Belfast: The Troubles (1983)
“That is what death is like. It doesn’t matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn’t matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore.”
— Jonathan Safran Foer
The conflict in Northern Ireland referred to as The Troubles started in the late 1960s and ended with the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, although British Soldiers were still deployed until 2007. The conflict was primarily ethnic and sectarian, but also had its roots set in the historical discrimination of the indigenous Irish. Generally, the Unionists (mainly Protestants) wanted to remain within the United Kingdom and the Nationalists (who were mainly Catholic) wanted to leave the United Kingdom and form a united Ireland (north and south).
Until the sixteenth century, Ireland was in the main a Catholic country. Protestants did not go to Ireland until the 1530s when Henry VIII declared the Act of Supremacy in 1534. The Act was created to ensure that Henry could produce a male heir, as the Pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. From that point on, English conflict with the Irish became, by definition, Protestant warfare against Irish Catholics. Many, mainly Scottish, Protestants flooded into Ireland because the British wanted Ireland to become part of the Church of England. Others later left Scotland to evade Oliver Cromwell’s oppressive policies. It should be noted that English Catholics were also discriminated against during this period and there are many fine examples of the priest holes used to hide Catholic priests at English country houses such as Coughton Court in Warwickshire.
Later, land could only be owned by English and Scottish settlers, not the Irish. Protestants could rent to the Irish, but the Irish were no longer allowed to own land in the area of Ulster, in the north, and this spread to a large extent into the rest of the country. The conditions that the Catholic Irish endured led to the Potato Famine, the exodus from Ireland of over two million people, and an estimated one million deaths that gave rise to the revolutionary movements.
The revolution against England, which began in the eighteenth century was, ironically, started by Wolfe Tone, a Protestant of English descent. The Fenian Brotherhood carried out armed raids through the 1916 Rebellion and the Anglo-Irish War (1919–1921), many of the leaders and soldiers fighting for Irish independence were Protestant. The main area of extreme Protestant-Catholic antipathy has been in what is now Northern Ireland, an area containing Ulster.
To begin with, the fight for independence was less about religion and more about British oppression, which continued into the twentieth century, where Irish Catholics were often discriminated against when looking for work. A lot of people still believe that the conflict was all about religion but, while religion played a significant part, the discrimination experienced by the Catholic population has always been the underlying factor.
The British Government has always tried to take a neutral stance on the Ireland problem, made easier given the fact that until recently Loyalists outnumbered Republicans. If Ireland did become whole again, would the present Irish Republic welcome that, given the potential for more violence? Personally, I do hope that one day, in whatever form it may take, Ireland becomes whole again.
During the period of The Troubles, thousands of young British soldiers spent long periods of their youth walking the streets of Belfast, Derry, and the country lanes of Fermanagh, Tyrone, and South Armagh, armed with their SLRs. Occasionally they were welcomed, more often they were spat at, pelted with missiles, shot at, or just ignored.
They were there to “keep the peace”, to “assist the civil powers” and to “fight terrorism”. On their return to Britain, there were no street parties or victory parades to welcome them home. The British Army has been deployed on the streets of Northern Ireland from August 1969 to 2007, over thirty years.
Throughout this time young, mainly English, mainly working-class men patrolled the streets of Northern Ireland. Their dead came home in boxes, without the ceremony attached to their fallen comrades in Afghanistan and Iraq; their wounded were forgotten, patched up as best as possible, and released from the army to tackle a new world on their own. They carried not only physical wounds but mental ones, in the days before Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) came to be understood.
In April 1983, we were informed that we were being posted to Northern Ireland for six months. The reason we were given for being there was to keep the peace and assist the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). To us, a terrorist was a terrorist – Protestant or Catholic, Republican or Loyalist, it didn’t matter to us. We had no hatred for either side unless they were going to come into conflict with us; and we didn’t consider the merits of either side or, in fact, if we should even have been there at all. We saw Northern Ireland as a war zone, we had a job to do. When I first was told about the posting I felt excited and apprehensive. I was just 20 and had never been on operations. Although there were some glum faces, most guys in the Battalion were ok about it, especially guys like me, who were going for the first time; it was a chance to earn a medal at long last.
The military has some formula for naming operational tours in war zones. I’m not sure if it’s chosen by a grey-suited civil servant deep in the bowls of MOD Headquarters in Westminster or if it’s the result of some oversized computer that spits out random names (and probably the winning numbers of the premium bonds as well). So, by whatever means, the name for deployment in Northern Ireland was Operation Banner
The training for Op Banner, as it became known, was long and comprehensive. It involved shooting ranges, fitness, and presentations from colleagues who had been on previous tours, information and training on terrorists and why things go wrong, as well as a lot of time in a shooting range that resembled the streets of Ireland, complete with targets that popped up from windows and doorways.
Two aspects of the training stand out to me. The first was the street range, where you were taught to walk while looking at the second floor of houses you passed. Try it, you will see that it’s a difficult thing to master – as humans we are conditioned to look down and ahead but seldom to look up. The reason for looking up is because terrorists shoot from bedroom windows and rooftops. Another difficult one was running at the shooter. Bang goes the gun and you immediately ran towards the person shooting at you – odd and unnerving, but necessary as it put pressure on the gunman. The shooter would know that if we got close to them they would at best be caught.
The IRA (Irish Republican Army) in particular were very skilled bomb makers and quickly learned that we could jam electronic detonations, so they put IEDs (improvised explosive devices) in natural firing positions such as lamp posts. The second part of the training that stood out was the identification of the “players” (known terrorists). We spent hours getting to know who was who, and what they did – if they were a carrier, bomb maker, bomber, shooter, etc. The street range training was harder and brought up a very personal lesson.
On 20 September 1982, Private Martin Jessop of the 1st Battalion Worcester and Sherwood Foresters was in a Sanger (fortified observation post) in Springfield Road, West Belfast. The IRA moved from a side street into a firing position with an RPG-7 opposite the Sanger and fired. The missile from the RPG-7 went through the Sanger and hit Martin, killing him instantly. He was 19 years old. I went to Henry Cavendish School in Derby with Martin. He wasn’t a friend, but I knew him. My mother attended his funeral. As part of our training, we were shown pictures of the Sanger (not of Martin). I found this disturbing and sobering in equal measure as I was going to the same part of Belfast.
I arrived in Belfast on 2 May 1983, courtesy of a very long and bumpy ride on a Hercules transport aircraft from Germany. We were to be sent to North Howard Street Mill. Not the sort of place you would choose to visit, it served the British Army for patrolling the Protestant Shankill Road and the Catholic Falls Road – two roads that were synonymous with violence and terrorism during The Troubles. We had weapons loaded with live rounds for a reason. We didn’t put our weapons into an armoury when we were off duty for a reason. The threats were real, the danger was real, and we needed to be able to react to it all quickly and, if needed, with deadly force.
have been asked far too often if I could ever kill someone. The answer, in a binary way, is yes, but it is more complex than that. If I or my colleagues are under immediate threat of harm then, yes, I would do so without hesitation – soldiers are trained that way. If the threat is not immediate then I have to set myself some questions: Is this an enemy combatant or (in the case of Northern Ireland a terrorist)? Is he or she armed? Will they pose a future threat in the short or long term? Will a civilian get hurt?
I remember in my police training being given a lecture by some armed police – they told everyone that, faced with killing someone, you would hesitate. I don’t agree. Soldiers react instantly to threats. Then again, the armed police also tried to be clever by sending a loaded pistol around the audience with a blank round in the chamber. They thought someone would not be able to resist pulling the trigger. When the pistol was returned to them, a former soldier had made it safe, and they were presented with the blank round, removed from the chamber, as well. We were told he should not have done that because he wasn’t trained. The medal ribbons on the guy’s chest said otherwise.
After landing in the dead of night at RAF Aldergrove, the military airport just outside Belfast, we set off. Our convoy was made of several ancient armoured vehicles including a Saracen Armoured car, a Pig Armoured car of early 1950s vintage, and several armoured Land Rovers. We sped through Belfast, along the Crumlin Road, and past the infamous Crumlin Road prison, before arriving at North Howard Street Mill in West Belfast. Our vehicles, especially the Land Rovers, would be frequent visitors to the base, but it was a no-go area for private vehicles. The only cars that pulled up to the front gates were full of explosives and left to blow up by fleet of foot drivers.
The building, our “home” was an old mill that had been transformed into a military base back in the ‘60s when The Troubles began. The conditions were cramped and frugal and there was a constant danger of IRA sniper, grenade, mortar, and bomb attacks on the building. We were there to assist the RUC in carrying out their duties of enforcing the law, and to maintain public order during riots. A normal day’s work involved patrolling with the RUC and being in the Operations Centre.
The work became boring, tedious at times, and very often tiring. The Sangers we used in North Howard Street Mill were basic, to say the least. We spent two hours in each Sanger, with about four Sangers to rotate around, so things could quickly become pretty boring. There was never any heating in the Sangers, which was a nightmare in winter, and in summer there was no air conditioning, which was also a nightmare – it wasn’t as though we could close the windows.
Every time we took a Sanger over from another soldier we were supposed to check the equipment. “Sanger bashing” was the most boring job on my whole tour, especially at 3 am. You always carried out your Sanger duties as if your life depended on it – and it did, as attacks by Republicans on the army and RUC were frequent, not only causing damage but loss of life, as the death of my school colleague Martin Jessop testified.
It was my first experience of operational life. For the old hands, it was their seventh, eighth, or maybe ninth trip to Northern Ireland. It was a long, hot summer, characterised by hot metal ID discs dangling inside our regimental t-shirts, soldiers having their hair cropped, à la Dogs of War, learning not to jump at cap guns during the small hours, sanger duties, endless patrolling, and waiting, never relaxing. It was a summer of Tonight I’m Yours by Rod Stewart, Every Breath You Take by the Police, and Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler.
The Mill where we lived was basic, even by army standards. It resembled a prison but with less space. We still went up and down by the narrow and well-worn original mill staircase, the first floor having the communication and operations centre as well as the small room that would become my and Neil Diamond’s (not his real name) home for seven months. The room had enough space for two small single beds and a small locker; space was very much at a premium and to make sure every inch was used, our room was also the home to the telephone exchange, which had to be manned from 6 am to midnight. In between, Neil and I would spend shifts in the ops room, on patrol and guard duty, working at least 16-hour days, and our time off was spent sleeping or eating. Also, the room didn’t have windows.
We ate in a basic canteen, which served basic yet wholesome food. The army cooks were helped by local Protestant civilians, and hatred of all things Catholic was very evident. I guess if you were brought up in such troubled communities your opinions would be tainted. They were good to us and always asked us if we needed anything from outside as we couldn’t leave the Mill unless on patrol. The rest of the Mill was made up mainly of accommodation, with some rest areas and briefing rooms, all very basic, and we had two pay telephones outside the canteen (these were the days before mobile phones). We always knew when something was up – either an incident or operation – as you would find guards on the telephones so that you could not use them.
On top of the Mill was the radio antenna; it was a place that we would never go without a reason as the IRA had a habit of taking pot-shots at us. Unfortunately, being in the Royal Signals, if there were problems I was one of the people who had to take the chance and go onto the roof to fix it, never knowing if a sniper had me in their sights. I remember once crawling through a hatch at the top of the Mill with my small tool kit to try to realign the antenna. I made my way from the hatch, being buffeted by the wind, with a couple of colleagues trying to offer me protection from IRA snipers, although I’m not sure how effective they would have been. As I made my way to the antenna, a shout of “bloody hurry up!” flew across the roof. I tightened up the mast while in a force ten gale, the wind making things extremely difficult. When I was finished, I made my way back to the hatch. Luckily that time, I thought, maybe the wind had kept the snipers away.I went back to the ops room to find all was well, so a second trip was not needed.
I also remember my first foot patrol. I stood by my bed and looked down at my rifle, then walked across to my body armour. I reached down, brought the body armour up, put it over my shoulders and neck, and made sure it was tight. I then put my combat jacket on, followed by my beret, and then picked up my rifle. I started to feel the butterflies in my stomach – this was to be the first time I would be putting my training to the test. I was to be blooded and exposed to a danger I had never witnessed before. I walked down the stairs, a trickle of sweat making its way down my back, and then out into the courtyard, lining up with the others. We checked our weapons – this is always done to ensure everything is working – then had our last briefing and we were ready, bar a few jokes at my expense: “Do your job, bleep. Do you know which end the gun fires from?” was one of the politest comments, others were barely printable.
The word bleep was a nickname they gave the Royal Signals, probably due to our ability to both send and receive Morse code at fairly rapid speeds. Dit dit dot dot, and all that malarkey. The gates opened, and we sprinted out to the far side of the street. We did this because we were sitting targets – or falling plates, as we called it – it was important that we didn’t give our lives away. This also settled me down – I had already been to the toilet twice that day.
We walked away in our formations that had been honed over weeks of training, down the street, all red brick, the pavements glistening in the wet, puddles in the gutters after the rain. The sky was overcast and dull, apt I would say, and more rain was due. I quickly got all thoughts of Martin Jessop out of my mind and started to follow my training: to look up at the first and second floor windows as well as looking ahead. The streets were quiet, but not too quiet. You never wanted to go down a street that looked abandoned by the locals. That signified danger – empty streets were not safe places, they were fraught with potential danger. A couple of other Bricks (a four-man patrol) also deployed and we criss-crossed West Belfast, always ensuring we could support each other.
Apart from radios, we also had various jamming devices that covered all the frequencies that a remote-controlled detonation would use. The terrorist response was to revert to cable and have what amounted to “dumb bombs”, which had a switch operated by a hidden bomber. We did our patrol and after about an hour started to make our way home. I’m glad to say that it was a boring walk around West Belfast – nothing happened, we did a couple of vehicle stops, spoke to a few locals, but that was all. The locals didn’t give us any trouble, we returned to base, it was another day at the mill, you might say. We liked boring. We unloaded our weapons and had a debrief and that was it, off for a tea or, in my case, off to the ops room for an eight-hour shift.
Our first major incident happened on 24 May, when a blue Volkswagen van pulled up outside the main gate of the joint RUC-army compound, called RUC Andersonstown. A male driver ran from the vehicle and rushed up to the gate shouting that there was a bomb in the van and that his family was being held at gunpoint. This had become routine, a favourite ploy of the paramilitaries; there is nothing like threatening your family to get you to do something you don’t want to do. The routine evacuation procedure was put into operation, which was fortunate because it was being practiced at the time. The 200kg improvised explosive device in the van then exploded, destroying the ops room, kitchen, and some of the accommodation; it also damaged nearby houses. No one died in the explosion, but 15 civilians were injured and taken to hospital with minor cuts and shock. The RUC, with British troops providing security, routinely undertook several intelligence-led searches often uncovering ammunition or the odd homemade machine gun or sawn-off shotgun.
Later that month, acting on intelligence, a defunct crystal factory was raided by the RUC with the support of B Company. Six suspects were arrested. The search identified several gas cylinders and further examination found that each cylinder was packed with 375lbs of explosives in plastic bags. A metal plate had been cut from the bottom of the cylinders to place the explosives inside, the plate had then been carefully replaced and covered with Isopon filler. The cylinders had then been repainted to appear perfectly normal. The reason they were found was that you can feel the liquid gas move when the cylinders were shaken – and explosives do not contain liquid. It was a good attempt to hide the explosive and the IRA had gone to a lot of trouble to do so. It wouldn’t be the first time we came across the use of liquefied gas cylinders that concealed explosives. As it was getting dark, it was decided to suspend the search until the next morning. When it recommenced, a man was found hidden in one of the false ceilings – he must have been up there over 24 hours as the building was guarded overnight, and he wouldn’t have been able to leave it. He explained that he was on his way to work, which fell on deaf ears, and the cheeky bugger was taken away by the RUC. As he departed, someone called out, “Pull the other one, mate, it’s got bells on it!”
The discovery of the bomb-making factory would have hurt the IRA in three ways: they would have lost their factory and bomb-making materials, lost their explosives, and more importantly lost one of their bomb makers. A good day for us. On 9 June, the day of the British General Election, an attempt was made to blow up RUC Woodbourne, with some success. An oil tanker was driven up to the main gate and the driver parked his vehicle right in front of it. The driver declared that it was a proxy bomb and that his family was being held, hostage. The warning gave enough time to ensure that the station and the area could be evacuated and a short time later the bomb exploded. For some reason, it didn’t have the effect that it should have and although it caused damage, thankfully there were no injuries. One of the theories was that the tanker had too much petrol in as it’s the vapour that causes the combustion and perhaps explains why that tanker stayed alight for some time after the explosion.
In July, we received disturbing information that the IRA had acquired a 20mm anti-tank weapon. This was a frightening thought as a 20mm round makes a lot of damage and would go through our armoured vehicles. It was a major step forward in the ability of the IRA to cause death and destruction. The weapon was first used against RUC Andersonstown (an all-to-frequent target) and, although unsuccessful, it caused confusion as the firing was reported from different areas, which led to the belief that there had been more than one attack. Several 7.62 rifle rounds were also fired at the Sanger, but nobody was hurt. The next appearance of the 20mm was a couple of weeks later, when the IRA used it to attack RUC Springfield Road. The target was again a Sanger but the 20mm round missed although the rifle fire hit its mark. There were no injuries to the RUC or military personnel, but fragments from the 20mm damaged two parked cars. Two weeks later, the IRA again attacked Springfield Road with the 20mm and this time hit a Sanger, causing the soldier on duty to fall down the ladder that led to the Sanger. Once again, the attack was supported by small arms fire but once again there were no injuries. We were didn’t hear from the “big gun” for another month when again there were no casualties.
The paramilitary groups also attacked each other and in July the IRA stronghold of the Lake Glen Hotel was destroyed by four bombs. Two men had entered the building with plastic bags, with the occupants very quickly exiting via any means they could find. The manager had run down to RUC Andersonstown, where he reported that bombs had been placed on his premises. You couldn’t make it up: an IRA man complaining about someone bombing his hotel. The bombs went off and the hotel was destroyed. The reason given for the bombing was that the RUC and British Army were going to take it over for accommodation due to the recent proxy bomb attack at RUC Andersonstown. It is more likely that it was destroyed so that the IRA could claim the insurance money, as we had no intention of moving into the hotel.
We often had visits to the Mill from the local Unionist population. Every now and then a group of young girls would appear, hoping to show their appreciation of the young soldiers, for the price of a cap badge. The girls, ranging from about 12 to 16 years old, would hold up their spoils from previous encounters – a sort of spoils of war. I found this sad and disturbing. I hope that during our Op Banner tour they didn’t manage to obtain any more cap badges. One evening, they showed up while I was in one of the Sangers at the rear of the Mill, one of the “Sanger bangers”, as they were nicknamed. She pointed to me and then herself, and shouted that she wanted my cap badge. “It’s the only one I have,” I shouted. I didn’t want to part with the cap badge or anything else, thank you. The girl couldn’t have been more than 12 and was willing to sell her body for the price of a cap badge. Judging by the cap badges that she held up, some perverts had probably taken her up on her offer. If so, they should be ashamed of themselves; their conduct was disgraceful and disrespectful. One person who was attracted to some entertainment was a light infantry corporal, whom I will not name as he was a married man. I had been on guard duty with him previously and he had become quite taken by one of the older Loyalist girls who was probably 16 or 17, but nothing had yet happened. One day, we had a proxy bomb alert, and everyone darted out of the Mill with their weapons, rushing to their predesignated places behind the barriers and Sangers. The corporal was on guard duty at the time and unbeknown to us had allowed the girl access to the Mill. This was a really stupid thing to do and a significant security threat. His intentions were clear, and he had the girl in the back of a Saracen armoured car when the alarm went up. His problem was that the Quick Reaction Force would always deploy in this type of situation – in the Saracen. He was in the deep brown stuff. This would no doubt have meant a prison sentence, disgrace, dismissal from the army, and perhaps the end of his marriage. But when it was asked where the guard commander was, someone covered for him. Luck was smiling on him that day: we were stood down very quickly which meant that the Quick Reaction team didn’t need to deploy. What an idiot, albeit a lucky one. The girl was immediately removed from the Saracen and the Mill once it was safe to do so.
The main problem I found when I went on patrol, normally in a Land Rover, were the drunks and young kids who were just looking for an excuse, through boredom, to attack British soldiers. Verbal abuse was an everyday occurrence over in Northern Ireland and we had to take it with a pinch of salt. We used to give as good as we got and the young guys eventually gave up after a while. On patrols in the armoured Land Rover, we had a commander, driver, and two people standing through a hole in the roof, one with his SLR pointing forward and another pointing backward. A lot of the time we had to suffer bricks and bottles flying at us from all angles when we were on “top cover”. But we were trained well enough for this kind of thing before we came over to Northern Ireland, so we were able to handle things. The state of some of the areas shocked me. For a place with such strong community bonds, they seem to let their areas fall into decline. These people had to live there, whether they liked it or not, and you’d think they would have taken care of where they live. Both sides had an argument for what they are fighting for. They both went over the top with the violence. On one occasion, they dropped a prepayment electric meter from the top of the Divis Flats, a 20-storey bastion of Irish Republican hatred situated in the heart of West Belfast. The meter landed with some accuracy onto the patrol Land Rover, putting a crack in the reinforced windscreen. We kept the meter until we got back to the Mill; it was empty, of course, although we did check. It was well aimed and if the Land Rover windscreen hadn’t been reinforced then it would have caused serious injury.
I have read books that describe the covert nature of entering and exiting the Divis flats in West Belfast and being greeted with stones and petrol bombs. Sure, you needed to make sure that comings and goings were not routine so that a pattern could not be identified. Confrontations often happened but I never experienced the level of violence that some people describe when entering the flats. It must have been difficult to take for the locals having an observation post and secret squirrel stuff based at the top of the Divis flats in the middle of the republican enclave of West Belfast.
On 10 June 1983, I was on vehicle patrol supporting the RUC in my armoured Land Rover in West Belfast. We had four in the vehicle and I was driving with two “up top” giving 360-degree cover and one in the passenger seat. Nearby, a Brick was patrolling the Nationalist Glenalina Road, they were no more than a couple of streets away. Both were normal patrols, supporting and protecting the RUC. As the Brick made its way down Glenalina Road, Private Geoffrey Curtis took up a firing position next to a lamp post and the IRA detonated a 15 lb device that had been concealed inside it. The explosion was deafening. It’s not the dull thud that you hear in films, it has a high-pitched crack, and is very different. A thud is a sound when an explosive is in the ground; when it’s above ground and not confined, it sounds more like a crack – you can tell the difference immediately.
We knew it was bad. You have that feeling in your gut – a hollow feeling. Our three armoured Land Rovers headed towards Glenalina Road at speed, led by the RUC. We arrived on the scene within minutes, Private Curtis had taken the full force of the explosion, sustaining head injuries that led to his death. Two other soldiers and a policeman were slightly injured. We were told that a woman had ran from her home when she heard the explosion she told the RUC: “There was blood everywhere. We got to the corner and saw the soldier lying in the middle of the road. A man living nearby ran out of his house and covered him with a blanket.” Afterward, a wreath was laid at the twisted metal stump of the lamp post. On it was a card which read: In Memory of Mark Curtis. May we forgive but never forget. From his friends at New Barnsley RUC. It was a simple, silent tribute to remember him. We rely on them a lot. They are our friends. The Belfast Brigade of the IRA said in a statement: “As long as armed British soldiers patrol the streets of Ireland, enforcing British rule, they must expect Irishmen to resist their presence.” It later emerged that two policemen, who were possibly the IRA’s intended targets, may well have been saved by a schoolgirl walking close by. It was suggested at the inquest by a police officer that the bombers, in contact with a lookout by radio, may have delayed the detonating of the device to avoid injuring the girl.
By the time Private Curtis approached the lamp post, there were no children in the immediate area. Despite a vigorous follow-up and several arrests, no one has ever been charged with his murder. Afterwards, we asked ourselves why and how the press had turned up so quickly. It turned out that the news crews had been warned of the incident before it happened, yet none of them chose to warn us. It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last.
The evening of 2 August 1983 was hot and sticky. I was on gate duty. I’m not sure if this was better or worse than the Sangers (although some soldiers used to piss in the Sangers as well as ejaculating other bodily fluids of a slightly salty kind, not that I tasted it, but we had to take it in turns, being in the Sanger that is). Guarding the Mill was an additional duty on top of our normal roles. I worked more or less from 6 am to about 11 pm in my normal role, with breaks to do my dhobi (washing) and to eat, seven days a week, then we would get additional guard duties or patrols. I never knew what day it was as they all blended into one. In a lot of ways, this was easier: I was occupied and it’s not as if I could leave the Mill – well, not without a rifle and some mates, lots of them. I could just imagine walking down to the local IRA bar, having a couple of drinks and a laugh with Seamus the bomber and Patrick the shooter before walking back to the Mill.
That evening was different. It was very late when the quiet of the night was broken by a light-coloured, battered old Lada pulling up with “two up”, that is to say, two people in the car. Non-military vehicles never came to the Mill. Normally military people in civilian dress would go to tactical headquarters and then transfer to a military vehicle for their ride to the Mill. The radio sparked into life with a shout from one of the Sangers about the unidentified vehicle approaching the front gate, and I walked out to confront the vehicle. Given the number of proxy bombs that we had at places like RUC Andersonstown and RUC Woodbourne and the damage they had caused, we were all very alert for this type of thing. When on the gate we had additional body armour on (our normal body armour with the plate inserted with an additional layer on top) that made us look like turtles. I understand that it was the height of fashion in the local zoo but I could never understand it myself – had I been blown up, I would have no limbs or head but at least I would have a body. I also had a 9mm semi-automatic Browning pistol in a side holster, which was always difficult to get out given the extra body armour. I could feel the beads of sweat trickling down my neck as the adrenaline started to kick in. This was real. “Identify yourself!” I challenged the occupants of the vehicle. “It’s me,” the passenger said, like I would know who the fuck he was. Why would I ask him who he was if I knew? He might have gone to a posh school and a good university, but he was a dick. It was dark and the occupants were in civilian clothes. There was a different feel to the situation – normally with proxy bombs the driver would be alone and out of the car, either running away or pleading the case that his family had been threatened. The fact that hadn’t happened played on my mind. “Identification. Now!” I shouted, the tone of my voice getting more anxious. The figure in the passenger seat started to put his hands down in the footwell of the vehicle. What is he doing? Is he going for a gun, grenade, or bomb? It was as if time stood still – well, almost. I went for my sidearm, it felt really slow, but apparently, I was like Jessie James and so quick I amazed the lads in the Sangers. As I was withdrawing the 9mm Browning from the holster, cocking the weapon as I drew it upwards so that I had a round in the chamber ready to fire, and taking the safety catch off at the same time, all in one action (I bet I couldn’t do that again under pressure) I also heard the Sangers cock their weapons. Shit, I thought, if they shoot they will kill me as well. My head arms and head, that is, because of the roughly five meters of insulation I had around my body. At this point your training takes over, everything is automatic as if your body remembers the muscle movement of repetitions done many times before.
The driver of the vehicle could see what was happening and let out a scream, “NO! STOP! BRITISH ARMY!” throwing his hands in the air at the same time. The passenger followed, putting his hands up as well. The Quick Reaction Force was out of the gate by then, itching to pull the triggers of their SLRs. They surrounded the car, pulled the two occupants from inside, and brought them into the Mill. The Quick Reaction Force was on standby 24/7 for threats to the base, this is what they were there for. Inside the Mill, the two occupants were able to show their identity cards and prove who they were. The driver was an undercover officer, and the passenger was a 1st Battalion Light Infantry Officer who had recently joined. The officer, whom I will not name, had been away playing cricket for the Army and in the rush to get back to the Mill had persuaded the undercover soldier to make a detour and drop him off rather than wait for military transport to become available. The incident was so close to becoming what is known as a “blue on blue” or, as you most probably know, a friendly-fire incident. I asked the infantry officer, “Why did you put your hands into the footwell?” “I thought you knew who I was, and I was getting my ID,” came the reply. “If you do that again I will bloody shoot you, let alone him!” the undercover guy interjected. “Sorry,” I said, “you were doing your job, mate, don’t worry about it.” I explained to the officer how close I had come to shooting him. He said he knew how close he had come to death. I, along with the Quick Reaction Force, and the lads in the Sangers needed to be replaced and then had to go through the process of unloading and making safe as we all had live rounds up the chambers of our weapons. The Commanding Officer was summoned and after hearing what had happened, including the ranting of the undercover soldier, he gave the unfortunate officer a dressing down and made him apologise to me, which he did with grace. It was the closest I have ever been to shooting someone. What if I had? He was on our side! How did he expect me to identify him? It was near pitch black and he was in civilian clothes in a civilian car. Why didn’t he get a Land Rover back? That would have been much safer. Well, back to normal life then, excitement over, thank god. So why didn’t I pull the trigger? To paraphrase Malcolm Gladwell in his excellent book The Tipping Point, the series of events that would trigger (no pun intended) the event of firing the 9mm Browning had not happened. Several events had taken place that supported possible terrorist activity, such as a private car being where it shouldn’t be, the previous proxy bombs, the officer putting his hands into the footwell. On the other side, the reverse: two people in the car instead of the usual one, the fact they weren’t running away or conversing with me. All of these factors meant the tipping point of pulling the trigger had not been met, but it was a very close call. The most significant factor that could have led to me pulling the trigger was the officer putting his hands in the footwell. He didn’t understand the cause and effect of what he was doing. If he had thought about what he was doing and the possible effect of putting his hands somewhere I could not see them, he would not have done it.
It was a dull, overcast day on 9 August 1983. I was driving one of the armoured Land Rovers, escorting an RUC patrol. Over the radio came a message that a large-scale disturbance was happening in Springfield Road in West Belfast. We made our way there, it didn’t take long. It had escalated by the time we arrived, with stones and rocks being thrown at the foot patrol, insults being traded – all normal occurrences – but the crowd was larger than normal and the noise was deafening.
The 9th of August is the anniversary of a now-suspended British policy of internment for suspected Republicans, which could have been why the disturbance was bigger and more violent. Suddenly, a shot rang out. I didn’t hear it over the noise, but it resulted in the death of Thomas “Kidso” Reilly, a road manager for the girl band Bananarama. I heard someone shout that there was a gun, but I cannot recall if that was before or after Reilly was killed, nor did I see Reilly or any other rioters with a weapon – that’s not to say that a gun wasn’t present but if it was I didn’t see it.
The shot was fired by Private Ian Thain of the 1st Battalion the Light Infantry, the battalion that I was attached to. Thain was standing about twenty to thirty feet from me when he knelt and took aim at Reilly and pulled the trigger. I didn’t see Thain do this and, because of the noise, I didn’t hear it. Thain shot Reilly from a distance of about 100 feet. Hitting a moving target at that range with everything that was going on was some shot. I rushed down to Reilly’s body along with members of the RUC; I could see the entry wound as well as the exit wound in his torso. He would have died instantly, nobody could have survived that amount of damage. The SLR uses a 7.62 round, a big round that causes a lot of damage. The current rifle used by the British Army, the SA80, uses the much smaller NATO-standard 5.56 round.
Within a few minutes, all hell broke out. The crowd started to grow and guess who turned up – the television crews. They were there far too quick for my liking, it’s possible they had been listening to our communications. Petrol bombs started to be thrown, one hitting the Land Rover that I was driving. Fortunately, it bounced off and its contents caught fire on the road when the milk bottle that was acting as the container smashed onto the ground. You could feel the heat as the bottle exploded into a fireball, the yellow and red reflecting off the blackening sky – the sun had almost set by this stage – and the acrid smell of burning petrol filled my nostrils. A petrol bomb or Molotov cocktail, is a simple but effective weapon. Generally, you fill a bottle with petrol or a similar substance that you have no doubt stolen from a nearby car, put a bit of cloth in it, light it, and throw it. If you overfill it you risk getting burnt and it’s not as effective if you underfill it then it doesn’t really work.
The Molotov cocktail is named after Vyacheslav Molotov, the Russian foreign minister who was one of the architects of the peace treaty signed between Nazi Germany and Russia in 1939. The treaty turned out to be worth nothing as Hitler invaded anyway (Operation Barbarossa) in 1941. The firebomb was invented not by the Russians but by the Finns, who were fighting the Russians at the time (The Winter War of 1939). The Russians were bombing Finland and declaring to the world that they were delivering airborne humanitarian food parcels. The Finns mockingly called their new firebomb a Molotov cocktail – a drink to go with the food parcels.
Dozens of petrol bombs were thrown at us, the effect of the liquid fire made all the more impressive by the onset of night. Near me, about ten yards away, Gerry Adams, the Sinn Féin spokesman, was being interviewed by a mob of press who were hanging off his every word. It has always amazed me that they didn’t seem interested in the petrol bombs hitting our vehicles and going off, they just stood recording what Adams was saying, even if he didn’t have the facts (why let those get in the way of a good story?). Adams has always denied claims that he was a member of the IRA, although most people assume he was. In May 2019 Adams gave evidence to an inquest into a disputed shooting in west Belfast in 1971 and said, “I’m very, very clear about my denial of IRA membership,” he said, “but I don’t disassociate myself from the IRA.” I have no idea if Adams was or was not a member of the IRA, but he was supportive of them and they were terrorists who murdered innocent people in barbaric ways. Gerry Adams looked over at me as I stood next to the vehicle. His eyes were scary, jet black, and his stare went right through me. The anger in them was plain to see. I patted my rifle, which made him frown; it was a stupid thing to do but I was only 19. One thing I will say about him is that it took courage to sit at the table with his enemies, the British Government, and the Loyalists, and talk peace. This enabled the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 to be signed and the violence to be reduced (not stopped but reduced) and for life to become more like it should have been – free from the fear of bombs and bullets.
For some weeks after the killing of Reilly, the violence intensified. The Republican paramilitaries – the IRA and INLA (Irish National Liberation Army) – stepped up their attempts to kill British soldiers. Shootings also intensified. The frightening thing was not knowing where a shot had come from, you had nothing to fix your response to. On the battlefield, you know the direction of the enemy but on the streets of Belfast, they could be anywhere, and normally after firing they would melt away like ghosts. One morning, after a stint in the ops room, I put on my Mark 2 British Army Issue INIBA body armour. Although this imparts a vision of being fully protected, like a knight in his armour, it did nothing of the sort. The body armour vest had a ceramic plate at the front and rear; the plates were square and measured approximately 6x6 inches. The other parts of the vest had Kevlar plates to give extra protection. The plates might stop a bullet, but the Kevlar wouldn’t. On top of the body armour I put on my standard-issue military camouflage jacket, as well as my Light Infantry green beret, and picked up my SLR. I was ready for patrol.
I wore a green beret instead of the normal Royal Signals black one because I was on attachment to them for two years, this was a normal thing to do. I kept my Royal Signals cap badge, the “Jimmy”, as did other corps that were attached to infantry regiments, such as the REME. We were on a routine patrol with the RUC, near the Divis Flats in West Belfast. Things seemed normal, nothing untoward, I was facing to the rear and another light infantry soldier, whose name has been lost with time was facing to the front. As we rounded a corner, I realised that the street was eerily silent, not a good sign. Generally, when terrorists attack, the civilians get out of the way, and cars no longer drive down that road. Then, suddenly, there was the crack of a rifle firing and the simultaneous whoosh of a bullet. The guy I was with shouted it out: “Zero, contact, Divis Flats, wait out.” I had no idea where the shot had come from as I was facing to the rear, but the firing location was quickly pointed out to me and we moved towards it, however, the gunman had gone. The shot had not been very accurate, and we couldn’t find where the bullet had gone. The reason they were unsuccessful was that they had done it on the spur of the moment, without the usual detailed planning that the IRA usually undertook. We always begrudgingly respected the paramilitaries’ professionalism – on the whole, they were very well trained and led, and they knew their limitations.
It was as a result of the recent death of Thomas Reilly that lots of pot-shots were taken at use over the coming weeks. Thousands attended Thomas Reilly’s funeral, including members of Bananarama, with whom he had been working shortly before his death. Flowers and cards were also sent from several other pop stars, including Paul Weller and Spandau Ballet. Sara Dallin of Bananarama has insisted 111 Belfast: The Troubles (1983) that the band’s decision to attend Reilly’s funeral was not political, asserting that she knew him before his death. About 800 people attended the funeral, with Gerry Adams appealing for calm, which would have helped keep any violence to a minimum. “Thomas was a friend,” Dallin explained. “He was the brother of Jim Reilly from Stiff Little Fingers, who Siobhan was dating at the time of the tragedy”. We went to the funeral, but we have nothing to do with anything else. “We aren’t on any side, we just went to a friend’s funeral.” (Belfast Telegraph 1983) Bananarama’s next single was called It’s a Cruel Summer – very apt given the circumstances of the summer of 1983.
Legal history was made when Private Ian Thain was convicted of Reilly’s murder and sentenced to life in prison. It was the first time that a British soldier serving in Northern Ireland had been convicted of murder while on duty. During the five-week trial, Thain claimed he thought Reilly was armed. However, this was rejected by the court after they heard that he had been wearing only a pair of shorts and had been searched before the incident. Mr. Justice Higgins rejected the defence, saying that it had been “concocted” during the soldier’s time on remand in a military base in England. He said that Thain had been deliberately dishonest throughout. I wasn’t mentioned at the trial, but Mr. Justice Higgins was wrong in his assumption that Thain had concocted the story that a gun was present that day. I heard the shout, calling out that there was a gun. I have no idea if a gun was present, but I don’t buy the idea that just because Reilly had previously been searched he could not have had a gun. Someone else could have given it to him and then taken it away after the shooting. In addition to this, there has to be a tipping point where the facts, on balance, point one way or the other. Did Reilly have a gun? I don’t think so. Was there a gun present? Possibly.
Thain was transferred to an English prison on the authorisation of then Home Secretary Douglas Hurd before being released just over two years later. It was later revealed that Thain had been released and returned to his regiment. For taking someone’s life I can see why people would not be happy with Thain’s release or the fact he went back into the Army. I have to admit that I was a bit shocked when I heard the news. Only Thain will know why he shot Reilly. To shoot and kill someone is the most serious thing you can do, and taking someone’s life should never be taken lightly. I can only say this: I was there at the time, and for me to have opened fire, I would have needed to have seen a gun and believed that that gun put either myself or others at risk of harm. If I hadn’t believed that, I would not have pulled the trigger. Perhaps Thain thought that a life was in danger. Who knows? We should not forget Thomas Reilly’s death but neither should we forget about the deaths of Privates Jessup and Curtis or the others who were killed or injured during The Troubles.
The British Army’s patrolling of the roads around West Belfast was not only to support the RUC in their role as policemen but to gather information on potential terrorist threats. To these ends, when the Bricks or the soldiers in the Bricks stopped vehicles or people of interest, the information would be sent back via the radio and recorded. My problem with this, sitting in the ops room at North Howard Street Mill, was that the collation of data was just that – data. It only became intelligence with skillful analysis of the information. Knowing how many times we had stopped a car or a known terrorist didn’t give a picture of what was happening. So, what if my friend Seamus the bomber had been down the Falls Road twice that week – what did that mean? If we were lucky we might find arms or bomb-making equipment but we would need to be lucky. It would be akin to buying a ticket for the lottery and we never got the opportunity to shout house as this was definitely a game of bingo, although I’m not sure who the two fat ladies were.
The information was kept in boxes full of cards – in alphabetical order, of course. The call would come through, we would pick the relevant card, tell the patrol how many times Seamus or his friend had been stopped and what car he drove, and then made a note that he had been stopped again. I proposed to some of the more senior officers that if we tried to cross-match the data we could build a picture of the interconnections between the terrorists and their helpers. It seemed a simple and obvious thing to do and I wondered why it hadn’t already been done. They agreed so I very quickly put it into effect. The operators were all given a script, a simple list of questions with a decision tree attached. The soldiers were asked to observe other things such as what other cars were following or close to the known vehicle that they had stopped, who were the occupants. If on foot, they would be asked who else accompanied the “known player”. We would then cross-referenced this and soon were able to pick up patterns where certain people were with certain others and certain cars with certain other cars. While this was interesting, what we were looking for was where things were not the norm: where people or vehicles were, who were they with, were they with people whom they would not normally be with, also what was their part in the paramilitary structure: leader, bomb maker, shooter, etc. It was like constructing a jigsaw, trying to find the last piece that brings everything together. At first, the information didn’t identify anything which was surprising as we needed to build up profiles. If we had discovered something straight away that would have just been lucky. This in itself was an issue as I needed quick results to show that the concept had legs. We were quickly able to give the soldiers’ information back, such as this person you have stopped is associated with so-and-so. You could hear the engagement in the soldiers’ voices when they started to get hits with the associates of the players – the cross-referencing was working.
We were then able to give the soldiers on the ground much more information on the known players and their associates in their area. The fact that we were able to identify players was not uncommon as we knew who they were – well, most of them – but it would not have become unnoticed by the paramilitaries that we were targeting people around the players and feeding this back to the control room.
One morning in June 1983, a patrol stopped a vehicle of a known player and then, after speaking to the control room, looked for and stopped another car a couple of cars back. The vehicle, a taxi, turned out to be carrying weapons. We then had a few more successes which must have had Seamus and his mates scratching their heads. Once or twice might have been down to luck but more must have raised a few paramilitary eyebrows. We were not only finding things but deterring terrorist activity.
The military command at the army headquarters in Lisburn became aware of what we were doing, and I was summoned to explain everything. I met with several senior officers and boffins, and explained what I knew. They seemed interested. I then sat with some analysts and was shown a primitive computer program that was being used to store data. At the end of the session, everyone was given a password and entry codes to access the database. Well, not everyone. This was the army and it’s not about one’s ability, it’s about hierarchy. I wasn’t, being too junior. Great, I thought, take my ideas and then exclude me. That’s the army for you. On reflection, what I had produced was a simple profiling system. It was effective but needed to be developed and integrated with the other intelligence tools that were being used. Let’s face it, the army’s intelligence-gathering and profiling ability were a little more sophisticated than my efforts. Mine was a very operational and tactical product. Remember, data is just data – it isn’t intelligence until it’s in a format where it can be interrogated and thereby become meaningful.
What I had given them was information that they could interrogate, therefore it was meaningful to them. I received a commendation for my work. I did often wonder how the army in Northern Ireland brought all of the information together from all of the tactical and intelligence functions, not a lot seemed to be passed down our way.
Black taxis were a common vehicle for delivering arms, bombs, and paramilitaries to their destinations, so they were always high on our agenda for stop and searches. On one occasion, a black taxi was stopped on the Falls Road, and on searching the passenger he was found to have a 9mm Browning in the waistband of his trousers. This would have all been fed into the intelligence system. Who did what, where, and with whom? We would now have a record of the vehicle used and the “gunman’s” associates. For good measure, about an hour after this stop and search, two petrol bombs were thrown into the RUC Woodbourne compound, with no damage caused. This was a common occurrence after we had a success.
While we concentrated on terrorist activity, there was also something I would call “honest criminality”, where people undertook burglaries and thefts for non-paramilitary or political reasons. While I say they were not connected to the paramilitaries this was often not strictly true. Apart from planning and carrying out violence, the paramilitaries were also involved in extortion and racketeering. Local businesses would need to pay for protection, drug dealers gave money to continue plying their trade, and criminality of any kind would need to be sanctioned by, for instance, the IRA. Failure to comply could lead to your business being firebombed or you were beaten up or, worse, murdered. Another option for the paramilitaries was knee-capping. This was carried out in many forms, with varying degrees of success depending on the perpetrator. Knee-capping was often a rite of passage for new members of the paramilitary, who could be a little nervous when pulling the trigger for the first time. I have seen several attempts at knee-capping, either in real life or in photographs – somewhere the victim had bullet holes everywhere bar his knee cap, and others where the knee cap was drilled from the back of the knee; this was particularly nasty.
If you run an extortion racket, then you need to be able to back it up, and the paramilitaries could certainly do that. Torture was one of their specialties. On another normal, overcast Belfast day, we were patrolling with the RUC when we received a call about a dead body at the City Arts Centre. It sounded like a bit of paramilitary retribution, so we headed over to the Centre. We were not the first there – C and D companies were in attendance – and what we found was not a paramilitary crime scene but something unconnected to The Troubles. An “honest” burglar trying to gain entry to the property had set off the alarm, and in his panic had run into a plate glass window. Unfortunately for him he had cut some major arteries and bled to death; there was blood everywhere as he lay there with his head more or less hanging off. This was, I think, the only time I came across what I could describe as “normal” police work in Northern Ireland.
On 11 July 1689, forces under the deposed King of England (and Scotland and Ireland) James II, and William of Orange, the new English monarch, met at the Battle of the Boyne. William of Orange’s ushered in an era of vague promises of fair treatment to the Irish, which was of course ignored by the victorious English leadership Today, every 12 July, William of Orange’s victory at the Battle of the Boyne is celebrated by the Loyalists. Originally, the commemoration on this day was for the Battle of Aughrim but the Orange parade by Loyalist Orangemen has now taken over, and 12 July is more closely associated with the Battle of the Boyne. The Orange Order was founded before the 1798 Rebellion, after the Battle of the Diamond, to defend and uphold Protestantism and the English monarchy. The parades are a glorious display of pageantry.
The colours of the Orangemen with their sash, the uniforms of the bands, and the beautiful paintings on the banners make the annual Orange Day parade (or “walk”, as the Order prefers to call it) a visual spectacle. They march with flags and banners unfolded – often full of religious, cultural, and political symbolism. The music provided by the accompanying bands is loud, with competition between them evident. The ensembles often include world champions in the ranks of flute, brass, and pipe bands. The issue with the walk is that it goes very close to Republican areas, and the Loyalist Orangemen often goad the Republicans and vice versa. During The Troubles, words turned to stones, and stones onto other things such as petrol bombs and worse. We would plan the policing of the parades well in advance of the 12th, and although the majority of things that we had to do remained the same as previous years, the political and terrorist threat had to be taken into account. One year all could go to plan and another, due to incidents immediately prior to the parades such as a bombing or the killing of a Protestant or Catholic figure, could lead to a rise in tensions across the sectarian divides. When the day came we left the Mill early, well before dawn, some of us as protectors and others to do a bit of manual labour.
The protectors, in their Bricks, would patrol the area around the route of the march, and the rest of us would be putting up barriers and hessian screens so that the two sides could not see or interact with each other. We would then take up our positions to monitor the march and wait. Soon, in the distance, you could hear the thump, thump, thump of drums as the bands came closer, and followed by the sound of the pipes (you have to love the bagpipes). This was the point at which the Catholic masses would start their reply: whistles, boos and comments that I could not understand but no doubt would have been a little discourteous. As the bands starting marching past in all of their glory, banners flying, chests pumped out, drums thumping, the Catholics went into phase two: bricks, stones and anything else that was not nailed down came raining down. The Orangemen bands played on, a bit like the Titanic, although they did quicken their step a little. This continued until all the bands had passed. “Quiet this year,” one of the RUC said, “I would like to police a non-quiet year.” I loved the music and the spectacle, apart from dodging the bricks. When all was quiet, we took the barriers and hessian down and back off to the Mill we went for some food.
We often received information from the local community on criminality, not the super grasses and informants that are highlighted in the newspapers, but low-level meets for information. We would arrange to meet these local informants – often young lads who thought they were James Bond, all laughing and joking, which hid the fact they were nervous and scared. I can remember the first time I went out in civilian clothes: the nerves and, dare I say it, fear – I was both frightened and worried. I tried to tell myself that I was protected but, in truth, I felt unprepared; this was something that was out of the ordinary, and we knew what happened to soldiers who were caught by the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) or the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA). Mick, the soldier I was with that day, and I both felt exposed but John Wayne syndrome kicked in and we made light of the danger with inappropriate jokes and banter to hide how we were feeling. This was our job, it wasn’t something we could say no to, even if we had wanted to do. Mick was the handler and I was, for want of a better word, his sidekick. We had received training on surveillance and counter-surveillance, some of which (like following people in cars) we would never use. To put things into perspective: if there was a tier system for undercover work we would be classed as bottom-feeders.
We mainly met the informants in churchyards or parks – somewhere in the open, where we could be seen but away from possible ambushes. We of course varied where we met, often changing the location at the last minute. We always went in pairs – my first time was with Mick, who had far more experience than I did – and we would arrive in our civilian clothes with a Browning 9mm handgun secured on our person (normally stuck down the cracks of our sweaty arses – it was always difficult knowing where to put your weapon). We were given shoulder holsters but although they were ideal with a coat or jacket, they were difficult in the heat of summer – even a Belfast summer. Would make our way out of our secure location – in our case the Mill – either on foot or in a vehicle that would drop us off, while a number of our friends would be circling the area on “routine” patrol. We would make our way to the allotted location, ensuring that we had not been followed and that we were not walking into a trap – if we felt that things were not right we would withdraw. We would look for who was on the streets (was it too quiet?) and then at the informants (what was their demeanour?).
We approached our informants, who looked nervous and cocky but nothing untoward stood out, no names were given or asked for, nothing ground-breaking was said, we gave them a few pounds for telling us when the local fish and chip shop was going to be robbed and other similar sorts of things, which are better off not being put onto paper. If anything, I never received anything that would be a major game-changer, but then again this wasn’t something I did that often. If anything more important than that came out of the meetings, then I certainly didn’t get to know about it. The major stuff was the remit of MI5 or military intelligence. They were the proper undercover operatives. Although what we did was dangerous, what the SAS and intelligence services such as 14 Intelligence Company did was on a different level.
I always felt vulnerable walking the streets of Belfast in civilian clothes with just a handgun to protect myself, even though I knew I had the protection of the patrols, but it did make me feel alive. I knew also that if I was caught I would have been tortured and executed, and I wouldn’t be the first to experience that. I always looked at myself in the mirror before I went out and all I saw was a soldier in civilian clothes, which never give me much comfort. This wasn’t an activity that I did very often and on more than one occasion we changed the location of the meet a number of times before we were comfortable. It was essential that things didn’t become predictable – and that applied to the people we were meeting, as well: if they dropped their guard, we could be in danger. The IRA had an efficient and brutal internal investigations process and an equally brutal internal security team to carry out the investigations and resulting punishments.
In 1988, two undercover Royal Signals corporals (my corps) armed with Browning pistols but dressed in civilian clothes drove their civilian car into a Provisional IRA funeral procession. The soldiers should have been briefed about the funeral and told to stay clear, but mistakenly took a wrong turn. As they neared the procession, they were surrounded by dozens of people who attacked their car. One of the soldiers drew his Browning and fired a shot in the air. You might have thought that when threatened with a life-ending event they would have fired into the crowd to protect themselves but they didn’t, nor did they use their vehicle as a battering ram to getaway. The soldiers were then dragged from the car and taken to a nearby sports ground where they were beaten, stripped and searched, and afterward shot dead. Two men were sentenced to life imprisonment for their murder but were released in 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
A lot of things happened in Northern Ireland that are not reported – shootings, bombings, and rioting – yet only things such as Reilly’s death were publicised; was that because of the popstar connection? We did have one unknown hero at the Mill, and that was the “choggie wallah”. In our case, this person was a Bangladeshi who ran a very small shop within the Mill. We would often complain about his prices and the fact that we were a captive audience (we could hardly nip out to the local supermarket on the Falls Road). In truth, he had a hard life: he would be picked up at a designated point, where we would load his meager supplies of washing powder, toothpaste, and chocolate onto a Land Rover and then he would lie at the bottom of the Land Rover and be driven into the Mill. There he would stay for three to four days at a time, living and sleeping in his kiosk, which was smaller than a broom cupboard, on the third floor of the Mill. He would often receive death threats from the paramilitaries because he was working with us. But it never stopped him. He was never off sick or missing and we never took him for granted. His burgers were also very welcome.
May 1981, the US Department of Justice won a court case forcing NORAID, the Irish Northern Aid Committee, to register the Provisional IRA as its “foreign principal” under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. In his decision, U.S. District Judge Charles S. Haight, Jr, wrote: “The uncontroverted evidence is that NORAID is an agent of the IRA, providing money and services for other than relief purposes.” NORAID lawyers appealed the decision but lost. NORAID was constantly accused of being a front for the IRA, and involved in fundraising for equipping the IRA with arms from North America. These charges were disputed by NORAID but they were also accused of sending their funds largely to the families of IRA “volunteers” and that one of the recipients of their aid, Clan na Gael, was the principal financial backer of the IRA. While NORAID has always said that their purpose was for a peaceful solution. The funding of the IRA by American Irish sympathisers was always a major concern. It’s untrue to say that the majority of weapons and financial support for the IRA came from the other side of the pond but some indeed did. In fact, a lot did and stories of hats going around Irish pubs in the U.S. for donations after incidents such as Bloody Sunday are a matter of fact. While many Irish Americans supported a united Ireland through peaceful means, some supported the IRA’s armed struggle. I do wonder if these people had all the facts. The fact that the IRA and other paramilitaries not only targeted soldiers and policemen, but also civilians, both British and Irish, Catholic, Protestant, political opponents, journalists, and anyone else they thought would get in their way. They extorted money from people and businesses using threats and intimidation, and were at the top of the food chain when it came to organised crime in Northern Ireland. I doubt if US citizens would like UK citizens to make voluntary payments to the Mafia, so do they realise that some of them are funding the Irish equivalent?
I have always chuckled when I watch movies where the police or soldiers hide behind the doors of their vehicles when being shot at. Think about it. Think about what the door of a car is made of, think strips of metal. If you hid behind such a door the bullet would go straight through it and into you. What you would do in real life is get behind the engine block – a big bit of metal that would give you better protection.
People always find it strange when I ask for certain rooms in hotels, especially in places that have a history of terrorist activity, such as India. Think about two things: how far are fire engine’s ladders likely to reach? There is a chance that if you are above the fifth floor they might struggle to get to you. Then there are terrorists. As seen in the attack at the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai, they are more than willing to enter a hotel to kill civilians (often Westerners). If you are on the first floor, you have nowhere to go, so you need to be further up. Bombs are normally detonated at the front of the hotel, so make sure your room is at the back. Therefore, when visiting hotels in higher-risk countries I ask for a room at the rear of the hotel, between the third and fifth floors.
The end of our tour was fast approaching and for all of the trauma and adrenaline, there were also humorous moments. One of my last mobile patrols provided just that. I was on top of a vehicle with another lad to give 360 protection as we drove through Belfast city centre – the centre, by the way, is beautiful especially if like me you like architecture. We had stopped at some traffic lights when a bus of Japanese tourists pulled up alongside (I never did understand why anyone would want to go sightseeing in Belfast at that time). One of the tourists spotted our vehicle, shouted to the others, and started to take pictures. The tourist bus then started to rock violently as one side rushed to the other to get a better view. It couldn’t move from the traffic lights due to its instability, much to the annoyance of other motorists. Further on, we stopped outside Woolworth’s department store – I needed something but I have no idea what. As I walked through the door, the security guard asked me to wait and then produced a scanner to check me for weapons. The irony wasn’t wasted on me as I was in uniform and carrying a rifle at the time.
It is worth remembering that about seven hundred members of the British Army were killed in Northern Ireland, with many more injured, during The Troubles. Over three hundred and fifty people were also killed by the British Army. The majority of them were active members of paramilitary organisations, but some were innocent civilians. It has been said that a soldier’s opinion on the conflict in Northern Ireland is by and large already formed as soon as they join the army. I don’t agree with that view. Unless you have been to Northern Ireland as a soldier or lived there as a resident, your understanding is peripheral and no different than anyone else’s. Once you have served in Northern Ireland, a soldier’s view can also be distorted, however. They are usually based in areas of deprivation and violence, and often come into contact with the worst of society. Soldiers seldom get to experience the Giant’s Causeway, the spectacular coastal roads, and the lush countryside. Belfast itself is a beautiful city if you ever get a chance to explore it.
Even still, after experiencing time in Northern Ireland, soldiers do not come back with a hatred of the Irish, only a hatred of terrorism. Having now served in Ireland I can understand both sides but my views never really changed. The army explained the situation as being fragile and that both sides were as bad as each other when it came to terrorism, but it also made clear that there are many decent people living there.
People call Northern Ireland at that time The Troubles or Conflict, which sounds like rival gangs getting pissed off with each other. For us, it was a war. Ask any squaddie and they will say it was a war; you were shot at, bombed; you were on a war footing, always at the ready. The media reported only the worst of atrocities but lots went on, often daily, that would have been front-and centre in the news had they occurred on the mainland. The issues are well documented but the life of the soldier is less well-known: what they had to deal with, the work they did, the dangers they experienced. People left NI, as we called it, with physical and mental injuries, and where help was made available to those returning from conventional wars such as Afghanistan and Iraq, little was done for those returning from Northern Ireland.
My time in Belfast was up. I had spent seven months in Northern Ireland and I was one of the last people to leave, I have no idea why, it was just one of those things. The incoming regiment was the Devon and Dorsets; they seemed keen, nearly as keen as I was to leave. The new incumbents were a similar age to ourselves, under 20 and I saw the same anxiousness that I had when I arrived. War is always fought by the young, by people with so much to live for, at the start of life’s journey. The practice of bringing vexatious claims of human rights breaches against British soldiers resulted in a number of high-profile cases in Afghanistan and Iraq, where after long and tortuous trials the soldiers were often found not guilty.
In April 2021, the Overseas Operations Bill was the government’s attempt to bring to an end what it sees as “lawfare”. The government’s exception to this rule is the actions of soldiers in Northern Ireland. This omittance led Johnny Mercer MP, Minister for Defence People and Veterans, to resign over the government’s failure to include protections for soldiers who fought in Northern Ireland, which was for him “a red line”