Another Bloody Chapter In an Endless Civil War Volume 1 Page 2
Though the courage of the troops detailed here is clear, the story does not shy away from relating the truth of the psychological implications that this kind of work had on many of the men. For some of them the strain of relentless terror attacks, and living in constant fear of an ubiquitous yet invisible enemy, became too much, and some of their resulting actions were far from by-the-book, but this simply goes to show what a truly battering experience it was to serve a term in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
This exhilarating book’s narrative unfolds against a background of critical political events. Spanning the Grand Hotel Brighton bombing of the Conservative Party conference, held there in October 1984 when five people were killed; through the 1985 signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the 1986 dissolution of the Northern Ireland Assembly; and ends with tragic accounts of the 1987 Remembrance Day Bombing when eleven people lost their lives.
The political environment at the time provides some little mitigation for the senseless and numerous clashes between British military units and PIRA and IRA troops. The unholy savagery of the acts that these men came up against seems almost limitless. From accounts of rocket launchers used in civilian streets, through shock kidnappings and brutal executions, to heavy explosives used to blow up army vehicles – one thing rings true: the atrocities faced by these British soldiers on the ground is nothing less than cold-blooded terrorism.
Perhaps one of the most unique and surprising things about this story is the way that Ken tells it. Recounting everything from meticulously recorded oral histories, the chronological approach maps out the relentless trepidations and often harrowing experiences of the soldiers in such a way that the horrors really speak for themselves. Ken’s approach is matter of fact, without allowing hyperbole to cloud the facts. There is no need – for the brutality and injustice of the daily tragedies speak for themselves.
In fact, for Ken Wharton, the truth of such events need no exaggeration, for he lived through much of the reality of them himself when he spent two tours in Northern Ireland during his own time serving in the British army. Possessing a strong sense of justice, it is undoubtable that his experiences here lead him to go on to study Politics and become an oral historian and writer, so that this story might be adequately told.
In meticulously detailing every element of the story and weaving an intricate picture of the wrong-doing that was done by both sides, it is Ken’s wish that the truth be known. He fears that if left unchecked, over time, it becomes too easy to canonise terrorists as freedom fighters while skimming over the brutal reality of their actions, which is why it is important to tell this story now more than ever. The bravery of those men who fought the terrorists in the streets must not be forgotten – and in this book Ken Wharton valiantly campaigns to make sure their stories do not go unheard.
Damien Lewis, bestselling author of many books, including Zero Six Bravo, War Dog, Operation Certain Death, Churchill’s Secret Warriors, and The Nazi Hunters.
Preface
Tim Francis
My first experience of Ken Wharton was in 2008 when I read a review of his first book, “A Long Long War” in a Sunday newspaper and found it hugely interesting as, although I had left the army in 1974, I had served on two tours of Northern Ireland prior to that and this book told the story very accurately of army life there during the Troubles, with contributions from many of those soldiers who had served there. After purchasing, reading and thoroughly enjoying the book I noticed inside the back cover a request for potential contributors to a further book being worked on by Ken. As I had felt such a massive empathy for his portrayal of life in Northern Ireland, very much striking several chords in my memory, I decided to make contact. We then met up at the Regimental Museum of the South Wales Borderers in Brecon and from that day on we have been genuine mates, with Ken contributing a Foreword to my own book about Northern Ireland published in 2011 and myself making a few contributions here and there to his subsequent books. I can honestly say that I would not have been inspired to write my own book without the input and encouragement of Ken, our annual get together in London with other ex-military contributors to his books have become fixed dates in the diary, eagerly looked forward to by all despite the potential for pain the following morning.
I have read all of his books but what I find of particular merit in this latest offering is the sheer quantity and quality of detail given, not only of the operations and casualties of the Army in Northern Ireland, but also the pain of the civilian population living in the middle of and, in many cases, dying as a result of the ongoing violence. Ken shows true humanity with an incredible level of sympathy for many of those not always in my experience particularly sympathetic towards the security forces. In addition Ken also looks at the effects of bereavement on military families with its sudden brutal overnight change of life for them in many cases.
In conjunction with this high level of sympathy for the innocents, Ken has no compunction in naming those generally believed to be responsible for the many atrocities, not necessarily those with fingers on the triggers but those giving the orders and the organisation, some of them now supposedly “respectable” politicians, although it must be said that most former members of the security forces would not describe them quite like that. It is a sad fact of the story of Northern Ireland that many of those responsible for violent activities have never been brought to justice but have instead been elevated to positions of power for the supposed greater good, while their innocent victims suffer to this day and still struggle to come to terms with the loss of loved ones.
Ken addresses all of these issues in this book, not to mention taking to task Prime Ministers from both sides of the UK political divide together with other political leaders for their contribution to Northern Ireland, not criticism for the sake of it, but balanced, giving credit where merited but equally, scathing where deserved, which it often was.
Ken remains a true advocate for the ordinary soldier who served in Northern Ireland, whilst on a recreational walk in the Welsh hills recently, I gave a practical demonstration of how to walk backwards, a skill still with me over forty years on! He has inspired me to work on further books and I wish him every success with this latest project.
Author of What Was It All About (2011) and Shadows over Iran (2015)
There is nothing timid in your belief. Let it be told that those that murdered indiscriminately, only stood on an IRA platform for their own inadequacies! I know that one individual arrested for my Father’s murder some years later, was not prosecuted down to his confession being under the influence of sedatives due to alcoholic withdrawal symptoms! Can’t have been as bad as bleeding to death due to wounds inflicted by terrorists, I say.
Anita Bailkoski, neè Haughey
Anita’s daddy was Sergeant John Haughey, Royal Artillery, murdered by a PIRA bomb,
Lonemoor Road, Londonderry, 21 January, 1974.
I think that you and Willie Frazer are very much alike; you are both honest and won’t be bullied. The IRA and Sinn Féin are attempting to rewrite history but neither of you will permit that.
Jeanne Griffin, Irish-American
We know what was what and who was who. Like you said, the younger generations MUST be told the truth, and your books do just that! But we must always remember that history is written (to suit) by the victors! Technically Adams + McGuinness are those writing that history. We need someone like Ken Wharton to report the facts of that history, and not the men in balaclavas (with their fairy tales) that sought to kill free speech and all that we as Servicemen and women stood for and still strive to achieve!
We buy poppies every year to remember our fallen from the various wars we have fought over the years, and there have been many, and that’s how it should be. But the civvie on the street doesn’t know or understand what we have to do to win those wars. They don’t understand the stress of it; they don’t understand the feeling of being bone-tired and hungry while still having to be on our toes and ready to
act after a 12 - 14 hour patrol. And they don’t understand that we are human and not the supermen that popular fiction paints us out to be.
More importantly they don’t know about the darker side of Northern Ireland; the foolish and unnecessary killings by negligent discharge, the tragic and heart breaking ‘blue on blue’ deaths and the suicides of strong, healthy young men unable to cope with the horrors of that place. The knee-capping and the punishment beatings and the evil done to the normal and good people of Northern Ireland - and they are the majority - by the murdering bastards, both Republican and Loyalist goes largely unremembered now. And as the saying goes ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’
Dave Judge, Royal Green Jackets
From the Author
The Provisionals, the INLA and IPLO, like their Loyalist counterparts: the UFF, UVF, RHC etc. ruled by terror and intimidation. They were ruthless, cold-blooded and calculating killers, who never gave an ounce of mercy or pity, yet demanded it in return from the SF. These were the people, who killed because a man had once been a soldier, or a police officer, and once, killed because someone had applied to join the RUCR. They killed and maimed for the most spurious and capricious of reasons and they took psychopathic pleasure from their brand of terror. Many of these so-called freedom fighters were bed-wetters, kiddie-fiddlers, petty, inadequate thieves who, having been green-booked and handed an Armalite suddenly became supermen, disguising their cowardice with a wave of a pistol or a rifle and a cry of ‘Provisional RA,’ guaranteed to strike fear into the hearts of even their own supporters. That was true equally of those psychopaths on the other side of what was quickly becoming a sectarian chasm. It is axiomatic that one man’s terrorist will be another man’s freedom fighter and that was no less true amongst the Brit-hating Irish-Americans, Irish-Australians and Irish-Canadians who packed their hatred and prejudices with them, along with the their passports and sunscreen when they left the ‘auld sod’ of Mother Ireland to export their rabid loathing of Albion to their new homes. The so-called ‘respectable’ men of Sinn Féin – Adams, McGuiness, – will attempt to convince the naïve Americans and new generations of Irish and British people, too young to have known the troubles that they – the IRA – were brave urban guerrillas, with freedom and liberty in their hearts. This author knows the truth and will not lie down and let the men of terror re-write history. This author will never forgive the depravity of the Provisional IRA.
Comment from a Former Soldier
I once got told by a loud-mouthed Aussie who had never left his sun-soaked country and was some sort of armchair expert on the world, that it was our fault because we ‘….invaded Ireland…’ I told him about one of my tours of Londonderry and he interrupted me and told me that it wasn’t called Londonderry; it was Derry! I lost two mates who were over there ensuring that the name of the city stayed as Londonderry. I read about French and German students chanting ‘Victory to the IRA’ and I just laughed and thought what the hell do they know? When the Moslems bombed New York on September 11, 2001, I grieved for the innocent dead but I felt deep down that they had supported terrorism for all of these years and now it had come back to bite them on the bum. Poetic justice? I’m not sure, but it might one day make them wake up from this dream world in which they seem to exist. I’m knocking on these days and my pension beckons me, but I know one thing: the IRA were fucking terrorists; they were murdering cowards and I will give anyone who tells me otherwise, a bloody good debate, or a bloody nose; take your pick!’
Note to the Reader
Several short stories are included with the permission of South East Fermanagh Foundation and the individual writer concerned. The story was first published in the SEFF book: Experiences that shaped our lives– SEFF members. Take a trip down memory lane (2013). Each individual contribution from this source will be annotated with the initials SEFF. My profound thanks to my new found friend and a man for whom I have much admiration: Kenny Donaldson. I am also very grateful to Anne Palmer as the facilitator/writer, and to Eric Brown (Chairman). Contributions are also taken from I’ll Never Forget and the facilitator/writer for this Project was Emma Stewart. Further short stories from SEFF’s 2015 publication For God and Ulster: The Vow Of Those Who Reject Violence are annotated the same way. SEFF’s Your Legacy Lives On was a further source of invaluable background information.
I am also deeply indebted to Jim Dixon and Lee McDowell of the Ely Centre in Enniskillen for access to photos of the Enniskillen bombing, to the people who survived and for permission to use extracts from two DVDs: The Troubles With The Troubles and A Forgotten Truth: Coping after Terrorism, and the publication which bears the name of the latter. All sections of this book which emanate from this source are annotated Ely.
The second volume of this book will cover the period 1988-90 and will continue where this volume has left off.
Introduction
I began writing this book on a roasting hot September morning; sitting on my balcony in Queensland on a perfectly clear and sunny Australian spring morning. This is my 9th book on the troubles and probably my best researched book to date, as I recount an almost daily diary of the events of 1984–87, another four years of insanity in an ocean of madness which lasted almost 30 years and there are many yet, who feel that it never ended. Certainly, I have been back five times now since I was a soldier there and confess at times to feeling a real fear when I am there. This book will cover the period from 1 January 1984, just weeks after the Harrods’ bomb, right up to 31 December 1987. It will cover events such as the outrage to end all outrages, as the Provisional IRA, led by men who are now ‘respectable’ politicians, bombed and killed innocent civilians, as they gathered to pay tribute to a nation’s fallen on that most sacred of days for the British, Remembrance Sunday, Enniskillen, 1987. It will cover the Brighton bombing in 1984 and look at every major incident involving the paramilitaries of both sides, the tragedy of innocent civilians caught up in the mayhem of violence and destruction and the poor British soldier, as ever playing the role of ‘piggy in the middle,’ in his own backyard. It will look at the role of the RUC; surely the most beleaguered police force in the world at that time and it will question why the Provisional IRA allowed the killing to continue for so long, when many of the Catholic civil rights’ injustices had been righted. It will ask why their leaders allowed the killing to go on once they knew that their impossible dream of a 32 County, united Ireland was no longer achievable. In short, in the words of the brilliant song by Harvey Andrews, it will describe another bloody chapter in an endless civil war.
Ken Wharton, Gold Coast, September 2014
Preamble
This book covers the forty-eight months, from 1 January 1984 until 31 December 1987. The following piece from a former member of the Blues and Royals falls well outside the chronological parameters, but, in breaking my own rules on inclusions, it is included because it throws a little more light on the deaths of two members of the same regiment, in the winter of 1979 at Woodbourne RUC station. Staff Corporal John Tucker was unlawfully killed by a comrade, Trooper Eddie Maggs, before another soldier from the same regiment then killed Maggs. The following is from another book by the author [see below] which gives further detail of the incident.
Trooper Edward ‘Eddie’ Maggs was on duty at Woodbourne RUC station and had, apparently, been drinking; certainly more than the ‘two cans a day’ ration which we were allowed to consume, whilst in Northern Ireland. The soldier was, according to some comrades, ‘troubled’ and this should have been picked up by his Platoon or Company Commander and he should have been sent home to convalesce. A comrade has reported that pre-tour: ‘Trooper Eddie Maggs had always been a bit of a loner: often brooding and tucked up in himself, he’d suddenly launch into an aggressive outburst for little or no apparent reason…….He looked pissed off. I asked: ‘What’s the matter, Eddie?’ Eddie looked up. ‘Fuck off. When I get to Northern Ireland, I’m going to shoot me some Irish twats.’ At the tim
e, I didn’t pay him much attention.’ 1
His father, retired bank official Douglas Maggs, told the Daily Mirror, the day after: ‘We don’t know what went wrong yet. All we’ve been told is that Eddie cracked up, ran amok with a rifle and was shot dead by another soldier to prevent further bloodshed. This wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been sent to Northern Ireland for a second time. He was a victim of Northern Ireland just as surely as if he’d been shot in the back by a sniper’s bullet. My son loved the Army, but four months out there last year finished him. He was terrified of going back. He planned to get out before his 21st birthday this September, and he’d applied for a job as a fireman in London. He was a good soldier, and I only hope that some good will come out of this tragedy.’ His mother, Pamela Maggs, added: ‘We adopted Eddie when he was six. Before he came to us his life had been rotten. We gave him all the love we could. He was always crazy about being a soldier, but he was desperately scared of returning to Northern Ireland.’
At this point, I would refer the reader to pp 154-56 of Wasted Years, Wasted Lives, Vol II in order to read the full story. I am indebted to the former soldier who writes the next personal story; he asked to remain anonymous and I am both delighted to honour his wishes and, at the same time, grateful that he chose to pass these memories on to me.
THAT NIGHT AT WOODBOURNE
Ken, Just been reading the part from the book; my God, remembering that night! It was my 4th tour with the Regiment, and, yes there was panic in the op room: firstly to understand what was happening, secondly what control we needed to put in place, thirdly safety of others. Eddie Maggs was on guard that night, so access to ammo was not a problem, as it was held in the guard room and allocated when going out on duty. He was seen on a number of occasions visiting the bar at the disco that night, and for some reason, known only to him, something snapped. Anyway, he returned to the guardroom and got his kit to get ready to go on duty. He was stopped and asked where he was going, but with that, he ran out grabbing the ammo. He fired at one of the towers and that was when the shit hit the fan. He moved around the camp along a route which led into a small area and was hiding behind dustbins. At this stage, John Tucker started talking to him and telling him to put the weapon down. Wisely, a PIG was moved into the area to give them some form of protection, but then he fired at least two more rounds and John and another lad – Dave Mellow – were hit.