The August Bank Holiday Monday of 1979 was hot and sunny. I was a Major, commanding B Company of 2nd Battalion The Parachute Regiment (2 Para) serving in Northern Ireland, General Sir Mike Jackson writes.
We had been on operations for several days and we had come in to the HQ of the Queen’s Own Highlanders at Bessbrook, County Armagh, to sort ourselves out. The plan was to stay a night or two.
Meanwhile, 2 Para’s Support Company was due to be relieved in Newry later that day by A Company. My opposite number in A Company was Major Peter Fursman. He was already in Newry in the process of taking over from Major Barry Rogan, commanding Support Company. We were all good friends.
A Company would be coming in by road convoy, which was always a concern; the route would be chosen at random to vary any pattern we might have been setting. The choice was to be a fateful one. The convoy, a Land Rover and two lorries carrying 26 men of A Company, was sent south along the coast and then up the eastern shore of the estuary of the Newry River.
For several miles above the port of Warrenpoint, the estuary funnels into a tidal lough about 200 yards wide. Known as Narrow Water, it marks the border with the Irish Republic. Thick woods came down to the water’s edge on the republic side, providing cover for terrorists, who had a clear view of traffic on the road on the Northern Ireland side.
There were no obstacles to interfere with a radio signal detonating a bomb and, being in the republic, an IRA team would have a good chance of escaping after an attack. It was an ideal spot for an ambush, in other words.
The Army had long recognised the vulnerability of this stretch of road and frequently put it out of bounds. However, there were only a few routes into Newry from the 2 Para base at Ballykinler and, if we were to avoid establishing a predictable pattern, we had to use this one from time to time.
In studying the Army’s procedures following a bomb attack, the IRA had noted that we invariably set up a control point near the scene, from which to evacuate casualties and collect forensic evidence. They decided to exploit this procedure by placing two bombs close to each other on the estuary route, the second located where the incident control point was likely to be.
The first bomb was hidden beneath straw bales in a trailer parked the previous night in a lay-by. The second was hidden about 200 yards further along the road towards Newry, in the gate lodge of a country house.
B Company was relaxing back at Bessbrook when the dreadful news of Lord Mountbatten’s murder came through at about midday. He and members of his family had been heading out to sea on a fishing-trip from Mullaghmore, County Sligo, when a radio-controlled device hidden in the boat was triggered from the shore.
As well as the Earl, three others had been killed. We were deeply shocked. But a bad day was about to get much worse.
Shortly before 5pm I was in the officers’ mess at Bessbrook when the intercom buzzed. It was my colour sergeant.
“I think you’d better come upstairs,” he said. “Now.”
There had been an explosion on the road from Warrenpoint to Newry. Men from 2 Para were involved.
The bomb in the lay-by had been detonated at 4.30pm as the rear lorry of the convoy was passing. It took the full force of the explosion and was hurled on its side. Bodies of the soldiers who had been riding inside the lorry were scattered across the road.
Convinced they were being shot at from the other side of the water, surviving soldiers opened fire, killing an innocent tourist and wounding another. One soldier spotted movement behind a roadside wall; pointing his gun, he shouted an order to come out with hands up. Several shocked children appeared; they had been picnicking with their mother.
Lieutenant-Colonel David Blair, commanding officer of the Queen’s Own Highlanders at Bessbrook, was airborne in a Gazelle helicopter when he heard the news, and headed to the scene. Barry Rogan and Peter Fursman also headed there, coming by road from Newry.
On arrival, they made the fateful decision to set up the incident control point at the gate-lodge. A Wessex helicopter carrying a medical team landed nearby in the road and began loading the wounded.
At that moment the watching terrorists detonated the second bomb. The lodge disintegrated in the huge explosion. Lumps of granite were hurled through the air. The Wessex was showered with rubble but, though severely damaged, it managed to take off and reach Bessbrook.
Back in Bessbrook there was much confusion about what had happened. Brigadier David Thorne, Commander of 3 Brigade, arrived at Bessbrook from his HQ in Dungannon and took control of the situation. Then he noticed me.
“Hello, Mike,” he said. “What are you doing here?” I explained that we were untasked, having just come off an operation.
“Right,” he said. “Get down to Warrenpoint and sort it out.”
Within minutes I was flying to the scene with my immediate command team, followed in fairly short order by the rest of the company. Our job was to relieve the soldiers on the ground and contain the scene. I remember saying: “We want to be bloody careful that there isn’t a third one around here somewhere.”
I arrived at the incident within half an hour of the second explosion. As we circled before landing, I could see two craters and large scorch-marks on the road. I found Barry Rogan, now the senior officer on site, his forehead covered by a field dressing; after a quick briefing, he handed over to me. It was a horrifying scene.
There was human debris everywhere – in the trees, on the grass verge and in the water. Mostly unidentifiable lumps of red flesh, but among them torsos, limbs, heads, hands and ears. I had seen the effect of bombs before but never carnage on this scale.
When a bomb goes off, the air inside the body is compressed and often forces its way out through the joints. All that was left of the driver of the rear lorry was his pelvis, welded to the seat by the intense heat. In such circumstances your emotions shut down and training takes over.
It stayed light late that warm summer evening. It seemed unbelievable that something so terrible could have happened in such a beautiful spot. One of the divers from the Royal Engineers asked me quietly to come and look at something he’d found in the water.
It was a human face that had been blown clear of the man’s skull. The line of a moustache was still visible. The diver asked if I recognised the man. I felt a shiver of horror.
“Of course I do,” I said in a shaky voice. “He’s a good friend of mine.”
It was Peter Fursman; that was all we ever found of him. David Blair was identified only by the crown and the star of his rank on his epaulette.
I was told that back at Ballykinler the wives and families were waiting to hear who had been killed. Apparently, there was a rumour that I was one of the dead. The final body count was 18 soldiers killed – 16 Paras and two from the Queen’s Own Highlanders. Six more Paras were seriously wounded.
This was the highest number of soldiers killed in any single incident during the whole bloody history of the Troubles. The loss to the Paras was the worst in a single contact since Arnhem in 1944. The clear-up was very hard for the soldiers because these were their mates.
I still have ugly pictures in my head from that terrible day. Once you’ve seen such appalling sights you can’t close your mind to them. But I don’t have nightmares; fortunately my temperament isn’t like that. My attitude is: move on, put that away, because if you get bogged down in thinking too much about it you might start losing your own courage – and that wouldn’t do at all.
Peter Fursman’s widow, Christine, said she wanted to see where her husband had died. I took it upon myself to escort her around the site of the bombing; it seemed to me that I owed it to them both. For me this was the hardest moment of the whole incident.
Christine’s fortitude was tremendously affecting. I felt close to tears myself as I watched her holding back her own. I was very anxious that there might still be body parts lying around, but if she did catch sight of anything of that kind she didn’t react.
Peter and I were the same age and the same rank. We’d been friends for years and spent a lot of time together. It occurred to me later that if the cards had come off the pack in a different order, it could have been B Company rather than A Company travelling along the road that day.
• From ‘Soldier’ by General Sir Mike Jackson
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