by Ann Williams
The calm at Enniskillen was suddenly shattered when, at 10.45 a.m., a bomb suddenly detonated. The blast caused the wall of a nearby building, St Michael’s Reading Rooms, to collapse, showering huge chunks of rubble down onto the small group below. All at once, the atmosphere became one of chaos, panic and sheer horror as the scale of the atrocity became clear. Some of the victims were killed instantly; some staggered about bleeding until they died; and others were buried below the rubble, slowly suffocating as others tried to rescue them.
Unusually, the entire event was captured on video, by an amateur video enthusiast who had brought his equipment along to film the service. The scene of carnage from this video, later shown on television, shocked all who saw it. A more graphic example of the horrific results of sectarian violence could not have been devised, and it brought home just how pointlessly destructive the conflict in Northern Ireland had become.
THE SURVIVOR
All of the victims of the attack were Protestants, many of them elderly people and their families. Three members of the Armstrong family, Bertha, Wesley and Edward, were killed. Edward, aged 52, was a member of the ‘Chosen Few’ Orange Lodge and the Royal Ulster Constabulary Reserve. Jessie and Kitchener Johnson, both aged 70, died; as did William and Angus Mullen, also in their 70s. Among the other victims was Marie Wilson, the 20-year-old daughter of Gordon Wilson, who was also buried under the rubble with her but survived the ordeal.
Later, Gordon Wilson told how the force of the bomb blast had thrown him and his daughter forwards into the air, while stones and rubble rained down on them. A piece of falling masonry struck him on the shoulder, causing intense pain, and he then found himself lying under a pile of rubble 20 m (6 ft) high. He shouted to his daughter, who was still alive, and the pair held hands, although he could not see her. He asked her if she was all right and she replied yes, but then, after telling her father that she loved him, she fell silent. After a few minutes, Wilson and his daughter were pulled out of the wreckage and taken to hospital. Marie later died there.
A HUMAN TRAGEDY
After he was released from hospital, Gordon Wilson made a public statement that he did not bear a grudge towards his daughter’s killers. ‘Dirty sort of talk is not going to bring her back to life,’ he said. He also mentioned that he would pray every night for the terrorists. His statement so impressed loyalist paramilitaries, who were intent on carrying out some form of retaliation, that they abandoned their plans for revenge. Wilson went on to become a spokesperson for peace, his courageous stance encouraging a general spirit of reconciliation in Northern Ireland.
Where the IRA had seriously miscalculated was to suppose that the Remembrance Day mourners in Enniskillen would be seen as a politically motivated group of Protestants with strong sectarian links, rather than as a group of ordinary citizens coming together to remember the many Irish men and women who had lost their lives in the World War I and II. In the public mind, the connection was made between the victims of the wars and the victims of the continuing troubles in Ireland; between the soldiers of the past who had no control over the political situation yet lost their lives, and modern-day civilians in Ireland who now found themselves in a similar situation, caught up as innocent victims in the horror of war.
SECTARIAN VIOLENCE
In fact, only one of the crowd who were present at the war memorial in Enniskillen that day was a politically motivated individual. Edward Armstrong, who lost his life, was a 52-year-old reserve member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which had come under heavy criticism from the IRA and others as a biased, anti-Catholic and often brutal state security force. In addition, he was a member of the ‘Chosen Few’ Orange Lodge. The Orange Order, as it sometimes called, is a Protestant organization that has been accused of anti-Catholic sectarianism, particularly with regard to its practise of marching through strongly Catholic areas in parades that celebrate Protestant culture and identity.
Thus, to some degree, there was a political aspect to the Remembrance Day bombing at Enniskillen, but it was hardly strong enough to warrant such a violently destructive act. Apart from Edward Armstrong, most of the victims that day were elderly or middle-aged people who had little or no connection with political activism. For this reason, the attack was seen as an example of the IRA’s increasing tendency towards mindless violence. The fact that the attack took place on a day when the destructiveness of war was being quietly remembered all over the country made the crime seem doubly outrageous.
A BUNCH OF HOODLUMS
Not surprisingly, the Enniskillen attack was extremely damaging to the IRA’s campaign. It was roundly condemned by all the leading political figures of the day, as well as by the media and members of the general public. This time, the rhetoric of the politicians had some real weight to it, and the public began to believe that, instead of agitating for a cause – the creation of an independent Republic of Ireland – the IRA were simply a bunch of hoodlums mired in violence and bitterness, dedicated to continuing age-old feuds and creating permanent civil war in the country. In response, the IRA claimed that the real target of the bomb had been a group of British soldiers, and that their leadership had not authorized the bombing. However, this was widely disbelieved.
It then emerged that a bomb had also been planted 32 km (20 miles) away, near a village called Pettigo, and that members of the Boys’ Brigade, a religious organization for boys and young men, had gathered there to take part in a service for Remembrance Day. Thankfully, the bomb had failed to detonate, and no one had been injured. However, news of this attempted attack caused more outrage and further damaged the republican cause.
LEGACY OF PEACE
In 1997, on Remembrance Day, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams publicly apologized for the bombing on behalf of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA. Three years later, Ronnie Hill, a victim of the bombing, finally died. He had been in a coma for 13 years as a result of his injuries at Enniskillen.
Gordon Wilson, whose daughter Marie was a victim of the Enniskillen bombing, and who later became a spokesman for peace in Northern Ireland, said after her death: ‘I don’t have an answer, but I know there has to be a plan. If I didn’t think that, I would commit suicide. It’s part of a greater plan.’ His words were prophetic, at least to the degree that the Remembrance Day bombing at Enniskillen finally marked the moment when the general public lost sympathy with the IRA, and the conflict in Northern Ireland reached a turning point, making it possible for a peace process to begin.
Pan Am Flight 103
To the little girl in the red dress who lies here who made my flight from Frankfurt such fun. You didn’t deserve this. God Bless, Chas.
A note left outside Lockerbie town hall
The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 – or the Lockerbie Air Disaster as it is known in Britain – was the largest and most destructive terror attack on an American airline in the 20th century. It also remains Britain’s largest mass murder. It took place on December 21, 1988, as many passengers were flying home to celebrate Christmas with their families, and not only killed the entire crew and passengers of the plane, but also 11 people on the ground, as it crashed into houses in the small Scottish town of Lockerbie. In the wake of the disaster, there were many theories as to who was behind the attack, including claims that the Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi was responsible. Eventually a security officer for Libyan Airlines, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi, was brought to trial, convicted and given a life sentence for his part in the crime. Today, many believe that Al-Megrahi was just a pawn in an international game of conspiracy, and that the biggest players – believed to be heads of state and high-ranking politicians in the Arab world – have been allowed to escape justice.
THE BOMB EXPLODES
The flight from London to New York took off on a busy evening at Heathrow Airport, 25 minutes later than its scheduled departure time of 6.00 p.m. Earlier in the day, it had arrived from Frankfurt. There were a total of 243 passengers on board, and a crew of 16, led by C
aptain James MacQuarrie. Among the passengers were US intelligence officers Mathew Gannon, Daniel O’Connor, Chuck McKee and Ronald Lariviere. McKee had just returned from Beirut, Lebanon, where he had been involved in investigating the whereabouts of hostages held by the terrorist wing of the militant group Hezbollah. This later prompted suspicions that the bomb may have been aimed at the US officers, in response to antiterrorist defence initiatives.
Initially, the plane flew northwards, to Scotland, before heading out over the Atlantic Ocean. Just over half an hour into the journey, while in Scottish airspace, the pilot requested clearance to cross the Atlantic from traffic controller Alan Topp. That was the last communication from the aircraft. As the plane moved off, Topp noticed that the small green square on his radar screen, with a cross in the middle indicating the aircraft’s transponder code, had completely vanished, and in its place were several smaller squares. At first he thought that the radar was not picking up the signal correctly, but then the awful truth began to emerge: the blips on the screen were in fact exploded remnants of the aeroplane, flying through the sky.
SCENE OF CARNAGE
The traffic controller’s worst fears were confirmed when, just one minute later, a wing section of the plane loaded with fuel dropped onto the ground in a quiet suburban area of the town of Lockerbie. The crash was immense, measuring 1.6 on the Richter scale for a seismic event, as the street became a fireball. The blast caused a crater in the ground, destroying several houses and killing 11 people. As the plane came down, the bodies of those aboard fell to the ground, scattering body parts around the area in a horrifying scene of carnage. The explosion scattered parts of the aeroplane for 2.190 sq km (845 sq miles) of land around Lockerbie. Not one of the 259 people aboard survived, although – amazingly – some landed intact, and two were even alive, but they died shortly afterwards.
The victims on the ground included a family, Jack and Rosalind Somerville and their children Paul and Lynsey, whose house was hit in the explosion. Others died as more houses in the street exploded and the resulting fireball moved along the roads, scorching cars in its wake. For the drivers, the disaster had literally come out of the blue, and it was some time before people realized what had happened: many thought at first that a nearby nuclear reactor had melted down.
TRAIL OF EVIDENCE
The next grim task was to clear the wreckage, which proved another nightmare. So that exact details of what had happened could be established, many of the victims’ bodies were left lying in streets and gardens for days, exactly as they had fallen. Residents complained of having to pass the same bodies, some of them small children, every day until forensic investigators finished their task. Meanwhile, relatives of the victims travelled to the town to identify their loved ones. In a touching gesture of friendship and solidarity in the face of their loss, volunteers from the town set up canteens for the relatives, offering food and company to those waiting to find out the worst. Once the forensic investigators had done their work, local people washed the clothing of the victims and returned it to their relatives. Many years later, friendships that were formed at that tragic time continued to be a source of comfort to both the people of Lockerbie who had lost loved ones and to the victims’ families.
After the blast, local police from the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary, the smallest police force in Britain, began the daunting task of trying to find out who was behind the largest terror attack in British aviation history. For almost two years, there was a high-level investigation into the crash, involving extensive forensic examination of the wreckage, as well as police inquiries in many countries. Little by little, a picture of what had happened began to emerge – however it was incomplete, and it remains so to this day.
A tiny fragment of the electrical device that detonated the bomb was found, and it was identified as part of a timer that was manufactured by a Swiss firm. When further investigations were made, the timer was found to have been exported to Libya as part of a consignment. This immediately suggested that the bombing was a politically motivated one, possibly sanctioned by the Libyan state under the leadership of Colonel Gaddafi.
REVENGE KILLING?
Gaddafi was already the subject of much suspicion, since there was a great deal of animosity between him and the US president, Ronald Reagan. In 1986, in response to a Libyan terror attack, the USA had bombed Tripoli, and in so doing, had managed to kill Gaddafi’s adopted baby daughter, which had outraged leaders of the Arab states. Not only this, but only a few months before the Lockerbie incident, the USA had shot down a large Iranian passenger plane, Iran Air Flight 655, apparently by accident, thinking it to be an enemy aircraft. The plane had been filled with Islamic pilgrims travelling to Mecca, and the shooting, which killed 290 passengers, was perceived as a deliberate attack on the Arab world.
Thus, Libya and Iran, as well as other closely linked states such as Syria, had a good deal of reason for revenge. Many believed that the Ayatollah Khomeini had ordered the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing and had been helped by Syria. It was also thought that the bombing had been carried out by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Syrian-sponsored terrorist group.
THE FALL GUYS?
However, when the case came to trial, it was two unknown Libyans, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al-Megrahi, and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, rather than heads of state or leaders of terrorist groups, who found themselves in the dock.
Al-Megrahi was a high-ranking Libyan intelligence officer who, it was alleged, had sent the bomb in a suitcase from Malta to Frankfurt, where it had been transferred to Heathrow and put on Pan Am Flight 103. Charred clothes wrapped round the bomb were traced to a Maltese shop, and the shopkeeper then identified Al-Megrahi as having bought clothes there shortly before the bombing. Al-Megrahi was also found to have arrived in Malta on a false passport, and he had travelled to Tripoli the following day.
On the basis of this evidence, on January 31, 2001, Al-Megrahi was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. However, it proved more difficult to find any evidence against Al Fhimah, a close friend of Al-Megrahi’s, and he was acquitted. Al-Megrahi immediately appealed against the judgement, but his appeal was turned down.
CONTROVERSY
Since then, the case has continued to be a controversial one, because many believe that Al-Megrahi and Al Fhimah were fall guys, and that the bomb was actually the work of the Iranian Khomeni regime. The theory is that the Iranians struck a deal with Libya whereby Al-Megrahi and Al Fhimah would take the rap for the bombing, and that Gaddafi concurred so that Libya could then resume normal relations with the international community.
Among the families of the victims themselves, there is some disagreement as to what really happened. The Americans are more inclined to accept the verdict that Al-Megrahi was responsible for the crime, while many of the British are not persuaded, viewing the bombing as a revenge attack masterminded by Iran, Syria and Libya, and carried out by Abu Nidal, a Palestinian political leader and the founder of Fatah – the Revolutionary Council or FRC. In addition, the British relatives want a full enquiry into the security arrangements at Heathrow Airport, to ensure that such a terrible tragedy could never happen again.
Attack On The Royal Marine School Of Music
Even the people who say they support what the IRA calls its cause must be sickened by the way in which such death and injury is mercilessly inflicted.
Neil Kinnock
The Royal Marine School of Music in Deal, Kent, was the target of an explosion on September 22, 1989. Twenty-two men were injured and 11 people were killed, the majority of the victims being nothing more than teenagers.
INVOLVEMENT IN IRELAND
British security forces have been involved in the struggle in Northern Ireland since 1969, and the Royal Marines involvement goes back several centuries. As far back as 1916, a Royal Marines Battalion was called to Ireland in response to the ‘Easter Uprising’. The rising was an attempt by militant Irish republicans to win independen
ce from the UK. The Royal Marines’ involvement lasted until the spring of 1922, following the establishment of the ‘Free State’. The Irish Free State was formed on December 6, with six northern counties staying as part of the UK. As a result a civil war broke out between those supporting the Anglo-Irish Treaty and those who renounced it because they felt it would lead to the partitioning of the island. The Irish Republican Army (IRA), which at the time was led by Eamon de Valera, fought against the partition but did not succeed.
It was another 47 years before the Royal Marines would return to Northern Ireland, when they were asked to serve on the streets of Belfast in September 1969. Royal Marines Commando units were among the first troops drafted into Northern Ireland in 1969 and have served in the Province almost every year since, predominantly in the nationalist heartlands of West Belfast and South Armagh.
HITTING WERE IT HURTS
The original Royal Naval School of Music was founded in 1903 to provide bands for the Royal Navy. The school itself was formed by the Royal Marines and later became an integral part of the Corps. Its original home was at the Eastney Barracks in Portsmouth, but in 1930 it was transferred to the Royal Marines Depot in Deal. Deal is a town in Kent, which lies on the English Channel 13 km (8 miles) north-east of Dover. The barracks at Walmer consisted of the North, East and South (or Cavalry) barracks, and all were constructed shortly after the outbreak of the French revolution.
