1
THE WAR AGAINST TERRORISM
âIt is the Governmentâs firm policy that we should continue in Northern Ireland to do our utmost to defeat terrorism.â
â Sir Humphrey Atkins, Secretary of State for
Northern Ireland, 2 July 19791
Narrow Water, Warrenpoint, County Down, 4.40 p.m.,
27 August 1979
It was a blistering hot Bank Holiday Monday in Narrow Water, a picturesque townland on Carlingford Lough, which straddles the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. On the main A2 dual carriageway, soldiers from A Company of the Parachute Regimentâs 2nd Battalion were making their way in a convoy from their base in Ballykinlar to relieve their comrades in Newry RUC station. As the rear vehicle, a four-tonne truck, rumbled along, the driver noticed a trailer loaded with hay bales parked in a nearby lay-by. The bales concealed a 700lb fertiliser-based bomb, packed tightly into milk churns and surrounded by petrol cans. The bomb exploded, sending a massive fireball into the back of the vehicle that burnt through the flesh of the soldiers piled into it. Six soldiers were killed immediately.2 Two civilians who had pulled into the lay-by for a picnic on the shoreline felt the initial shockwave pass through them and heard the loud bang that followed. âI looked up and saw a large cloud of smoke where the lorry used to be,â one of them recalled. âI saw soldiers running back to the explosion. I thought the bomb had been meant for the soldiers and that they had got away.â3 The scene was one of utter devastation.
Twenty-eight-year-old Captain Tom Schwartz from Farnborough in Hampshire was among the young Parachute Regiment officers in an accompanying Land Rover. He described what he saw after the explosion: âI have never seen such a sight in my life and never wish to see it again. Bits and pieces of people were scattered all over the place.â4 He said he was hit by a âgreat rushing windâ, though he managed to escape with his life. After the initial blast, he raised his head and saw that everything was completely enveloped in thick dust. As the survivors began to pick themselves up and brush themselves off, it was clear that some of the young soldiers were wracked with fear, but trying not to show it.
A patrol of Royal Marines from 40 Commando were in nearby Warrenpoint when they heard the explosion. They lost no time in radioing in a âcontact reportâ. The senior officer who came over the net was 34-year-old Major Barry Rogan. He immediately rushed out the door of Newry RUC station with reinforcements, arriving at the scene of the bomb blast within minutes. He was accompanied by Major Pete Fursman, also in his mid-30s, whose soldiers had been targeted in the explosion and who had arrived ahead of his men. Back in the Armyâs regional Operations Room at Bessbrook Mill, deep inside South Armagh, commanders mobilised an Airborne Reaction Force (ARF). At that time, Bessbrook was the busiest helipad in Europe and the first port of call for the deployment of air support in the southern border region. The ARF was tasked with swiftly responding to incidents and so always included a medic on-board to deal with any casualties. The unfortunate reality was that casualties were a common occurrence in this part of the world. The principal objective of the soldiers rushing to the scene was to preserve life and establish what had happened.
Meanwhile, 40-year-old Lieutenant Colonel David Blair, the CO of the Queenâs Own Highlanders, was in a Gazelle helicopter hovering 3,000 feet overhead. Colonel Blair had been on a separate mission when he received a radio report about the attack at Narrow Water. He immediately directed the pilot to the incident. As the helicopter prepared to land in the grounds of the Narrow Water Castle country estate, just opposite where the explosion had taken place, Blair spotted the smouldering military vehicles on the dual carriageway. Along with his signaller, 24-year-old Lance Corporal Victor MacLeod, Blair jumped out of the aircraft and ran towards the scene to begin coordinating the response. As the two Highlanders reached the gateway lodge of the estate, a pair of IRA men lying on a grassy bank on the Irish Republic side of Carlingford Lough flicked a switch on their handheld radio-controlled firing device, initiating a second charge. Colonel Blair and Corporal MacLeod were killed instantly, along with ten other soldiers. âI will always remember the chilling silence after that second explosion,â recalled Tom Schwartz, âand the total lack of noise of any type.â5 A police officer who arrived soon afterwards recalled seeing âbodies scattered around the areaâ, which were âblackened and some were mutilatedâ.6 A fireman who had been busy putting out the raging fires was struck by shrapnel that had been hidden beside the keep of Narrow Water Castle to maximise casualties. Most of the soldiers killed in the IRA attack had only been in Northern Ireland a matter of weeks.
Back at Bessbrook, 35-year-old Major Mike Jackson was enjoying a tea break in the Officersâ Mess when he got a call from the Ops Room about the first explosion. Jackson was the Officer Commanding (OC) of B Company of 2 PARA. He and his men had only just returned to barracks after having been out on operations. As his company replenished their ammunition and sorted their kit, he hurried to the Ops Room, where he was joined by Brigadier David Thorne, the commander of 3rd (Infantry) Brigade, who had flown in from his headquarters in Dungannon to take control of the situation. Thorne told Jackson to âget down to Warrenpoint and sort it outâ. Jackson immediately roused his company and organised an airborne move to Narrow Water. No sooner had his helicopter lifted off than word came over the net of a second explosion. As Jackson neared the scene, he peered down. âThere was human debris everywhere â in the trees, on the grass verge and in the water,â he later recalled. âMostly unidentifiable lumps of red flesh, but among them torsos, limbs, heads, hands and ears. I had seen the effect of bombs before but never carnage on this scale.â7
Pathologist Arthur Orr, who arrived an hour later, also said that he had ânever seen such carnageâ. He stated that it was âthe most distressing incidentâ he had ever encountered in his twenty-five years as a coroner. Presiding over the inquests in July 1980, Orr described the deaths as âthe most abhorrent and gruesome that I have ever had to deal with, and I have no doubt that no other deaths have caused greater public grief in this provinceâ.8 He reserved much of his opprobrium for those responsible: âThese villains with their lookouts, their signallers and their activator lay in wait and, not satisfied with one death-dealing explosion, they knew that the army would rush to the rescue and they were ready to set off a second and more massive explosion.â9
Two IRA volunteers, Brendan Burns and Joe Brennan, both in their early twenties, were stopped by An Garda SĂochĂĄna (Irish police) while riding a motorbike in the vicinity. Despite reportedly finding traces of gunshot residue and explosives on their hands and clothing, the GardaĂ could not conclusively tie either of the men to the scene and so released them soon afterwards.10
In an interview given by a representative of the IRAâs ruling Army Council at the time, the group commented on its success in ambushing the troops: âThe first bomb was 1,100lb, the second 800lb. It was the second one which caused most of the deaths. Both were remote-detonated. The British Army has been very, very fortunate in escaping major losses since the sophisticated remote was developed â very, very lucky.â11
In claiming responsibility for the attack on the paratroopers, the Provisionals referred to the regimentâs involvement in the killing of thirteen civilians in Derry seven years earlier. âWithout apology we republicans are proud of the battle being fought and we unreservedly support the methods,â the IRA told its newspaper, An Phoblacht/Republican News. âThe Paras had their Bloody Sunday and they sowed, and now, they have reaped their Bloody Monday.â12
One former RUC Special Branch officer who policed these borderlands characterised the region as being âlawless and lacking in any sustained intelligence coverageâ.13 The IRAâs ability to cultivate sources inside the GardaĂ hindered cross-border cooperation aimed at defeating the terrorists and created difficulties for law enforcement agencies in the North. âWhen I was down with the Crime Squad, working on the murder of four policemen at Bessbrook, [I was] temporarily redirected to Warrenpoint to the murder of the paratroopers,â recalled CID officer Roy Cairns. âWe were warned by a uniformed Sergeant in the Garda down there, if we were coming down, not to tell anybody we were coming down. To tell him and tell no one else. And [Officer X] was identified to us as giving information to the IRA.â14 Such leakage inside the GardaĂ was compounded by another, perhaps more corrosive problem: the lack of coordination between the RUC and the Army, which made it easier for the IRA to act with impunity along the porous border.
***
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was working on official correspondence at her private residence in Chequers in Buckinghamshire when a member of her staff broke the news about Narrow Water to her.15 She had already been informed earlier that day of the assassination of the former Chief of Defence Staff Lord Louis Mountbatten, his 14-year-old grandson and a local teenager at Mullaghmore in County Sligo. Reports of the deaths touched a raw nerve in her. As soon as she had finished composing a letter to the Royal Family expressing her condolences on Mountbattenâs death, she asked her Private Secretary, Sir Clive Whitmore, to furnish her with the addresses of the next of kin of the eighteen dead soldiers. Thatcher was eager to write to their families personally.16 She then asked Whitmore to arrange her return to Downing Street before assisting her with the drafting of a statement on the dayâs dramatic developments. The language in her statement was uncompromising: âThe Government will spare no effort to ensure that those responsible for these and for all other acts of terrorism are brought to justice. The people of the United Kingdom will wage the war against terrorism with relentless determination until it is won.â17
Thatcher arrived back in London the next morning to convene a high-level meeting with her Cabinet colleagues to discuss the governmentâs response. In attendance were Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw, the Lord Privy Seal, Sir Ian Gilmour, and Defence Secretary Francis Pym, all of whom returned later that evening for a second crisis meeting to decide on what steps to take. Further cooperation with the Irish government was seen as a top priority, along with, perhaps, âmore vigorous use of the SAS [Special Air Service]â. Thatcher, however, felt that the best step forward for longer-term success against the terrorists was to improve cooperation between the RUC and the Army, particularly in the intelligence field. It was clear to everyone, from Thatcher in Downing Street to senior military commanders in Lisburn, that there was âdistressing evidence of mutual distrust at the highest levels of the RUC and the Armyâ.18 Thatcher considered the appointment of an overall Director of Operations to âexercise control of operations both by the Police and the Armyâ, an essential first step in dealing with the breakdown in policeâArmy relations.19 She made arrangements to visit the front line herself in order to obtain an overview of how precarious the security situation was on the ground.
The next day, Thatcher travelled to Belfast aboard her personal RAF jet. Upon arrival, she was driven to Musgrave Park Hospital to meet the survivors of the Narrow Water attack. After speaking with the injured soldiers, she visited Belfast city centre to meet the public. âI shall never forget the reception I received,â she later wrote. âIt is peculiarly moving to receive good wishes from people who are suffering. One never knows quite how to respond. But I formed then an impression I have never had reason to revise that the people of Ulster will never bow to violence.â20 Her next stop was Mahon Road Barracks in Portadown, where she received a briefing from Brigadier Thorne, who informed her of a âdeterioration of the situation, the level of casualties, the number of incidentsâ. There was ânothing new in what I was sayingâ, he later recalled.21 To emphasise his exasperation, Thorne placed David Blairâs rank epaulette, the only trace of the late colonel that remained at the scene, on the table beside Thatcher.22
Emboldened by what she had been told, Thatcher donned military fatigues and boarded a short helicopter flight to South Armagh to experience for herself the challenges facing the Security Forces. âI saw the bomb-battered Crossmaglen RUC station â the most attacked RUCâArmy post in Northern Ireland â before r...