Several hours later, at 3 a.m. on 2 December, Soldier A briefed five other SAS soldiers on the task ahead. In a subsequent written statement he said, ‘It was my intention on this mission to apprehend any terrorist attempting to take any weapons or clothing from the cache, and the members of the group were briefed accordingly.’ He told them that they should only open fire in accordance with the Yellow Card rules and after he had attempted to issue a challenge.
Before dawn the six SAS soldiers had put themselves into positions around the field. They were split into three groups of two. All but one of them was armed with an Armalite AR15 rifle, the sixth carrying an HK53. The HK53 was something of an SAS favourite, being of the same compact, reliable design as the Heckler and Koch MP5 9 mm sub-machine-guns used at the Iranian embassy but firing a more powerful 5.56 mm round, like the Armalite.
Two of the groups positioned themselves overlooking the cache. They were about 30 metres away from the IRA weapons behind another part of the embankment. The third group were further away, lying in a ditch about 50 metres from the others and 10 metres from the lane which runs past the field. It is close country – small fields are surrounded by thick hedges and the ground around the field is undulating and often waterlogged.
For two days nothing happened. One soldier in each pair remained alert at all times, with the other often resting in a sleeping bag. The pair in the roadside ditch heard the comings and goings of passers-by, a few feet away from them. The soldiers had to ensure that they remained undetected by such people, who might have been scouts for the Provisionals. It is partly the skill and self-discipline of SAS soldiers, in their ability to remain undetected for days while exposed to the elements, which results in them being given such missions.
At about 3 p.m. on Sunday, a brown Talbot car with three men in it pulled up. Two of the men made their way through a gap in the hedge towards the hidden guns. Colm McGirr, twenty-two, and Brian Campbell, nineteen, were both Provisionals from the Coalisland area. The other man stayed with the car, which had been parked just off the road in a gateway.
According to the soldiers’ later statements, McGirr went straight towards the hedge and pulled out the Armalite which he handed to Campbell. Soldier A used his radio to alert the others. As Campbell had turned and began to head back to the car, and McGirr was still kneeling by the cache, Soldier A says he shouted the challenge ‘Halt, Security Forces!’.
The men did not reply, but McGirr ‘pivoted round, pointing the shotgun in my direction’, according to the SAS man, who opened fire. Campbell, now running towards the car, appeared to turn threateningly too, the SAS men said, and was also engaged. McGirr was hit by up to thirteen bullets, according to later examination, and died immediately.
Although several soldiers were firing at him from only 20–30 metres away, Campbell was hit just twice. The man at the car, realizing it was a trap, jumped in and started the engine. The soldiers fired at the car, shattering its windscreen. As the Talbot pulled away Soldiers E and F, who had been waiting in the roadside ditch, also opened fire. As the car sped past them Soldier E fired ten rounds at it, several of which were believed to have hit. The car was later found two miles away, spattered with blood, but with no driver.
The soldiers moved forward to the shot IRA members. Campbell was still just alive. Soldier D said in his statement:
There was one exit wound at the front of his left shoulder from which he was losing a lot of blood. I put a shell dressing on this. I did not dress the entry wounds as they were not bleeding. At this stage he was going into deep shock and having difficulty in breathing. I immediately inserted a plastic breathing tube in his throat to assist his breathing and placed him in the coma position. I stayed with him checking his pulse and pupils for about five minutes until he died.
At Lisburn the incident was regarded as a success. But the IRA made various allegations about what had happened, allegations designed to deprive the Army of its ‘clean kill’ and to outrage local nationalists. The Provisionals said that the driver of the car disputed the soldiers’ claim that there had been any shouted warning. They also alleged that the men had been shot before they had reached the arms cache and were therefore defenceless. A priest called to the scene reportedly confirmed that both bodies were lying near the fence, suggesting that they were shot as soon as they entered the field.
Were the soldiers really ordered to arrest them or was it an ambush? Would the soldiers have done things differently if they had wanted to apprehend them?
During the previous few years, there had been several occasions when the security forces had found arms caches. Sometimes, for example when an informer from the County Down IRA had provided them with a machine gun, they had responded by ‘jarking’ weapons; at others by making them jam if fired. In certain instances, for example following the discovery of the sniper’s rifle on a farm near Dungannon in 1980, arrests followed.
The IRA was aware of the possibility that the weapons might have been tampered with, saying after the McGirr/Campbell shooting that, ‘In all probability the ammunition had also been removed from the weapons.’ The RUC stated that the weapons had been loaded when recovered. However, it is clear from both the IRA and Army statements that the weapons had only been there for a short time: before the soldiers went in they realized that the guns were likely to be removed
