THE AMERICAN tourists were growing accustomed to the buzz of army helicopters overhead. The whirring would stop and start again as their two buses crossed intermittently over the invisible border separating Northern Ireland from the Republic. The video-camera enthusiasts tried in vain to film the choppers. “See how they like it,” said one man loudly to the crowd, in reference to the spy cameras which rose from the numerous towers dotting the countryside.
South Armagh residents had been campaigning for 25 years to have the outposts removed but they had multiplied instead, just as surely and steadily as the horrors of The Troubles had increased. When a group of armed men emerged from the scrub, an exasperated blonde woman rolled her eyes. “It’s the goddamn Brits again,” she said, automatically adopting the derogatory term used by Irish republicans.
A fellow traveller, pointing to the balaclavas and machine guns, corrected her. “Heck no, it’s the goddamn fucking IRA.” And with that, these well-to-do, middle-class men and women scrambled from their seats to shake hands and pose for photos with the men and weapons their money may well have bought. “We’re behind you 100 per cent boys,” one man said, before he and his fellow Noraid contributors hurriedly returned to their buses.
The IRA volunteers, having participated in a risky but potentially profitable public relations exercise for their patrons, disappeared as quickly as they had materialised. The army’s top guerrillas had to change clothes and return home to the nearby villages where Sunday dinner was hot and waiting on the table.
When the IRA’s ceasefire began on September 1, Catholic
nationalists in Belfast and Derry took to the streets for a night of historic celebration. In Crossmaglen, South Armagh’s most famous village, the clock’s midnight chime raised barely a murmur from the town’s 1,800 residents. The army’s helicopters stopped momentarily and returned early the next morning in a routine they had followed for the previous 25 years.
“They’re naïve in Belfast to think it’s all over now,” says Paddy Short, the 75-year-old town publican, republican and original civil rights campaigner. “Really, it’s not over until they leave.” He nods his head towards the heavily reinforced army barracks which dominates the tiny village square.
No sound emits from this monolithic building despite the fact it teems with at least a hundred security personnel who work, eat and sleep in the ground under this bewildering outcrop. The soldiers emerge occasionally for helicopter surveillance trips but they learn early that it doesn’t pay to walk the streets. When they do take to the road they run quickly and in formation, their rifles at the ready.
A fortnight of IRA peace does little to dispel the overpowering knowledge that this tiny triangle of land, 100 square miles in size, has claimed more soldiers and RUC men through the sniper’s bullet and the mortar bomb than any other part of Northern Ireland.
While nationalists in Derry and Belfast have rejoiced at the reduction in troop levels since the ceasefire, Crossmaglen still echoes daily with the sound of army Chinooks. Many believe patrols have actually increased in Crossmaglen and its surrounds. The British army seems to be waiting for this stubborn little town to challenge the leaders of the IRA and ignore the ceasefire, just as it did in the 1974 ceasefire.
Still, parts of the police routine have been relaxed. Members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary will now stand on the road at checkpoints without the fear of a sniper bullet in their back and some can be seen driving around in cars – something that hasn’t happened since two officers were killed by a booby trap in January, 1970.
That was the first of thousands of IRA attacks which gave the guerrillas from Crossmaglen and surrounding South Armagh a notoriety for defying death and imprisonment. The only reputation which is likely to supersede it is one imposed by an unwitting British Government: that of the most militarised zone in western Europe.
“People have only two options here,” says Short. “Accept the army, take them in and cuddle them and all the rest of it or react against them. The people here were always gonna go against them. What the hell’s the army doing here anyway?”
In 1974, Merlyn Rees, the then Secretary of State, tagged South Armagh “bandit country”. The locals, far from being offended, adopted it as their own. Crossmaglen’s surrounding hills, thickly covered valleys and tight-knit community have combined to thwart every one of the British army’s attempts to break the hold of the IRA here. With 223 security force deaths since 1969, it’s generally acknowledged that this is one battle the bandits have won.
“Some people might not support IRA activities but the thing is, if a woman saw a young fella in the IRA and the soldiers were after him she’d hide him in the house even though she mightn’t agree and tell him off later for being stupid, “ says Paddy, who was a victim of a British bullet during a scuffle with civil rights marchers in 1974. “Same thing if the IRA was waiting to attack the soldiers. People wouldn’t tell the soldiers. They just mind their own business.”
“We look straight through the soldiers as if they’re not even there,” says one drinker at Shorts, as he throws back the last of his pint. “There’s no friends, no good mornings. It hurts them more than any words could.”
Only the hardest of British soldiers, mainly marines and paratroopers, do a three-month tour of duty in The Cross, as it is called. Local shop keepers stopped serving them shortly after their arrival, even before the IRA sent death threats to anyone supplying them with goods or services. Everything the army needs, from breakfast cereal to soap, is flown in and all their refuse if flown out – including the soldiers’ latrine contents.
While other border towns are only starting the battle to reopen the roads to the south, Crossmaglen’s bumpy links with the 26 counties never closed. That was despite army explosions, stone bollards cemented to the tarmac and the threat of violence. It was the first campaign which united the people and was a forewarning of the psychological and physical warfare the two sides would engage in.
O’Fiaich Square, named after the late Cardinal O’Fiaich, the region’s most famous local son, is dotted with bullet holes and scorch marks as testament to the violence of the past. New soldiers to the Cross are shown the site where three grenadier guardsmen were machine-gunned to death while passers-by did their Christmas shopping in 1978.
A bullet nick near the front door of Murtagh’s pub marks the spot where The Cross’ infamous unidentified sniper killed his ninth and last victim late last year. His partner’s voice yelling “open your eyes Jimmy” still resonates around the silent village for many residents. They remained frozen behind their locked doors, knowing that to help now would mean being punished later by the IRA.
“In the early days from about 1971 to 1980 there were a lot of attacks here, you know, once or twice a week but in the last 10 years we might have had three or four attacks in a year,” says life-long resident Michael McEvoy. “We’d be here in the pub and hear an explosion but after half an hour the whole thing dies down.”
“George Orwell didn’t know the half of it.” Jim McAllister – widower, chain-smoker and Sinn Fein councillor – is gazing out at the four army outposts which are situated within a two-mile radius of Crossmaglen. “You can drive for miles and never be out of their sight.”
There are 14 other similar posts, each with high tech surveillance equipment, scattered amongst the small farms and villages in South Armagh. Locals joke that they are the only concrete result of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement.
More frightening is new research suggesting that residents in the area have a three times greater risk of developing a brain haemorrhage than anyone else in the North – a result, one local GP says, of the non-ionising radiation emitting from surveillance equipment. Just as the metal structures point to the British army’s presence, “road” signs on the outskirts of Crossmaglen also act as a harbinger of another army influence – that of the IRA. One shows the silhouette of a gunman with the words “Sniper At Work”; another, a nose-diving helicopter with the warning “Heli-buster Control Zone.”
“Why don’t the army tear them down?” I ask. “They had a habit of exploding when you touched them so they learnt to leave them alone,” says McAllister, father-of-three. The IRA unit here has a reputation for skill and expertise which has made it the most notorious in Northern Ireland. And the local supporters are eager to relate their success stories.
Like last September’s operation in which IRA volunteers attacked army helicopters and engaged them in a running battle from the ground for five hours before disappearing into thick scrub. Or the time when a flame-thrower decimated an outpost and all in it but an embarrassed British army claimed no fatalities except some deaths a day later in “some place where they have peace.”
Despite a camera mounted on a 160 foot pole which records movements in the immediate outlying area, the barracks have been attacked countless times, including occasions of very high security.
“The Brits might be watching everything but they don’t know the country,” says McAllister, dragging heavily on another cigarette. “They might see farmer Joe go by with his cart every day at 11.00 but one day it’s not farmer Joe but IRA man Joe but they don’t know that and that’s why they could never win this territory.
“The IRA really would have to be the best guerrilla force in the world.”
“The IRA is accepted as part and parcel of living in Cross-maglen,” says Gerry Murray, proprietor and editor of the local newspaper, The Chronicle.
“The fact there’s a ceasefire is a great relief. You can reach out and touch and feel the relief. You know you aren’t going to get caught up in some violent explosion and you don’t have to worry about the kids.”
Most houses in the village centre are pockmarked with the shells of mortars. Children of the ’70s have kept their souvenirs of shrapnel and bullet cartridges collected after each gun battle. They remember the visits of IRA volunteers afterwards, admiring the collection of spent shells while surreptitiously retrieving the valuable ammunition clips.
Everyone has a story of near misses, incredible escapes. While at least 50 people file claims for housing damage after each mortar attack, few are successful in being compensated with the accompanying shock of it all. The IRA says its careful planning and speedy warnings have spared the lives of every civilian. Others say it is a miracle.
Despite republican assertions that the IRA has wide support in Crossmaglen, a 100 per cent nationalist town, and its immediate surrounds, the Social Democratic Labour Party still holds three of the five local council seats compared with Sinn Fein’s two.
“When the IRA comes into the pub selling their newsletter and tickets for the raffle everyone buys them, but quite a few will leave the paper behind when they leave,” says one local man.
“They might not agree with the IRA but few will create trouble for themselves.” Like their counterparts in Belfast and Derry, South Armagh’s paramilitaries also take on the policing role for a community which has a deep distrust of the RUC and British army. Plenty of young men have disappeared overnight to start new lives in London. Some again have disappeared without trace, their fate rumoured to be a shallow grave somewhere in the hills.
Kneecappings are more rare here but people can still remember the 1970s when tar and feathering was acceptable. Just last year a gang of teenage vandals had their heads shaved and were forced to parade through the village wearing placards on their backs saying “I am a vandal” and “I am a thief.”
“I felt sorry for the lads but I didn’t lose any sleep over them,” says Murray, who did not report the incident in his local newspaper because “it served no purpose. I’m sure the families were extremely embarrassed, but what can you do?”
“A percentage of the population would say it’s got to be stopped but we don’t have a regular security of police protection here so we have to get our own security force to take care of it.”
“Claims for harassment by the security forces will increase depending on what regiment is in town,” says local solicitor Thomas Tiernan. “The marines and paratroopers are notorious and you can always tell when there’ll be trouble.”
The British army has made a number of out-of-court settlements of 10,000 pounds each following violent and unprovoked attacks on residents at checkpoints. Tiernan is unaware if any are removed from the village, it being difficult to distinguish one soldier from the other “with all that camouflage paint and the helmets.” Everyone has a tale of aggravation: dead rats tied by their tails to doorknobs, street lights being broken, animals let loose, constant and unnecessary checks on identity.
Over 1,000 troops descended on Crossmaglen in July, while the barracks were being expanded. It increased the population by almost 50 per cent and doubled the number of complaints, particularly from young women.
“They’d pull over their car at a checkpoint, keep them there for an hour or so and then another lot would pull the same woman in just a hundred yards up the road,” says Tiernan.
“I guess they think it’s a bit of craic. It’s not much craic for the women though.” The killing of local resident and Sinn Fein member, Feargal Caraher, by British soldiers in 1990 focused international attention on the actions of the army in Northern Ireland. While the army maintains that the 20-year-old was shot when the car he was travelling in failed to stop at a checkpoint, eyewitnesses told international lawyers at a community inquiry that the vehicle had been waved through before three soldiers knelt down and opened fire.
His widow, Margaret, and four-year-old son still live in Crossmaglen, their tiny home overshadowed by a monstrous army base.
“There are several things they could have done if they had wanted to stop him again but in all honesty they are not trained to wound,” says the petite 24-year-old. “They’re trained to shoot at your heart or your head. The chances of them not doing that are slim.”
Fourteen months after the incident, two marines were charged with murder but were later acquitted. Margaret Caraher is now seeking a hearing in the European Court.
Despite a feeling of being constantly under siege, Crossmaglen inhabitants have learnt to exploit their position as best they can. Farmers on either side “lend” each other cattle for head counts when European Union subsidies are being handed out. The unemployed can claim benefits on either side if they are quick and clever enough and the entrepreneurial smuggler can make a decent living in cigarettes, whiskey and fuel. They know their position is safe from nosy bureaucrats unwilling to venture into such territory without an army helicopter and police escort.
With the idea of peace finally seeping its way into residents’ psyche, there is even talk of economic renewal and a tourist boom.
“If the peace keeps up it could be a boom tourist town if for no other reason than to see South Armagh’s bandit country without going all the way up north to see the bandits,” says the newspaper editor, Murray.
The less optimistic refer to a history peppered with injustices as an indicator of the future. The community’s very existence is the result of a forced eviction from Ulster by the Protestant plantation owners of the early 1600s. Residents look no further than 1921 as an example of how they were sacrificed by the Dublin Government in partition, leaving them in the hands of Protestant politicians who neglected the nationalist population on the border.
“You never have anyone around here involved in talks,” says short, as he closes up for the night. “We’re always bypassed and ignored completely.”
Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, is well-liked in Crossmaglen, “although he’s only been here once or twice.” The Cross residents are expecting him to deliver a solution and a united Ireland is the only deal they want to hear him accept.
“A united Ireland is the only answer,” says Short. “If Adams accepts anything less, we’ll continue with the armed struggle. Men were head of the IRA before Adams came along and there’ll be men head of it when Adams is gone.”