thirty yards ahead of us.
‘Christ!’ said JR.
We all looked up and JR put his foot down hard on the accelerator, making straight for the barricade which covered the entire width of the road. We could see a car on its side, well alight, as well as tyres, mattresses and old sofas, blazing away, filling the road with flames and smoke.
I thought JR had panicked and that he was planning to crash straight through the blazing mass ahead of us. Suddenly, bricks and bottles began raining down on the car. The windscreen shattered but JR continued to accelerate.
Without warning, I found myself thrown headlong against the side of the car as JR slammed on the handbrake with all his strength and turned 180 degrees with a great squeal of rubber as the tyres bit into the road. A split second later, we were facing the other direction and racing away as bricks and stones rained down on us.
I had really believed that JR was about to smash through the barricade. We must have been less than five yards away from it when he made the U-turn.
‘Shit,’Don said. ‘That was fucking brilliant. Where did you learn to do that?’
‘Something I just learned,’ JR said, a great beaming smile across his face. That one single act had helped him to win back some self-esteem. He felt good. We felt relieved. There was little doubt that he had performed brilliantly. I am certain that we would never have survived if he had tried to smash through the road block.
Don decided that we needed to get rid of the car immediately. As we drove through Lisburn trying to find a quiet place to dump and set fire to the car, we received the sort of odd looks you might expect, driving along with no windscreen, just four men sitting back and trying to appear as relaxed and nonchalant as possible. As soon as we found a farm track away from the main road, we parked the car, doused it with petrol from the can in the boot and threw on a match.
The fire erupted with a ‘whoomf’ and we legged it across country. We hadn’t gone more than 800 yards when the car erupted like a bomb, producing a fire ball. The flames shot fifty feet in the air as the jerry can of petrol, which we had only half-emptied, exploded.
Thank goodness that night was overcast as we had to walk back to Long Kesh, a distance of perhaps six miles, with the su
b-machine guns under our arms. If we had been spotted by police, they would have realised instantly that we were carrying guns under our jackets. As it happened, we hardly saw a soul until we arrived back at camp.
We had, however, learned a valuable lesson. Keeping a jerry can of petrol in the boot had not been such a great idea because it meant that we would always have to get out of the car to get the petrol. From now on, we made do without a jerry can but filled two large bottles with petrol and kept them under the front seats instead.
When we finally returned to the Portakabin, Benny cut a piece of cardboard from a packet of cigarettes and, using the silver cigarette paper, made a mock Victoria Cross. Amid lots of clapping, cheers and piss-taking, we presented the medal to JR for ‘outstanding valour under fire’. He took it in good spirit. We celebrated with a cup of coffee.
Deep down, however, we all realised that he had saved us from a very awkward situation.
Two weeks later, we had another near disaster. We were driving our new Q-car, a dark-blue Cortina, when, by accident, we drove into a hard-line IRA area while out searching for a victim one night.
We had intended turning left into a main road, which should have led us away from the ‘no-go’ area, but, somehow, we missed the turning and found ourselves facing an IRA barricade, with gunmen, wearing balaclavas, on guard. Some of the sandbags had even been painted in the green, white and orange colours of the Republican flag. The barricade had obviously been in position for weeks, if not months, a semi-permanent bulwark, constructed mainly of sandbags.
‘Shit,’ said JR.
‘Jeeeezus,’ we all whispered as we realised we were sitting ducks. Instinctively, I clicked off the safety catch of my SMG, pushing it to automatic. I heard Don and Benny do the same. I was convinced we would be in the middle of a fire fight within seconds.
Almost together, Don and I said quietly, ‘Cool it, act nonchalant. Do nothing.’
