The Bloodiest Year 1972

British Soldiers in Northern Ireland, in Their Own Words

Ken Wharton

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780752472980
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Ken Wharton's latest book on the Northern Ireland Troubles is, as always, written from the perspective of the British soldier. Here he chronicles the worst year of The Troubles - 1972 - a year in which 172 soldiers died as a direct consequence of the insanity that would grip Ulster for almost 30 years. His empathy lies firstly with the men who tramped the streets and countryside of Northern Ireland - but also with the good folk of the six counties who never wanted their beautiful land to be the terrorists' battleground. Ken Wharton is utterly condemnatory of the Provisional IRA and INLA but he certainly pulls no punches in his assessment of the Loyalist paramilitaries and terror gangs who sought to outdo the barbarism of their republican counterparts. Based on the testimony of the men who were there during that terrible year, the author tries to investigate every loss in as much detail as time and space permit, with longer chapters to describe 'Bloody Friday' the appalling tragedy of Claudy and - with the 12-year public inquiry finally over - the terrible events of 'Bloody Sunday'. The Bloodiest Year is written with passion and a detailed knowledge in particular of Belfast and the experience of the ordinary squaddie on the streets. The Troubles have become Britain's forgotten war and so long as he is able, Ken will do his best to keep the memory of Operation Banner alive.

'This is good honest history. Soldiers and civilians alike owe the author a debt of gratitude for telling it like it was.' - Patrick Bishop, best-selling author of 3 Para

CHAPTER ONE

JANUARY

[This chapter was written some months before the findings of the Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday were published. All comments stand as written and were not influenced by the report. Comments on the inquiry appear in this book’s epilogue.]

1971 had ended badly for the British Army on December 29 with the shooting of Gunner Richard Ham (20) of the Royal Artillery in Foyle Road, Londonderry. His worried mother had tried several times to purchase his discharge from the Army but he had refused, preferring to stay with his friends and comrades in the 22nd Light Air Defence Regiment.

On the first Monday of the New Year, an IRA car bomb was detonated in Callender Street, Belfast, only several score yards from Belfast City Council’s offices; 60 people were injured, but thankfully none were killed. The ‘economic war’ so favoured by the Provisional IRA was on; this year it would only grow in intensity. The avowed intention of the Provos was to make the North ungovernable.

The first CVO (Casualty Visiting Officer), or regimental officer as they were then known, to be dispatched from his regiment’s home depot received his orders on Wednesday 5 January. He was ordered to report to a household in the Bristol area. Earlier in the day, a foot patrol of the Gloucestershire Regiment – the ‘Glorious Glosters’ – came under fire from IRA gunmen in Ardmoulin Street in the vicinity of Divis Road. Private Keith Bryan (18) was hit by one of two shots fired from a position close to St Peter’s. He was immediately rushed to the nearby Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH) but succumbed to his wounds less than an hour later. He was the first British soldier to die that year.

Not long after Private Bryan had been taken away in an ambulance, local Catholic women were seen on the spot where he fell, laughing and joking. ‘The death of a soldier was almost enough to make one of the Falls hags drop a stitch when knitting’ as one former squaddie told the author.

The pattern of IRA attacks on the security forces during those first two years was tragically unpredictable. Although foot patrols and mobile patrols became less regular in their planning, the IRA with its growing army of ‘dickers’ could increasingly predict where an Army patrol might be, and was becoming more and more emboldened. Generally, as one journalist observed, it might involve a stolen car with typically three or four men inside. It would stop at the end of a street with excellent cover and with the route of an approaching patrol in plain sight. The boot would be popped open and a weapon or weapons would be passed out by pre-arrangement. As the lead man came into range, one gunman would either spray indiscriminate automatic fire in his direction or go for the carefully aimed head or chest shot.

If he went down, the gunman or gunmen would rely on the other soldiers to be either too shocked to move or to rush to aid their stricken comrade; it would be like shooting fish in a barrel. The locals would have a grandstand view of the shooting and would cheer each hit on a soldier. Often the soldiers, uncertain of a target, might not even return fire and the gunmen would throw their weapons back into the boot of their car and melt away into the heart of nationalist territory. The bolt holes and safe houses were legendary amongst the rabbit warrens of the ’Murph, Turf Lodge and Andersonstown.

Kevin Myers in Watching The Door wrote of the bloody aftermath of a shooting incident in which two soldiers were wounded in such an ambush on Shaw’s Road, west Belfast.

On the ground, sitting in a pool of blood, lay a soldier’s helmet. Children rushed over to examine it. One boy of about twelve scooped it up with a long stick, whirling it above his head as he pranced in the blood. Then, like an Orange band-leader, he yanked the stick upwards, sending the helmet even higher [which] he caught expertly on his head … still dancing in the blood of a stranger from England.

The IRA’s stated aim was to kill a British soldier every day, and leading Provisional Brendan Hughes said that he simply wanted to get out and ‘shoot Brits’. The Provisional IRA saw themselves as an army, organising themselves into brigades, battalions and even companies. The very worst of the lot was ‘D’ company – the ‘dogs’ – of Gerry Adams et al, which largely controlled west Belfast. They saw themselves as an army at war, something the soldiers of the British Army recognised but the British government singularly and spectacularly failed to do.

ARMAGH AMBUSH

Mike Pinchen, 42 Commando, Royal Marines

In the early hours, just after Christmas, we were patrolling in two vehicles between Armagh and Blackwatertown. We had just passed through the latter when we were ambushed. I was in the leading vehicle, a Land Rover, which also carried the C42 radio and signaller. I remember a loud bang and a flash, and then what seemed slow motion, a series of sparks flying off the roof of the armoured PIG following behind. It must have only been a split second but it seemed ages before I reacted. It was pitch black and we were driving along a country road that had a raised embankment on one side. The terrorists were lucky they caught us, as we had never been this route before. Anyway, I returned fire in the direction of the flashes that came from the top of the bank. At first the driver braked, as if to carry out an anti-ambush drill but we were in a sort of gully so he put his foot down, and with the other vehicle closing from behind, we drove out of it. I suppose they could have mined the road or set up a ‘stop group’, but we were in the ‘killing ground’ and had little option. Further on the road turned sharp left, at right angles to their position.

We de-bussed and took up all round defence. The section commander then let off a flare in the direction of the terrorists’ position and the GPMG was readied to ‘get to work’ but there were no targets of opportunity, and it would be irresponsible to just blast the area. Meanwhile, the radio operator had sent a Sit-Rep and we were ordered not to penetrate the field until a cordon had been established by other patrols in the area. A sweep of the area revealed the terrorists’ position, where a combat jacket and some spent cartridge cases were found, but our birds had flown. Back at Gough Barracks seven bullet marks were found on the PIG, which wasn’t much considering they were using at least one automatic weapon. It had been a close shave and, as with most people who have come under fire for the first time, it sort of changes you. You come of age so to speak, and one becomes a better soldier for the experience.

‘K’ Company was re-deployed to Bessbrook, which at that time was not established as a base. It had an RUC station but little else, so we were housed in a primary school and it took a lot of hard work to establish this as a base of operations. Sangars were built and the playing field was set up as a heli-pad, with positions to cover take-off and landings. A marquee tent and some pipe-work were erected as a shower room, complete with wooden pallets as duck boards. The most amusing part was the ablutions. Designed for infant school children it was now being used by hairy-arsed ‘bootnecks’. One could have a conversation, face to face with an oppo when sitting on the ‘throne’, because the partitions between the traps were so low. During the time at Bessbrook patrols on the border continued, through Newtownhamilton and on as far as Forkhill.

42 Cdo completed its first of fourteen tours on 18 January 1972, being relieved by the Devon & Dorset Regiment, who sadly, within a few weeks, lost three of their people. On the plus side we did not lose anyone, although five marines were wounded. On the down side was the thought that people with whom we had made friends were still there, facing intimidation, injury and sometimes death, whilst we were able to go home and forget it; well for a while at least, until the next time, which would not be long in coming.

Belfast was becoming ‘Berlinised’ and Royal Engineers had long ago sealed off all of the streets leading from the Crumlin Road, into both the Protestant and the Catholic areas, with corrugated barricades the height of the houses. Flax Street in the Ardoyne used to empty into the Crumlin Road, but the Army closed off the road permanently with a huge brick wall and turned that end of Flax Street into a cul-de-sac. Everywhere, the walls were beginning to spring up and none more noticeably than the ‘peace line’ along North Howard Street and Cupar Way; the ‘Berlin Wall’ had come to Belfast.

The day before Keith Bryan’s killing, the Army had shot and fatally wounded IRA member Daniel O’Neil (20) during an exchange of shots in the Leeson Street area. A patrol had come under fire from a car and they fired back and hit O’Neil; he died in hospital on the 7th. A day later, a Catholic pub owner was shot and killed and robbed by gunmen believed to be Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) as he returned home after closing for the night. Peter Woods (29) had no political connections and whether he was targeted for being a Catholic or simply for his night’s takings is unknown.

On the 11th, proving that not only the British Army had NDs (negligent discharges), the IRA managed to shoot and kill one of their own at ‘weapons training’. Michael Sloan (15) was accidentally shot at a house in New Barnsley, on the edge of the Ballymurphy estate. The following day, masked IRA gunmen entered printers’ premises in Waterford Street, opposite Dunville Park and close to Springfield Road. They singled out Raymond Denham (42), a part-time policeman in the RUCR (Royal Ulster Constabulary Reserve), and forced him to lie on the floor, before cold-bloodedly shooting him in the head at close range. One of the IRA gunmen (Tony Lewis) was later killed in an ‘own-goal’ explosion.

A day later, the IRA demonstrated its callous ruthlessness by continuing its tactic of attacking soft targets as they shot and killed an off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) man. At around 16.00 hrs on Thursday 13 January, Maynard Crawford (38) from Lambeg, Co Antrim, a sergeant in the UDR, was sitting in a van outside a building site in Newtownabbey where he was employed as a foreman. The married father of two was well known throughout the then-fledgling UDR and was noted for his size – over 16 stone and well over 6ft tall – and his incredible shooting prowess. Whether or not he was targeted for these reasons is a question perhaps only an Ulster politician such as Gerry Adams can answer. What is more likely is that he was in all probability unarmed and easy prey to the IRA. Whatever the reason, he became the second British soldier to die with the new year less than two weeks old.

As Sergeant Crawford of the 9th Battalion sat in the van, a hijacked vehicle containing four masked men pulled up alongside and fired two rounds at him, killing him instantly, making him the fourth UDR man killed whilst off duty in the previous seven weeks. Lost Lives (p. 141) reports that he was a former ‘B’ Special, having served over seventeen years, and that his distraught widow received 98 wreaths and over 150 letters of condolence. The measure of the man was that his funeral was the largest seen for several years in the Lisburn area. One of the few growth industries in Ulster during the years of the Troubles, thanks to the paramilitary killers – both Republican and Loyalist – was that of the undertaker.

On the 17th, the IRA pulled off a remarkable propaganda coup and scored a stunning success against the British government. Seven of its members who were internees staged an escape from the prison ship, HMS Maidstone, moored in Belfast Lough. Maidstone’s deck was surrounded by 10ft-high barbed wire and was moored 20ft from the land, with entry to the jetty guarded by sand-bagged sangars. The men swam close to 300 yards through icy water and evaded Army and police only to later poke fun at the authorities with a hastily arranged but nonetheless triumphant press conference.

The men were Jim Bryson, Tommy Tolan (killed by the Official IRA in 1977), Thomas Kane (killed in a car crash in 1976), Martin Taylor, Tommy Gorman, Peter Rodgers and Seán Convery. Bryson was later re-arrested but then was ‘sprung’ by the IRA again from Crumlin Road Jail – the second such escape from this institution involving the IRA – shortly before he was killed. He was shot on the Ballymurphy estate on 31 August 1973, dying in hospital a little over three weeks later on 22 September.

The Maidstone escape had been conceived after the prisoners had noticed a seal swimming through the ring of barbed wire which surrounded the ship and reasoned that the gap was also sufficient to allow a human through. They had also been tossing tin cans overboard to monitor the movements of the tide. There was barbed wire ringing the ship some ten to fifteen yards out from the hull so the men thought they would have to swing out and jump into the water, but the splash would have given them away. Fortunately for the IRA men, a day before the planned escape another ship moored alongside the Maidstone and when it departed it left a thick mooring cable which had held the two boats together. It hung down from the top deck and out into the water beyond the barbed wire. Waiting for the right moment, having previously sawn through the iron bars in their cell, one by one, they jumped over the side, slid down the cable into the water and made good their escape.

A waiting car driven by accomplices drove off, forcing the men instead to hijack a bus and drive through security gates before heading into Belfast. In a pub in Andersonstown, drinkers took off their own clothes to allow the semi-naked men to look ‘respectable’. They then had to dodge UDR patrols out searching for them before escaping across the border. They were feted as a cause celebre by IRA/Sinn Féin for some time, leaving a deeply embarrassed HMS Maidstone commander to hastily review security. As noted, three of the escapees were killed over the course of the next five years and at least one of the others was involved in continued terrorist activity. It was a humiliating experience for the security forces, especially in view of the Crumlin Road Jail breakout the previous year; it wouldn’t be the last one. In that incident, nine IRA prisoners – known later as the ‘Crumlin Kangaroos’ – escaped over the wall of the jail. The breakout from the Maidstone, allied to the earlier Crumlin Road escape, was a massive shot in the arm for the IRA and within days the men were being paraded in front of the world’s media in Dublin.

I WON’T …

Terry Friend, Royal Artillery

When we arrived in Belfast, we were first sent to the Royal Victoria Hospital to guard it and carry out vehicle patrols. On my very first day, I ended up in the main road, outside the hospital entrance, directing traffic. At one side of the entrance, armed and behind a sandbagged sangar, my mate Frank Halfpenny kept a beady eye on me. It took some getting used to, seeing buildings protected by walls of sandbags. It created the impression that we were all playing extras in a Second World War film! Every day after breakfast, as we filed out of our billet to carry out our duties, we passed a message board up on the corridor wall.

There was a large photo pinned up on it, which was from the Daily Express, and was half the size of one of that paper’s pages. It showed a line of squaddies in riot gear, one of whom was completely engulfed in flames over twelve feet high, from an exploding petrol bomb. The caption above the photo read: ‘Stay alert; do not let this happen to you!’ It made me shudder every time I walked past it!

The previous October, in an attack on soldiers on the Ballymurphy estate, IRA gunman Eamonn McCormick (17) had been shot and fatally wounded; he died on 16 January. On the 18th, after agreeing to give evidence against two men who had hijacked his bus at gunpoint, Sydney Agnew (46) was targeted at his home in east Belfast and shot dead. The IRA were clearly involved in this cowardly murder – carried out in front the man’s terrified children – and this was one more piece of evidence that they considered themselves above not only the rule of law but also the law of human decency. Mr Agnew’s killing was cited as justification for the introduction of the non-jury Diplock Courts, established later that year to try terrorist-related cases.

On the very same day, Prime Minister Brian Faulkner banned all parades and marches in Northern Ireland until the end of the year. Belatedly waking up to the provocation caused to both communities by the other’s marches, he acted some three or four years too late.

Only a few more days would pass before another CVO would be dispatched to an unsuspecting family; this time it would be to the Exeter area. On a winter’s Thursday, a detachment from the ‘Drunk and Disorderlies’, the Devon and Dorsets, was giving close protection to a Royal Engineers party who were investigating a suspect device at Derrynoose, South Armagh, very close to the border with the Irish Republic. Three landmines, planted by the IRA on a roadside with the obvious intention of hitting an Army vehicle patrol, exploded. Private Charles Stentiford (18), from the village of Cheriton Fitzpaine, was killed instantly by one of the explosions which were detonated by an IRA unit skulking across the protection of the border. Private Stentiford, who was engaged to be married, had only been in the Province a matter of days. He is buried at the English Cemetery in Crediton, Devon. That ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Author’s Note
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Prologue, December 1971
• Chapter One January
• Chapter Two February
• Chapter Three March
• Chapter Four April
• Chapter Five May
• Chapter Six June
• Chapter Seven July
• Chapter Eight August
• Chapter Nine September
• Chapter Ten October
• Chapter Eleven November
• Chapter Twelve December
• Epilogue
• Final Thoughts
• Appendix One The Saville Inquiry
• Appendix Two Recent IRA ‘Executions’
• Appendix Three Northern Ireland Roll of Honour (1,371 Military Names) 1969–98
• Select Bibliography