Soldiering Against Subversion - Dan Harvey

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sunset, LÉ Gráinne’s radar picked up a small contact leaving Helvic Harbour and merging with the MV Claudia. Twenty-five minutes later it was time to spring the trap. ‘Action Stations’ were sounded on all three Irish Naval ships and LÉ Fòla and LÉ Gráinne were ordered to close in on the targets. Within the hour the Irish naval pursuers dramatically revealed their presence by suddenly switching on their navigation lights, and the trap was successfully sprung.

      The 290-tonne Cypriot-registered MV Claudia was boarded and no resistance was offered. However, the smaller boat made a run for it and zig-zagged away from the scene to make boarding more difficult. LÉ Fòla, whose signal to stop was ignored, fired a warning shot over the vessel with LÉ Gráinne adding three more rounds, before putting a Gemini dinghy and boarding party into the water to pursue. The officer in charge of the boarding party fired several shots from his pistol before the smaller launch was taken in charge and its three occupants detained. Before midnight on 28 March 1973, it was all over and 5-tonnes of assorted arms and ammunition were seized. The MV Claudia was escorted to Haulbowline where it was unloaded; its deadly cargo transferred to Collins Barracks, Cork and placed under guard. On 29 March, the Minister for Defence, Mr Paddy Donegan TD, and the Chief-of-Staff, Major General TL O’Carroll, were flown to Haulbowline by Air Corps helicopter and congratulated the assembled ships’ crews. This vital interception operation denied the Provisional IRA weapons, and lives were saved as a result.

      ***

      On Friday, 17 May 1974, close to 5.30 pm, three car bombs detonated without warning within ninety seconds of each other in Parnell, Talbot and South Leinster Streets, Dublin. As each device detonated, within milliseconds the explosive material was converted into massive volumes of gas and heat causing a pressure effect that instantaneously released energy in a shockwave, resulting in indiscriminate damage, burns and injury to anyone or anything in the surrounding area. With a blinding flash and a deafening roar, the metallic frames of the cars disintegrated, sending flying shards of glass and metal shrapnel into the air that sliced through bodies, tore through flesh and ripped through bone. Rubble mixed with wreckage, debris, bodies, blood and separated limbs lay everywhere, and amidst the dead, the dying and the maimed there was utter shock, disbelief, screams and terror.

      Ninety minutes later a fourth car bomb exploded in Monaghan town. Thirty-three innocent people were killed, one an unborn infant, and 258 were maimed in what was the single biggest loss of life in any one day of the Troubles. This was not Beirut or Belfast; instead the Dublin–Monaghan bombings remain the longest unsolved murder case in Irish history.

      ***

      It was a beautiful sunny summer’s day as the joint army/Gardaí patrol responded to reports of suspicious boxes on unapproved roads off the main Cavan to Clones road on 8 June 1972. Sitting on the border road was a sturdy wooden crate, 10-metres in front of which was a rudimentary makeshift wooden sign with a primitively hand-painted four letter word: ‘Bomb’. It was all rather simple and basic in appearance. There was no Defence Forces Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team stationed in the area, and having sealed off the area, Garda Inspector Samuel (Sam) Donegan and Second Lieutenant John Gallagher approached the box. A cord was attached to the crate, long enough to be pulled at from a distance and set off the device. Inspector Donegan pulled on the cord, toppling the crate into the ditch next to the road. Approaching gingerly, on inspection the crate was found to be empty; it was a ruse, a deception, a hoax bomb. Proceeding on to Legakelly Lane, Drumboghanagh, approximately 300-metres away, Inspector Donegan and Second Lieutenant Gallagher approached the second crate. Standing side by side, Inspector Donegan bent forward to examine it more closely when suddenly the crate exploded. Second Lieutenant Gallagher suffered severe leg injuries, but Inspector Donegan took the full force of the bomb. Rushed to Cavan Surgical Hospital, Inspector Samuel Donegan died five minutes before midnight without regaining consciousness.

      ***

      The border and bombings, the arms seizures, searches and sieges and more, made up the lengthy, very full chronological catalogue of incidents which occurred throughout the Republic of Ireland during the three decades of the Troubles. When listed by themselves, they are a collective record far more extensive than first imagined; far more comprehensive than first considered; far more involved in their detail than first thought, and the contribution of the Defence Forces was far greater than first appreciated or understood.

      Once over, the years of the Troubles were considered a period probably best forgotten. Many features, facts and events were put out of mind, with the priority being to move forward and look to the future. An unconscious consequence of this, however, was that the Defence Forces’ efforts and input in maintaining the stability of the Irish State, which many who have served feel has been minimised, overlooked and disregarded. This necessary defence was an enormously demanding and elongated effort, witnessing the difficulties and dangers of exposure to a sometimes highly charged atmosphere. More frequently, the period was an extended but very necessary operation filled with the grim drudgery of laborious and unspectacular security duties, poor pay and conditions and extended periods away from family. Notwithstanding, it was a role which gave the Defence Forces a very real purpose and their contribution is one sacrifice, of stoic calm and uncomplaining loyalty to the State, and a proud unswerving service to the nation. This is that already forgotten story.

      BEGINNINGS

      Troubled Times

      The calling out of taunts, catcalls and jeers gave way to the throwing of stones, bricks and bottles, but it was the petrol bomb smashing full-square onto a Shortland armoured Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) vehicle, setting it alight, which gave rise to the loudest roars and cheers. The RUC men quickly evacuated the vehicle, its tyres, bonnet and roof ablaze as after a day of mounting tension Derry’s Bogside area erupted into a running battle between Catholic nationalist youths and the predominantly protestant police force. The staging of the Apprentice Boys’ parade had been contentious; there had been an expectation of trouble and the tension had been building for some time. As the Northern crisis worsened, Taoiseach Jack Lynch sent his Minister for External Affairs, Dr Patrick Hillery, to London to meet Michael Stewart, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. Hillery expressed the Irish Government’s grave concerns about the prospect of holding an excessively large Apprentice Boys’ parade on 12 August 1969, deliberately routed through Catholic areas, and urged that it be banned, or at least confined to Protestant areas, that no partisan B-Specials (the RUC Auxiliary police force) should be allowed to be deployed and that British Government observers should be present to exercise a restraining influence on events. In reply, he was told that it was a matter for the Stormont and London Governments not Dublin, that it was better to control than ban the parade and that the parade was to follow the less provocative of the two routes.

      What followed bore out the Dublin Government’s misgivings and the London Government’s misjudgement. Westminster’s misguided policy on non-interference in Stormont’s five decades of misrule was about to unmercifully misfire.

      A strong RUC force had been drafted into Derry and the Catholic Bogsiders were fearful that its deployment would not be impartial; that instead it would be extreme and uncompromising towards them. The initial disturbances flared in Waterloo Square during the late afternoon, towards the end of the parade when sections of the Catholic and Protestant crowds faced each other. The RUC and its part-time reserve – the feared and hated steel-helmeted, shield-carrying, baton-wielding B-Specials – forced the stone-throwing Catholic youths back towards the Bogside, a nationalist area in Derry. After two hours of stone throwing between the two sides, charge and counter charge, advance and retreat up and down William Street, approximately a quarter of a mile into the Bogside, the RUC made its move.

      The feared eruption of rioting and street violence escalated quickly, progressing into an unprecedented sustained exchange that developed with heightened intensity, the residents inflamed by the naked aggression of the RUC, the B-Specials and the Protestant mob following behind them. The brutality of the B-Specials was nothing new for the Bogsiders; eight months previously, in January 1969, they had launched a limited but nonetheless fierce foray and the residents had not forgotten the experience. This time they were ready, prepared and expectant. Moreover,

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