Drummuckavall Ambush

Drummuckavall Ambush
Part of The Troubles
Date 22 November 1975 Location Drummuckavall, County Armagh 54°3′6.71″N 6°34′11.48″W / 54.0518639°N 6.5698556°W / 54.0518639; -6.5698556Coordinates: 54°3′6.71″N 6°34′11.48″W / 54.0518639°N 6.5698556°W / 54.0518639; -6.5698556 Result IRA success SAS deployed to Northern Ireland[1]
Belligerents
Provisional IRA (South Armagh Brigade)	British Army (Royal Regiment of Fusiliers)
Commanders and leaders
Unknown	Lance Corporal Paul Johnson
Strength
Up to 12 IRA members	1 infantry section
Casualties and losses
None	3 dead 1 wounded

The Drummuckavall Ambush was a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) attack on a British Army observation post southeast of Crossmaglen, County Armagh, along the border with the Republic of Ireland. It occurred on 22 November 1975 and resulted in the deaths of three soldiers.

Background

During the mid-1970s, the most violent decade of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the monitoring of the border between south County Armagh and the Republic of Ireland by the British Army was carried out from several static observation posts (OPs), in order to prevent attacks launched from beyond the border. These part-time manned positions were highly vulnerable to attack, as proved by a 1974 bomb attack which claimed the lives of two Royal Marines at the outpost of Drummuckavall.^[2]

It was not until 1986, when the first surveillance watchtowers were erected by the code named operations "Condor" and "Magistrate" that the army tried to regain the initiative in the region from the IRA.^[3]

The intelligence and control over the area relied until then, and for a lapse of ten years, mostly on mobile posts, comprising small uncovered infantry sections.^[4]

The ambush

A section of four soldiers from the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers regiment, coming from Crossmaglen, mounted an observation post at 2:00 on 21 November 1975. Unknown to them, an IRA unit of about 12 members had spotted their position with the help of some local people, who had been watching the previous movements of the troops. The next day, at 16:20, heavy gunfire erupted, killing three Fusiliers and disabling the communications equipment. Those killed were James Duncan (19), Peter McDonald (19) and Michael Sampson (20).^[5] The lance corporal in charge of the party, Paul Johnson, unscathed during the first burst, was seriously injured when he tried to react, after the IRA men asked him to surrender.^[6]

One of the AR-15 rifles used in the attack was found to have been used by the South Armagh Republican Action Force^[7][8] in an attack on the Tullyvallen Orange Hall that killed five civilians.^[9]

Aftermath

Shortly after the attack, Merlyn Rees, then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, issued a famous statement dubbing South Armagh Bandit Country.^[10] The next year, the British Government officially deployed the Special Air Service (SAS) into Northern Ireland in order to deal with the IRA.^[11] The secretive and undercover nature of this elite force made of them the best choice to infiltrate the South Armagh area, after the official report on the action exposed several flaws in the layout of the OP.^[1]

As a complement to the SAS operations, the British Army also changed tactics. Major General Dick Trant established small teams of troops, called COPs (close observation platoons), with the purpose of collecting information, often in plain clothes or camouflaged in the landscape. They were also able to set up ambushes, like the ill-fated Operation Conservation in 1990.^[4]

See also

• Timeline of Provisional Irish Republican Army actions
• Glasdrumman ambush
• Attack on Derryard checkpoint
• Operation Conservation
• Attack on Cloghogue checkpoint

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} "The fact that initially the SAS would operate only in South Armagh was an illustration of the seriousness of the situation there and tacit acceptance of the fact that normal soldiering and fieldcraft skills were proving inadequate. This had been brought home by the incident in which the three fusiliers had been killed when their Observation Post (OP) had been attacked in 1975. The Army follow up report identified a number of basic errors. The OP had been established in darkness on a slope at Drummuckavall behind bushes overlooking a small stream running along the border. Lance Corporal Johnson and three fusiliers had been bunched together on a single site, which was exposed and within sight of several houses. None of the soldiers was wearing a combat jacket or head net and a groundsheet had been flapping in the breeze. 'Remember, in South Armagh it is no use removing local vegetation to provide cover, locals will soon spot that' the report said, before concluding that the casualties had been the result of 'bad camouflage, wrong routine and incorrect OP layout." Harnden, page 159
2. ^ Harnden, page 254
3. ^ "'Before the towers went in they [the IRA] almost had complete freedom of movement and could pick the time and the place' he [Lt. Colonel Tim Spicer] said. 'They had a number of aces in their hand, and our intention was to try to take the initiative from them through total surveillance combined with impredictable patrols.'"Harnden, page 253
4. ^ ^{a b} "The SAS was a finite resource and was soon being used throughout Northern Ireland so there was a need for regular soldiers to be trained to operate covertly. This led to the establishment of Close Observation Platoons (COPs) by Major General Dick Trant in 1977. (...) As well as carrying out surveillance, COPs -which are tasked by RUC Special Branch rather than by the Army- have also been used in South Armagh to mount ambushes." Harnden, page 169
5. ^ CAIN chronology of events in NI toubles
6. ^ Harnden, pp. 67-68
7. ^ A Secret History of the IRA, Ed Moloney, 2002. (PB) ISBN 0-393-32502-4 (HB) ISBN 0-7139-9665-X p.320
8. ^ Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA‎, Richard English, 2005. ISBN 978-0-19-517753-4 p.171
9. ^ Simon Dunstan: For England and St George - A History of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, page 109
10. ^ Harnden, page 68
11. ^ Harnden, page 158

References

• Harnden, Toby (2000).Bandit Country:The IRA & South Armagh. Coronet Books. ISBN 0340717378