The Provisionals issued a statement saying that the men had been captured but were ‘summarily shot in an orgy of British Army and RUC concentrated fire’. The IRA, apparently in reference to the stated desire of Army commanders to frighten it through increased undercover activities, added, ‘Death is no stranger or deterrent to the volunteers of the Irish Republican Army.’ An estimated 2000 people joined the funeral procession for the three bombers. The mainly Catholic Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) said the killings were part of a ‘shooting-without-question’ policy by the Army and asked for an inquiry into the incident – a request which was turned down by Roy Mason, the then Northern Ireland Secretary.
At HQNI, Lisburn, there was jubilation following the shooting. It was felt a great success had been scored against the Provisionals. The view at RUC headquarters, Knock, was different. Jack Hermon, Deputy Chief Constable, is said to have told Major General Trant forcefully at one of their regular meetings that he did not want shoot-outs on the streets of Belfast. Senior officers at Knock appear to have succeeded in checking the Army’s desire for more undercover operations of the Ballysillan kind in Belfast. It was to be ten years before another person died in an SAS operation in Belfast, and that was a passer-by who was not a member of a paramilitary gang.
Despite the desire at Lisburn to step up covert SAS operations and the increase in intelligence information available, it remained difficult for intelligence specialists to gain reliable foreknowledge of a terrorist attack. Most informer or ‘tout’ intelligence was extremely vague. A certain person was going to be killed, for example, but the tout didn’t know where or when. As a result many operations by the SAS, COPs and 14 Company produced no information, no arrests and no dead terrorists.
Unsuccessful operations of this kind led to Army impatience with informers and the Intelligence Corps briefers or ‘green slime’ as they are known in special forces slang – a reference to the Int Corps’ bright green beret – who liaise with them. ‘Soldier I’, an SAS sergeant who subsequently wrote his memoirs, remembered an operation which produced no results: ‘Bastard, I thought, all this pissing about for nothing! The sharp acid of frustration started to well up and corrode my insides. My skull seemed to grow tighter and press in on my brain. The fucking tout had got it wrong. How much was the green slime paying him anyway?’
By late 1978 it had become clear that the use of the SAS carried political risks. Killing the wrong person, particularly if they are unarmed or not members of a paramilitary group, can carry a heavy political penalty. It confirms a belief among many Catholics that the SAS are a force of state executioners. The death of William Hanna marked the beginning of a string of mishaps for the SAS.
The month after Ballysillan a group of four SAS men travelled to Dunloy in County Antrim. The village is set in close, rolling country. Its Catholic population reside in a predominantly Protestant area. Outside the village, on the side of a hill overlooking the road from Ballymena to Ballymoney is a small, disused graveyard. It is connected to a small road which runs up the hill by a track with hedges on both sides.
Quite close to where the path enters the graveyard and fairly central to the small, square, burial area which is surrounded by a hedge is a fallen headstone. It was underneath this slab that John Boyle, the sixteen-year-old son of a local farmer, made what he must have thought an exciting discovery. Secreted beneath the slab was an Armalite rifle, a pistol and other terrorist paraphernalia. John rushed home to his father, Con Boyle, who immediately phoned the police.
A train of events had begun which were to claim a life and see SAS men brought to trial. Senior police and Army officers decided that the SAS should stake out the graveyard, in case terrorists returned to the cache.
Four SAS men were sent to cover the graveyard. They had split into two groups of two, each in what the Army calls an ‘Aggressive OP’. The mission in such an observation post is to wait and see what happens but to open fire if the circumstances justify it. Corporal Alan Bohan and Trooper Ron Temperley occupied the OP closest to the gravestone.
Early the next morning, 11 July 1978, Con and his two sons, John and Harry, set out to work the fields. A couple of hours later John Boyle left his father and brother working in the fields and curiosity took him back to the graveyard.
At about 10 a.m. Con Boyle heard shots from the graveyard. He went across, joined by his son Harry. As they approached two soldiers with blackened faces and camouflage clothing appeared and threw them to the ground. Con remembers one of the soldiers saying, ‘The other bastard’s lying dead.’ Initially the soldiers were in high spirits, but their mood soon changed.
John Boyle the teenager who’d found the cache, had been shot, felled by SAS bullets. A few minutes too late a detective from Ballymoney police station rang the farmhouse, telling Mrs Boyle that under no circumstances should anyone return to the graveyard. Shortly after the soldiers realized what had happened they were taken away by helicopter. Other troops came to secure the area.
The incident grew into a public relations disaster for the Army. Matters were compounded by the Lisburn press office’s release of inaccurate statements about what had happened in an attempt to make the soldiers’ actions seem justifiable.
At first journalists were told that an Army patrol had stopped three terrorists. In fact the Boyles had no connection with any paramilitary group and it would be difficult to imagine how any Catholics finding an IRA arms cache could have behaved more responsibly. It was then suggested that John Boyle had