with the irregularity of the circumstances and was not prepared to take responsibility for the convoy, its content or to allow the consignment be unloaded, nor agree to provide an armed guard for it.
Having arrived to where [we were] ordered, albeit in unusual circumstances, I backed the six trucks up against each other, three abreast, and mounted our own guard. The acting Post Commander in Aiken Barracks was not happy. I, the Convoy Commander, was [also] not happy, the drivers now undertaking an overnight guard were not happy, the transport company unit who had provided the now not returning six trucks were not happy. All in all, for all involved, it was an irregular, unusual, unhappy situation and circumstance.
The gas masks were eventually emptied into a billet in the barracks and the three trucks released back to their unit. The three remaining trucks were left unloaded, the weapons and ammunition only taken off them two days later.
The ‘Dundalk Arms Shipment’, as it came to be called, and the likely intended release of arms and ammunition from army custody into Northern Ireland, had effectively been stalled. On hearing a report of the situation, the Taoiseach immediately insisted on the cessation of this unauthorised arrangement and the shipment of arms was cancelled. This unsanctioned effort to put Irish Defence Forces rifles and ammunition (obsolete but still deadly) into the hands of people in the North was a high level, but not governmentally authorised direction. The attempt to smuggle arms through the Defence Forces chain-of-command having failed, unbelievably a further clandestine ploy was revealed, but this too was fortuitously uncovered in the nick of time. Information was received about a surreptitious plot to bring a consignment of arms from the continent through Dublin Airport. A cloak-and-dagger episode of unparalleled gravity, it was a crisis within a crisis, the implications of which – if successfully executed, even in its very attempt – could have had a calamitous political effect. It might have completely undermined the diplomatic standing of the Irish Government and State. The ‘Arms Crisis’ was the greatest internal crisis since the Civil War in Ireland. With emotions throughout the country already running high due to the violent turn of events in the North, these were further legitimate concerns for stability in the South.
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