Across The Sea To Ireland...
by Cliff Sweeting

April 1969.  The Battalion Command Post Exercise was in full swing.  At the Stanford Practical Training Area in Norfolk, the Battalion HQ for 1st Prince of Wales's Own was set up on a wooded hillside.  Consisting of the Orderly Room, Operations/Training Section, Signals Platoon, Intelligence Section and the young drummers and buglers of the Corps of Drums (in their fighting role as the Defence Platoon), we mapped the progress of the main inter-platoon exercise being conducted by the rest of the battalion.  After three days in the field, the men of the rifle companies were looking forward to a return to Colchester in two days.  Nice, long, hot showers; clean beds; clean, dry clothing; hot food; cool beer – fantasies of luxury running through their minds.

The Commanding Officer knew differently.  He'd received the “Stand By” from higher HQ an hour ago.  After a series of terrorist attacks on infrastructure in Northern Ireland, the Ministry of Defence had declared a state of emergency, and activated the "Spearhead" callout.  The Battalion would shortly return to Roman Barracks in Colchester, to prepare ourselves and our equipment for immediate airlift to Ulster.  The Intelligence Section Sergeant sidled into the Int Section tent from the neighbouring signals truck:  "Quietly and discreetly, boys – prepare to PUFO.  The CO’s gonna let ‘em know in about ten minutes.”  We recognised the Int Section’s acronym for departure (Pack Up and Fuck Off).  The four of us (a corporal, a lance-corporal and two privates) who made up the rest of the Section, started to dismantle the CP internally – securing typewriters, unpinning and rolling maps, folding tables, and disconnecting and stowing field telephones.  The Ops Room tent concealed all this activity, and would be the last piece of CP equipment to be taken down.  Twenty minutes was the Battalion record for setting up the CP – fifteen for dismantling it.  With an internal “pre-pack”, departure was only five minutes away.

Four hours later, back in Colchester, the atmosphere was electric:  by now, everybody knew that we were heading for a new, and possibly dangerous, posting.  Troops ran into one another as bedding was stored, kit was handed-in, kit and drawn from the QM's store.  Most of us had done this before. We old hands guided the rookies through the process, made sure they did everything right just as we, in our turn, had been guided through the call-out procedures two years earlier.  In 1967, the Battalion had been called out to Aden to support the Argyll And Sutherland Highlanders in their bid to retake Crater.  Our Support Company, with their 120mm WOMBATs and 81mm mortars,  had occupied the heights of  Jebel Shamsan, some two thousand feet above sea-level and blasted into oblivion anything resembling aggressive activity.  The ease of the Argylls' retaking of Crater was, in large part, due to this vigorous suppression of the anti-British elements.

This was slightly different.  Northern Ireland (to borrow from Churchill's description of the Soviet Union) was an enigma wrapped around an anachronism.  A part of the United Kingdom which could not survive on its own, irretrievably tied to the UK by all sorts of political and economic mechanisms.  But the people of  Ulster were sorely divided on the subject of where their loyalties lay.  The Partition of 1921 had left the "Six Counties" of Londonderry, Antrim, Tyrone, Fermanagh, Armagh and Down, firmly in the British camp.  The Catholic minority in the province found themselves treated as an underclass in their own country.  Every year, on the 12th of July, the Protestant majority (represented by the Orange Lodges) would stage an elaborate re-affirmation of Presbyterian control of the province, by marching through the Catholic housing estates with bands playing and banners flying.  This ceremony marked the anniversary of the conquest of Ulster in 1690 by Prince William of Orange.  By tradition, the march would be followed by local (Protestant) thugs who would then pick fights with the local Catholics.  Any follow-up by the Royal Ulster Constabulary, would invariably find that Catholics had caused the fight in the first place.

When one considers that the RUC were ninety-per-cent Presbyterian, one then starts to question just how objective was the police force in the province.  The ranks of the regular RUC were often augmented, when large numbers of officers were required, by the Ulster Special Constabulary, or B Specials as they were locally known.  These para-military reservists were raised initially as border guards, and were each armed with a .38" calibre revolver, a 9mm Sterling sub-machine-gun, and a .303" Lee-Enfield rifle.  They were all Presbyterians.  Added to this overwhelming firepower in the hands of the Protestants, was the political fragmentation of the Catholics.  Already outnumbered two-to-one, they split their vote amongst at least three different parties, whereas the Protestants voted for one - the Unionist Party.  This tended to ensure that the Catholics remained powerless, as the Stormont parliament became the permanent possession of the Unionists.

First priority for the Int Sect was to get some maps of the operational area.  The Int Officer got on the phone to order the map sheets, as I took a Land Rover and a private soldier to the Map Centre at Guildford in Surrey, some 70 miles to the southwest.  Four hours later, we returned to Colchester, where we stored the maps in our trailer.  A quick nap, for an hour or so, then into the trucks and off to Lyneham.  Divided into "chalks" or plane-loads, we drove the Land Rovers into the bellies of the C130 Hercules, where the RAF strapped them to the floor of the plane.  Just because a Herk is so big, don't think it gives you plenty of room inside.  All that space is taken up by vehicles and equipment, while the soldiers sit along the edge of the fuselage on flimsy, uncomfortable aluminium-and-plastic fold-down seats.  (I flew in a RAAF Hercules recently - the latest C130-J model - and the seats were exactly the same as they were 37 years ago!)

A noisy and uncomfortable 4 hours later (believe it or not, I actually dozed off for an hour), we landed at Aldergrove Airfield.  Next stop was an emergency camp set up for us at Ballykinler, in County Down.  From here, we would patrol the water supply dams, pumps and pipes in the Mountains of Mourne which was the main water supply for the province.  My task was to maintain a newspaper-clipping fact file for the Int Officer's Bn HQ briefings.  It taught me a lot about the predatory creatures who swam just under the surface of this murky pond.  How the hell could they could still be all bent out of shape over something that had happened nearly three centuries ago?  My parents came from opposite sides of the religious divide (Dad was Church of England, Mum's parents were Irish Catholics) but they never got all worked up over religion like these folk.

Anyway...our duties continued to be boring and routine for the next couple of months.  Our social life revolved around the cosy canteen at Sandes', just over the road,  occasional pub-crawls through Downpatrick (always starting and ending at Breen's Bar); and the local dance at Ardglass.  It was here, in the carpark, that I watched a huge RUC sergeant beat a drunken Catholic youth senseless.  I suspect that the youth had been guilty of more-than-casual contact with the sergeant's teenage daughter, but no proof of this was ever provided.  I was romantically involved with a Catholic girl in the village.  She spent the entire evening dodging ex-boyfriends in the church hall where the dance was staged.  I did not confide this information to the angry RUC sergeant.  I escorted my girlfriend home, spent too long over the goodnight kiss, and missed the truck back to camp.  A 17-mile hike followed, over the rolling County Down countryside.  No big deal for a fit young soldier but my dancing shoes (pointy-toed, Cuban-heeled boots) were not the ideal footwear for this task.  I got back to Ballykinler, footsore and weary, just in time for a quick shower and shave before muster parade.

I'd applied for two weeks' leave before we left England.  Now that the excitement had died down, the CO authorised us to take whatever leave was owing to us.  So, one morning in July, clad in civvies, I swung  my suitcase onto the back of the 3-tonner for the drive to the airport.  As I was about to climb aboard, all hell broke loose.  Squaddies were running in all directions, grabbing kit, and loading it into vehicles;  NCOs yelled orders and officers huddled in groups looking at maps.  What on earth was going on?  Suddenly, the penny dropped - today was the 12th.  The Orangemen were marching, and it had turned ugly.  Apparently, a gang of  Catholics had burnt down an Orange Lodge, and the Protestants were out for revenge.  The Battalion had been ordered to move to HMS Sea Eagle, across the River Foyle from the Catholic Bogside district of Londonderry, and be prepared to assist the RUC if required.  To hell with leave, I said - I'm not missing this!  I grabbed my suitcase, threw it into the Int Sect Land Rover, told the driver to wait for me, then sprinted to my room, got back into combat kit, and dragged my kitbag and my person out to the 'Rover.

We drove from the extreme southeast of Ulster, to the north-west (took us less than an hour.)  At the naval base, we set up a temporary CP and organised a radio and phone watch as we liaised with the RUC.  Reluctant to hand over to us, they waded in and brought the situation under control in a matter of hours.  Our next move was further north, to the remote Magilligan's Point camp.  Here we would assume a low profile - no overt patrolling beyond securing the camp limits but we were poised to return to Derry at a moment's notice.  I'd been at Magilligan's no more than 4 or 5 hours, before the 2IC called me into his office.  The Int Officer was already sitting there with a smile on his face.  Apparently, the brass were so impressed by my military keenness in cancelling my leave, that they'd decided to give me an easy billet for a few weeks.  I was to return to Sea Eagle, set up an Ops Room there, and act as a link to the Battalion.  My only regular duties were to make a phone call and a radio check twice a day, and to inform the IO of anything out of the ordinary.  I was to wear civvies, eat at the Navy mess, and sleep in a spare room next to the Ops Room.  Needless to say, I did not refuse this duty.

The next four weeks were a fascinating experience.  I struck up a friendship with a few of the RN boys (we always seemed to have more in common with the Navy than with the Air Force lads, somehow (maybe the RAF types were too intelligent to drink with us?).  Whenever there was a "run ashore", I was invited along.  The social rules were slightly different from Colchester codes.  Each run ashore, it was somebody else's turn to buy a supply of Merrydown.  This was a particularly scary locally-brewed applejack - alcohol content: don't ask.  A real brain-blower.  The venue of choice on this side of the river, was the Club A Go-Go - a heap of rubble (no exaggeration, the jumbled bricks and mortar of the second storey lay all around the doorway).  You entered through the conventional street-level door of a once-terraced house.  Then you descended into the cellar, where the bar was set up at the edge of the concrete dance floor.  The live band (very good, too) occupied the edges of the street-level floor, above our heads.  We could see this, because the centre of the floor had been cut out.  Believe me, it was a really happening place, especially when we shared the Merrydown with our dancing partners...

This could not last, of course.  In the streets, the build-up to the next Orange Lodge march, the Apprentice Boys Parade on 12th of August, continued.  You could cut the atmosphere with a knife.  This one was going to place Derry right in the spotlight.  It was held twice annually - the first, in December, to commemorate the closing of the city's gates in 1688, to deny the forces of King James II access to the fortress and a secure base against the Orange armies.  As no soldiers were available that day, the young apprentice tradesmen took it upon themselves to perform this militarily vital task.  Derry held, and James II was eventually caught in the open and forced to flee before the victorious Protestant forces.  This lifting of the siege, in August 1689, was the subject of the second Apprentice Boys March.  The historical details were irrelevant here. What was vital was the potential for violence from both sides.  "All We Are Saying...Is Give Peace A Chance!..." Over and over, the chorus of the John Lennon classic blared out over the Londonderry streets, as community leaders toured the city in loudspeaker-equipped vans, to broadcast their appeal for sanity and tolerance.  As the men of goodwill appealed for calm, the real powerbrokers counted down the days to the confrontation.  There were opportunities here for the power-hungry men behind the scenes.  No way would peace prevail.

All too soon, the evil day dawned.  I changed into combat kit, opened the Ops Room, did my phone and radio checks, and confirmed that the Battalion would be descending on Sea Eagle within the hour.  Already, some 600 RUC personnel were on duty between Belfast and Derry, with the major effort in the northwestern city.  That day, I watched some of our lads training with the RUC riot squad.  We had some pretty fit boys, but these coppers were just huge.  They were picking the soldiers up and tossing them aside like rag dolls.  As the march started, I sat in the Ops Room and listened to the police radio net.  The RUC were mostly mobile in wire-screened Land Rovers (for protection against stones), but they weren't prepared for the barrage of petrol bombs which came their way.  If they ventured down side streets, they would find barricades moved into place, trapping them in the alleys, as petrol bombs and lumps of concrete rained down on them from the rooftops.  Their attempts to use teargas to disperse crowds, were utterly futile as well.  Quite often, they failed to gauge wind strength and direction, and the gas came back at them.  Horrific injuries were sustained as the rioters used sharpened iron fence pickets as spears, smashing through the thin sides of the Land Rovers and wounding the occupants.  It became clear that the police were being tactically outmanoeuvred and outfought by a determined and well-prepared enemy.

After three days of running battles, the situation was no nearer being brought under control.  Attrition had whittled away the police numbers and the B Specials were mobilised, but to no effect.  If anything, the sight of the hated reservists provoked the rioters to new levels of frenzied violence.  At 1700 hours on the 14th, the RUC requested that the military be sent in.  Our troops were already kitted-up and embussed.  Three companies went in immediately, to be greeted with tears of joy by the Catholics.  Not that they particularly liked us, we understood that much, but they did not hate us with anything like the venom they reserved for the RUC and USC.  As the realisation dawned that they had won this mammoth struggle, they emerged from behind the barricades.  A new era had dawned.  For the time being, peace had been restored.  We knew that it would not last. It was only a honeymoon period like so many others before it in the turbulent history of this place.  What came after is another story, to be told at another time and we had already left the province by the time it all went sour.  But I take pride in reflecting that we played our part in this story effectively, with professional efficiency and with honour.