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CHAPTER 2

Border-Bound Beginnings

It is with deep sadness that you and I, Irishmen of goodwill, have learned of the tragic events which have been taking place in Derry and elsewhere in the North in recent days.

Irish men in every part of this island have made known their concern at these events. This concern is heightened by the realisation that the spirit of reform and intercommunal co-operation has given way to forces of sectarianism and prejudice. All people of goodwill must feel saddened and disappointed at this backward turn in events and must be apprehensive for the future.

The Government fully share these feelings and I wish to repeat that we deplore sectarianism and intolerance in all their forms wherever they occur. The Government has been very patient and have acted with great restraint over several months past. While we made our views known to the British Government on a number of occasions, both by direct contact and through our Diplomatic representative in London, we were careful to do nothing that would exacerbate the situation.

But it is clear now that the situation cannot be allowed to continue.

It is evident, also, that the Stormont Government is no longer in control of the situation. Indeed, the present situation is the inevitable outcome of the policies pursued for decades by successive Stormont Governments. It is clear, also, that the Irish Government can no longer stand by and see innocent people injured and perhaps worse.

It is obvious that the RUC is no longer accepted as an impartial police force. Neither would the employment of British troops be acceptable nor would they be likely to restore peaceful conditions – certainly not in the long run. The Irish Government have, therefore, requested the British Government to apply immediately to the United Nations for the urgent despatch of a Peacekeeping Force for the Six Counties of Northern Ireland and have instructed the Irish Permanent Representative of the United Nations to inform the Secretary-General of this request. We have also asked the British Government to see to it that police attacks on the people of Derry should cease immediately.

Very many people have been injured and some of them seriously. We know that many of these do not wish to be treated in Six County hospitals. We have, therefore, directed the Irish Army authorities to have field hospitals established in County Donegal, adjacent to Derry and at other points along the border where they may be necessary.

Recognising, however, that the reunification of the national territory can provide the only permanent solution for the problem, it is our intention to request the British Government to enter into early negotiations with the Irish Government to review the present constitutional position of the six counties of Northern Ireland. These measures which I have outlined to you seem to the Government to be those immediately and urgently necessary.

(Taoiseach Jack Lynch’s televised address to the nation, 13 August 1969.)

In response to the riots in Derry, the Irish Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, gave a carefully measured broadcast to the nation after presiding over an emergency cabinet meeting which saw Government ministers recalled from their summer holidays to discuss, then determine, an appropriate Irish Government response to the deteriorating situation in the North. There was an imperative to act, yet an equal imperative not to overreact.

Well below its peacetime strength, possessing only antiquated equipment and little reliable transport ability of any note, and with no permanently occupied military posts north of a line from Galway to Gormanstown camp in County Meath, the Defence Forces were ordered northwards:

We were a mostly barrack-bound army, sedentary, domesticated, old and as obsolete as our equipment. There were officers and soldiers still in service who had first-hand involvement in countering IRA campaigns during the Emergency and in the late 1950s. Little or none of this was ever mentioned, however. Idle and inept, would – if brutal honesty were called for – aptly describe us. Overseas service with the United Nations, however, had been our escape to professionalism and a new, totally different, emphasis on soldiering emerged. The experience of the Congo was a shock, and this outward-looking emphasis was further developed with UN service in Cyprus. Both significant involvements were a great education for us, because among the UN contingents were people from other armies who had actual war-fighting experience – during World War II and the Korean War.

The standards that we operated with, and under, led to a raising of our own standards, an increase in invaluable experience and an improvement in equipment. Despite all this, in 1969 the army was still very small, largely inactive with antiquated transport, deficient in resources and no defence policy or direction. In short, neglected. Skeletal if you like, but one without the bones of a proper framework or the flesh of any fighting capability – at best a light infantry force. Defence was the victim among government departments and very little of [the] scarce money [available] was spent on it. Conditions were unsatisfactory, pay was poor. It was choked by civil service control and lacked any perceived purpose. Ill-prepared, with a deferential, weak leadership who all too readily bowed to pressure from politicians.

The North was a powder keg set to blow, and August 1969 was a time of enormous tension and pressure. There was a great and growing unease, anxiety and concern about the immediate future, and the highly volatile and uncertain security and political situation was the context within which a neglected and unprepared Defence Force was directed to act.

There was an unprecedented urgency throughout the Defence Forces. Jack Lynch’s address to the nation was complemented by an order for immediate action and so the Defence Forces apparatus kicked into life, the organs of command and control stirred themselves and the military’s main effort was directed towards getting troops to the border in the north west to set up field hospitals.

The first phase was to consolidate the maximum available transport assets spread throughout the Western Command area to get the vehicles in and get convoys of troops and equipment out. The staff of Western Command Headquarters, located in the centre of Ireland at Custume Barracks, Athlone, Co. Westmeath, had to coordinate the details to meet the demands of their sudden new circumstances:

The many necessary land-line phone communications to outlying barracks within the command had to be channelled through the Barracks switchboard on the one external line out, for which there was great demand. The frustration was immense, the progress impeded, headway [was] hindered, advance obstructed and the time factor critical. The transport need was a priority: stores, troops; all kinds of equipment were needed and the means to get them to where needed had yet to be assembled, and great difficulty was being experienced in doing so. An added difficulty, once the land-line phone line became available, was actually making contact with the individual unit transport officers in the different barracks; [if] they not at their desks, [but] instead [were] outside in the transport yards or elsewhere. You then had to hang up and wait your turn in the queue for the external land-line again. There were bigger … concerns, however, as a picture soon emerged regarding the actual roadworthiness of much of the transport fleet. There were multiple breakdowns. The antiquated vehicles were not even making it to Athlone, and of those that did, [many] broke down on the way to Donegal.

Not all of the transport was unserviceable or broke down, and the convoys – even though they made faltering progress – eventually arrived to their destination.

Also heading northwards, and ultimately for locations along the border but from far further south, were units from the other command formations: South, East and Curragh. They moved in convoys from as far away as Cork city and county and also, as it happened, from Arklow, where the Curragh Command’s 3rd Battalion ‘The Bloods’ were on Summer Camp. Border-bound were what was to become four ad hoc ‘cobbled together’ company-sized infantry groups. The newly designated 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th Infantry Groups were to deploy to border areas, including the towns of Dundalk, Castleblayney, Cootehill and Cavan, to participate in what was to be a very complex operation:

I was on ‘Exercise Shanagarry’ in East Cork and we were aware that matters were becoming hot in the North, and one night, very late, while asleep I remember being awoken by someone telling me I must report back immediately to my unit, the 1st Motor Squadron in Fermoy, Co. Cork. I arrived there in the middle of the night (early morning 14 August 1969) to find the camp a hive of activity. The unit had been placed on ‘12-hours’ notice to move’ to the border. I remember as a young officer being impressed watching the army system kick in from a logistics point of view. Trucks arrived from Collins Barracks, Cork, to the camp’s main gate, the drivers descending from the cab of the truck, handing over the vehicles’ keys and log book and receiving in return a signature for them and a travel warrant for public transport to return to Cork City. We took our allotment of 1st line ammunition from holdings stored within the camp; the balance was removed into Collins Barracks, Cork. The entire unit was mobilised.

The 1st Motor Squadron was an ideal unit to send. We had ‘wheels’ (vehicles), [and] were loosely self-contained as an already integrated entity. It was the correct company-size strength of 140 and we had recently been on Summer Camp where we had to build a camp, run it and on completion strike (deconstruct) it. Whilst on camp we rehearsed checkpoints (CPs) moving in bounds and such like; ideal preparation, but as it happened, completely unintentional preparation for what lay ahead. All this on the back of two exercises: ‘Exercise Shanagolden’ (for the FCÁ) and ‘Exercise Shanagarry’ (1st Brigade). The older, sick and more infirm troopers (soldiers) of the unit were to be left behind and along with the 11th Battalion FCÁ headquarters staff would act as a fire piquet for the camp.

Having completed our arrangements we gathered somewhat excitedly for a departing conference and whilst waiting for the Southern Command Intelligence Officer to arrive we began wondering among ourselves [if we] were going in (to the North)? What will be there? What are we to do if we come face to face with the B-Specials, or even the British army? Are we to take them on? The briefing was short but intriguing. The last order we received was: ‘Get to Mullingar, bed in and wait for sealed orders.’ There was concern about the availability of relevant maps and when we raised questions about this we were told, ‘with the sealed orders would be maps’ and with that we were on the move.

We passed out through the gates of Fitzgerald Camp, Fermoy, late afternoon 14 August 1969 at 4.30 and [when] we turned left onto the main Cork to Dublin road there was a large crowd of family members, townspeople and well-wishers there to say goodbye and cheer us off on our way. This was repeated again as we passed through Mitchelstown and it seemed ever increasingly so by even larger crowds as we went through the various towns along our route until we came to Portlaoise and Mountmellick, where what seemed like huge cheering crowds greeted us. On our arrival to Columb Barracks in Mullingar we found turmoil reigned as troops coming together to form the Infantry Group were arriving in and shaking out, accommodated mostly in tents. The sealed orders from Dublin arrived also, placing us on a ‘half hours’ notice to move’.

Meanwhile, the night of 13–14 August saw the continuation of the Battle of the Bogside in Derry and the spread of street violence, clashes and large-scale rioting across the North, especially in Belfast where the situation had tragically and alarmingly led to loss of life and the burning out of Catholic families from their homes, along with much disorder and dislocation elsewhere.

To ensure that this unrest, unsettledness and insecurity was contained and the strife did not spread into the South, troops were directed to head for the border immediately:

On the cessation of the Taoiseach’s address, we headed for the border that same night in old 1951 Bedford trucks and clapped out Land Rovers from Custume Barracks, Athlone. I was company commander of 6th Infantry Battalion Company, which was scrambled together, and we left Athlone at 10 pm heading to Donegal to be prepared to protect the Field Hospitals we were to establish. There was a certain hype, expectancy and excitement also prevailing, that perhaps we might be crossing the border. With this playing on the back of my mind I stopped the convoy outside Boyle, Co. Roscommon, and did a thorough check through the ammunition to discover that no 84 mm anti-tank or 81 mm mortar rounds had been loaded. Arriving in the early hours, we began setting up ‘Camp Arrow’ in an open field in darkness on the Letterkenny to Ramelton road, close to the border. I was concerned that we had no Force Protection measures in that open field and were not left position checkpoints on the road frontage running outside along the camp’s boundary with the roadway. And so to set up camp, the soldiers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) had two man bivvies, the officers were in larger eight-man tents, wherein stores were also placed. The first hours were fairly ad hoc, and with two more infantry companies expected; one from the East and one from the South, we had to prepare accordingly. They did arrive the next day, but by a bit of good fortune, the 4th Engineer Company were on Summer Camp in nearby Finner Camp and they assisted greatly in getting latrines and other such necessities, even managing to set up a working television on an outside pole in the middle of the field. The support weapon ammunition, ponchos and other equipment began to arrive in, as did the First Line Reservists, even some from England, supported by their English employers. There we sat, keeping a low profile, not conducting any patrols. After a number of days we began to question what we were doing there. Among the priorities: getting mass organised for the 15 August became regarded as one more important than others.

Control of the border in its own right was identified early on as being important, so along with the setting up of Field Hospitals – in reality First Aid stations, three of which were established on the main Donegal to Derry road and a fourth in County Cavan – it was important that the Irish Government retained its state territorial authority and the power to direct, influence or restrain movement across it. The highly volatile and uncertain political situation was the overall context within which the Defence Forces were directed to act. The circumstance for the Irish Government unfolded as an unprecedented crisis; developed north of the border in a manner over which it had no jurisdictive control. Internally there were those, some Government ministers amongst them, suggesting the seizure of the moment to end partition by directing the Defence Forces across it. Jack Lynch had received the wise counsel of the Governor of the Central Bank, TK ‘Ken’ Whitaker, who advised that the Republic take over neither Britain’s financial contributions, nor the task of keeping order by controlling the border.

There were those, primarily Sinn Féin, who were advocating such an intervention to crowds in Dublin. Scuffles broke out, punches and kicks were thrown and there was a lot of pulling and dragging; a crowd dynamic was whipped up and a mob mentality aroused. The inevitable clash erupted – not a fully fledged fight, more a confused struggle – but there was a roughness to it all the same. The non-violent demonstrators had marched from outside Dublin’s General Post Office (GPO) on O’Connell Street where about 3,000 people had gathered initially and been addressed by the President of Sinn Féin, Tomás Mac Giolla. He raised cheers when he announced that IRA units had ‘defended with guns, Belfast people under attack, that the IRA were the only ones present to protect the people and that it was time for action’. From among the crowd, ‘volunteers’ for active service were recruited from the platform, whereupon he pointed out that the army had the weapons needed to protect the people in the North and that if the (Irish) army were not prepared to use their weapons then they ought to give them to the volunteers, who would. He then encouraged the crowd to accompany him to Collins Barracks, Dublin, where upon their arrival he demanded that the Collins Barracks garrison protect the people of the North or else hand over their guns to the volunteers, who were ready to do so. They began chanting: ‘Give us guns, give us guns’, and with that a scuffle broke out with the attendant Gardaí and the scene became an unpleasant and threatening one for a time, before the crowd realised they were not getting guns on this occasion and dispersed.

The following evening (16 August) also saw some disturbances, again initiated after a meeting outside the GPO, this time under the auspices of The National Solidarity Committee. Hostile and ugly scenes followed when a crowd of 2,000 marched on the British Embassy in Merrion Square outside which the street was cordoned off by Gardaí, as there had also been protests the previous evening. On arrival at the cordon, the marchers started throwing stones, with bricks and bottles being added as the disturbance continued. The Gardaí responded with baton charges, causing the crowd to eventually disperse and retreat into Clare Street, only for them to erect a makeshift barricade outside the Mount Clare Hotel. Fires were set, windows broken and cars vandalised. In all, fourteen Gardaí were injured during the disturbances but the Embassy remained intact.

Whilst this was ongoing, not too far away in St Stephen’s Green three Nationalist Stormont MPs arrived at the offices of the Department of External Affairs (Iveagh House) requesting to speak with the Taoiseach. They were there to obtain weapons for beleaguered Catholics in Belfast’s Falls Road area, where the B-Specials and extremist Protestant mobs were running amok attacking nationalists, burning rows of houses and injuring scores of residents. Three people had been fatally shot, and with the number of displaced people growing the situation was deteriorating alarmingly, eclipsing the uproar and rioting that was witnessed during the Battle of the Bogside:

I was Quartermaster for a large FCÁ Camp (second line, part-time reservists) in Gormanstown Camp, Co. Meath, when mid-morning at the camp’s end – and organising the FCÁ out, and refugees in – I emerged from my office to find the camp suddenly ‘chock-a-block’ full with army vehicles and hundreds of troops. Enquiring as to what was happening, I was glibly told: ‘Oh, we’re from the Brugha (Cathal Brugha Barracks, Rathmines, Dublin) and now we’re the 16th Infantry Group going to the Border.’

Their arrival was a total surprise to me and the sudden presence of possible extra mouths to feed immediately triggered my quartermasterly instinct and mind-set and I decided I needed to know if they were expecting to be fed. To this end I boldly interrupted an officer’s briefing in progress and requested of the officer-in-charge were he and his men staying for lunch, to be told they were and [I was] thanked for my seeking clarification on the matter. Then was added: ‘But I want the Point Platoon fed first.’ I had never heard the expression ‘Point Platoon’ used before and discreetly enquired as to who and what were his Point Platoon? I was informed that they were a recently passed-out recruit platoon and the only platoon to have combat uniforms!

It is often said that the truth comes out in a crisis. Such truths that the Troubles were set to expose, however, had yet to be revealed. The Irish Government would face unprecedented challenges as the various strands of the circumstances played out dramatically. One element which became starkly obvious early on though was a lack of foresight: aware of a growing political problem on its doorstep, the Defence Forces were grossly unprepared for its outbreak and the early days of the crisis – a period of considerable danger – proved to be a time of great difficulty. There was great uncertainty; no one was sure what might happen next; and there was no planning contingency, no resources were available and no organisational preparations had been made. Yet the need for action and a speedy response to the eruption of the Troubles was paramount. Nine years previously, the Defence Forces had received a serious jolt when they were suddenly tasked by the United Nations to provide a response for overseas troop participation in the Congo. This overseas involvement was to prove to be the single most significant development in the history of the Defence Forces. Nearly a decade later, the Defence Forces remained undermanned, underarmed and underfunded, only now it was facing a severe test at home; the mission to contain a situation which, if unaddressed, could possibly lead to a civil war on the island of Ireland.

Along with the setting up of field hospitals and refugee stations, and coordinating the northward movement of Irish troops to the border, a prudent, logical contingency to explore was the possibility of a drastic humanitarian crisis, with an extraction operation in extremis if necessary. If the violence in the North escalated, should Irish troops on the border move into the Six Counties to extricate nationalists from attack and significant loss of life, or to facilitate the rescue of wounded and terrified portions of the Catholic population? A judicious proposal, it was contingent on the operational and logistical capability to execute it. However daringly audacious, morally justified and politically righteous, it would need to be rigorously feasible, and the Irish army in its current state was not in a position to respond to such a scenario.

There were, however, some who recklessly advocated this course of action. The Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, was not one of them and he again requested Dr Patrick Hillery, the Minister for External Affairs, to travel to London to propose the setting up of a combined Irish and British military peacekeeping force, or alternatively a United Nations one. Unsuccessful with the British Government in London, the Irish Government continued to internationalise the Northern Ireland crisis and Patrick Hillery travelled to the United Nations Headquarters in New York in an attempt to raise the Northern Irish situation as a motion on the UN Security Council Agenda. This initiative was not necessarily to actually achieve such an outcome, it was deemed an internal matter for the United Kingdom, but to create worldwide awareness of the matter, which was certainly achieved.

The British had overall responsibility for the situation in Northern Ireland but understood neither the problem nor the place. The Northern Irish Unionists understood the problem, but had no desire to reform, and the Northern Irish Nationalists had a strong case for reform but had neither the voice nor the platform. The Irish Government had no jurisdiction but had to contain the crisis from spilling over into their territory. Not only were they challenged externally, there were internal problems to be controlled also, not just within the country but in the very Cabinet itself. Arising from all of these convoluted causes, courses and consequences of the crisis, there were other difficulties to be dealt with. There was shock and outrage from the Irish public and claims of interference in their internal affairs from the British; there were cries for arms from beleaguered northern nationalists and calls for an Irish army incursion from some Government ministers. Throughout the Republic there were ‘Forty Shades of Green’, an expression taken from a Johnny Cash song to express a range of Republican feelings, some of which were fast changing. The Government, the Gardaí and the Defence Forces had to tread a very fine line, yet were still unaware of just how fine it was to become. Captain Noel Carey (Retd.), hero of the Defence Forces involvement in Jadotville in the Congo, recalls:

We were convinced we were going in. We were personally ready to cross the border [and] Jack Lynch’s televised address at 6 pm earlier in the evening, together with the prior memorable television news clip of a hate-filled RUC baton charge of a peaceful civil rights march (on 5 October 1968 in Derry’s Duke Street, when RTÉ cameraman Gay O’Brien filmed images that were broadcast around the world) were uppermost in our minds. Twenty trucks left Custume Barracks, Athlone, that night. We left ten of them on the side of the road, broken down, as we travelled northwards to Finner Camp, where we overnighted.

At a conference the next morning, we were informed we were going to locate in a selected campsite called ‘Camp Arrow’ outside Letterkenny near the border, of which I was made Camp Adjutant. Shortly after arriving, I remember we were all standing there in a large empty green field ... with officers in their super-fines, NCOs and men in their bull’s wool uniforms, until trucks arrived from Athlone with tents and we then set about erecting them. Later that day a rag-tag cobbled together company arrived from Collins Barracks, Cork, under Commandant Jim Flynn. They had been on Summer Camp in Cork. Another similarly quickly assembled Company, under Commandant Ned Dineen, arrived from the Eastern Command later again the same day. Brigade Headquarters were set up in Rockhill House.

There was a lot of comings and goings that day as we set about organising ourselves. We were greatly aided by an engineer unit under Captain Walter Rafferty, who very quickly erected a temporary cookhouse, latrines, dining areas and washing facilities. We had no support weapons (mortars and anti-tank weapons), or ammunition; however, this arrived at 10 pm with the armoured cavalry unit. I remembered their first vehicle on arrival in through the camp’s gate drove straight through the commanding officer’s tent. Nor was the drama over just yet, because early the next morning we got news that the international press were on their way to visit the camp and our main concern was to hide from view the newly arrived support weapon ammunition. This we tried to do with tarpaulin canvas strip lengths, which kept slipping off the ammunition boxes. Matters thereafter settled down.

The first morning, the cooks – however they managed it – even had a breakfast prepared. Lieutenant Colonel George Murphy was Officer Commanding and Commandant Tom Gleeson was the second-in-command. Commandant Dermot Byrne was Company Commander, Western Command Company, and Captain Joe Fallon his second-in-command. It was the first time since ‘The Emergency’ that a full battalion was on the ground. There were between 600–700 men in Camp Arrow. Our equipment was outdated, we had no combat uniforms, no wet gear, no sleeping bags and our radios were primitive. The helmets were of First World War era and our webbing was from the Second World War times – in a word ‘ridiculous’.

Notwithstanding, we were mentally prepared and very willing to cross the border, especially when the support weapon ammunition arrived. Within a few days delegations came from Derry, two separate groups, the first wanting weapons – to whom we replied that we had no authority to give them any. The second was a larger group; they shouted and roared at us disparagingly for not going into Derry. We had a concern for how our fellow nationalists were being treated, brought up as we were on a definite dogma that the ‘Irish’ were nationalists only, and felt that we had justification to go in. It was all very polarising and upsetting.

Time passed, the weather deteriorated, the excitement waned, [and] there was less and less contact with and between Command and Brigade Headquarters and ourselves. Some discontent emerged among those of the First Line Reserve, especially those who had come back from England. They wished to return home but were refused permission. The weather deteriorated into October and units rotated up those unit personnel who had yet to come to the border until the companies from the South and the East went back to their commands, leaving the 6th Battalion only in situ in Camp Arrow.

The tents began leaking, the morale deteriorating somewhat and in early December the field hospital returned to Custume Barracks, Athlone. When this was pulled out we moved into Rockhill House, from which we patrolled along the border with the Garda. We received visits and inspections from higher headquarters but there was an unrest stirring within due to a lack of information on what was likely to happen and this was driving us mad.

We rotated back to Athlone in mid-December and were very glad that the Second Line part-time reserve, the FCÁ, were allowed to do Barrack guard duties; this was a great relief to us. The Battalion gradually identified people from the border areas who wanted to go there in proximity to where they were originally from. It took a year to a year and a half to settle down. It was a critical time in the army because we did not know what was going to happen.