Soldiering Against Subversion. Dan Harvey
as the disturbance continued. The Gardaí responded with baton charges, causing the crowd to eventually disperse and retreat into Clare Street, only for them to erect a makeshift barricade outside the Mount Clare Hotel. Fires were set, windows broken and cars vandalised. In all, fourteen Gardaí were injured during the disturbances but the Embassy remained intact.
Whilst this was ongoing, not too far away in St Stephen’s Green three Nationalist Stormont MPs arrived at the offices of the Department of External Affairs (Iveagh House) requesting to speak with the Taoiseach. They were there to obtain weapons for beleaguered Catholics in Belfast’s Falls Road area, where the B-Specials and extremist Protestant mobs were running amok attacking nationalists, burning rows of houses and injuring scores of residents. Three people had been fatally shot, and with the number of displaced people growing the situation was deteriorating alarmingly, eclipsing the uproar and rioting that was witnessed during the Battle of the Bogside:
I was Quartermaster for a large FCÁ Camp (second line, part-time reservists) in Gormanstown Camp, Co. Meath, when mid-morning at the camp’s end – and organising the FCÁ out, and refugees in – I emerged from my office to find the camp suddenly ‘chock-a-block’ full with army vehicles and hundreds of troops. Enquiring as to what was happening, I was glibly told: ‘Oh, we’re from the Brugha (Cathal Brugha Barracks, Rathmines, Dublin) and now we’re the 16th Infantry Group going to the Border.’
Their arrival was a total surprise to me and the sudden presence of possible extra mouths to feed immediately triggered my quartermasterly instinct and mind-set and I decided I needed to know if they were expecting to be fed. To this end I boldly interrupted an officer’s briefing in progress and requested of the officer-in-charge were he and his men staying for lunch, to be told they were and [I was] thanked for my seeking clarification on the matter. Then was added: ‘But I want the Point Platoon fed first.’ I had never heard the expression ‘Point Platoon’ used before and discreetly enquired as to who and what were his Point Platoon? I was informed that they were a recently passed-out recruit platoon and the only platoon to have combat uniforms!
It is often said that the truth comes out in a crisis. Such truths that the Troubles were set to expose, however, had yet to be revealed. The Irish Government would face unprecedented challenges as the various strands of the circumstances played out dramatically. One element which became starkly obvious early on though was a lack of foresight: aware of a growing political problem on its doorstep, the Defence Forces were grossly unprepared for its outbreak and the early days of the crisis – a period of considerable danger – proved to be a time of great difficulty. There was great uncertainty; no one was sure what might happen next; and there was no planning contingency, no resources were available and no organisational preparations had been made. Yet the need for action and a speedy response to the eruption of the Troubles was paramount. Nine years previously, the Defence Forces had received a serious jolt when they were suddenly tasked by the United Nations to provide a response for overseas troop participation in the Congo. This overseas involvement was to prove to be the single most significant development in the history of the Defence Forces. Nearly a decade later, the Defence Forces remained undermanned, underarmed and underfunded, only now it was facing a severe test at home; the mission to contain a situation which, if unaddressed, could possibly lead to a civil war on the island of Ireland.
Along with the setting up of field hospitals and refugee stations, and coordinating the northward movement of Irish troops to the border, a prudent, logical contingency to explore was the possibility of a drastic humanitarian crisis, with an extraction operation in extremis if necessary. If the violence in the North escalated, should Irish troops on the border move into the Six Counties to extricate nationalists from attack and significant loss of life, or to facilitate the rescue of wounded and terrified portions of the Catholic population? A judicious proposal, it was contingent on the operational and logistical capability to execute it. However daringly audacious, morally justified and politically righteous, it would need to be rigorously feasible, and the Irish army in its current state was not in a position to respond to such a scenario.
There were, however, some who recklessly advocated this course of action. The Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, was not one of them and he again requested Dr Patrick Hillery, the Minister for External Affairs, to travel to London to propose the setting up of a combined Irish and British military peacekeeping force, or alternatively a United Nations one. Unsuccessful with the British Government in London, the Irish Government continued to internationalise the Northern Ireland crisis and Patrick Hillery travelled to the United Nations Headquarters in New York in an attempt to raise the Northern Irish situation as a motion on the UN Security Council Agenda. This initiative was not necessarily to actually achieve such an outcome, it was deemed an internal matter for the United Kingdom, but to create worldwide awareness of the matter, which was certainly achieved.
The British had overall responsibility for the situation in Northern Ireland but understood neither the problem nor the place. The Northern Irish Unionists understood the problem, but had no desire to reform, and the Northern Irish Nationalists had a strong case for reform but had neither the voice nor the platform. The Irish Government had no jurisdiction but had to contain the crisis from spilling over into their territory. Not only were they challenged externally, there were internal problems to be 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