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.
CHAPTER 3
The British Army Blunders
With severe and prolonged rioting in Derry, Belfast and elsewhere across the Six Counties, the Irish army was already moving towards the border. The British Prime Minister took the decision to hurriedly draft in British army elements from the mainland to reinforce the token military presence garrisoned there and together they patrolled the streets across Northern Ireland to prevent a breakdown of law and order. At 5 pm on 14 August 1969, 300 British soldiers of the 1st Battalion, the Prince of Wales Own Regiment of Yorkshire, reinforced by a Company of the 1st Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Wales, having earlier arrived in Northern Ireland on the HMS Sea Eagle, entered the Bogside in Derry. Meanwhile, three companies of the 2nd Battalion, the Queen’s Regiment, and two companies of 1st Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Wales, deployed into Belfast.
The following day, Brigadier Peter Hudson, Officer Commanding 39th Infantry Brigade, toured the areas and determined reinforcements were required. Later that same day the first elements of the 3rd Battalion, the Light Infantry, began to arrive. ‘Operation Banner’, the British army campaign in Northern Ireland, was underway. By early September, 6,000 British troops were in Northern Ireland.
They were there to quell any further intercommunal violence and at first were welcomed and accepted in the embattled Catholic areas of Belfast and Derry; their presence even perceived as likely to back the political reforms insisted on by London. In mid-October 1969, the decision was taken to disband the B-Specials and replace it with the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). This, however, was to be a part-time element of the British army. The Unionists were deeply shocked, but it was deemed that the B-Specials represented Protestant repression and needed to be reformed. However, the move enraged Protestants, resulting in serious rioting along the Shankill Road area. Shots were fired at the British army and over twenty soldiers were wounded overall after riot squads moved in and made arrests. The British army presence in the North was regarded as a huge relief by Catholics, who happily furnished tea and biscuits to the troops. This honeymoon was not to last, however, and the pre- and post-Christmas period was to prove to be the lull before the gathering storm.
During Easter 1970 (1 April) at the edge of Belfast’s Catholic Ballymurphy housing estate, trouble broke out between two sets of rural groups and the Royal Scots intervened between them. However, instead of ‘holding the line’ between both sets of protagonists, they waded in against the Catholic residents with batons and indiscriminate volleys of CS gas to quell the stoning, rioting behaviour and continuing disorder. If not a key turning point, it was perhaps the beginning of a radicalising moment whereby nationalists began to view the British army as an instrument to perpetuate the
