Declan Daly - Borderline - An Oral History of the Brexit Wars 2020-2022

Anyway, that first assault. It was the next day, so the third day after the initial Carsonite attack. 2 Cav had rolled out in the morning, we had asked to go for a night assault, but the PC9s and the ground troops still didn’t have enough night vision to go around. It all had a bit of a ‘walking towards the machine guns vibe’, going in by day. The worry was that there would be a push south of the gap into Donegal town and at that stage, it would not be self contained to the North and would spread south. Anyway, daytime it was.

The running order for us was the two EC135s running forward air control for the PC-9s, two AW139s with troops to secure landing sites for the Chinooks on the Western end of the Bluestacks, two Chinooks following close behind them and then us with the other four AW139s and last Chinook on our Eastern side. We were all split up into flights but the need to put sufficient troops in place meant we were all essentially in two big tactically spaced out trains. Because we were assualting mountain tops, we were also already up at altitude, which sucked. It’s worth pointing out that, yes, we’d been assaulting through the Cooleys and all that, but running straight at a hot LZ with a SAM threat? One that had already hit one of the Spectres? This was fairly new to all of us, so yeah, it’s fair to say there was a lot of nerves before take off. Once we got up and going though, there was too much going on to do anything except, well, just do it, get on with it. It wasn’t going to get any better for waiting at that stage!

Obviously, we had prepped the area, such arty as was available had hit our LZ just before we got there but a few miles out still. We split off East and the rest split off west. After trying to avoid the back end of a Chinook, the first big picture I saw when he cleared out of my way had quite a bit to take in. First, on the ground on the east, on my side. I saw the last few rounds splash on top of the mountains, where we were going to land. I saw smoke coming out of the Barnesmore Gap itself, where 2 Cav had only just pushed through, just then. There were two Mowags burning on the side of the road just south of it where they’d been pushed out of the way and the others were just steaming through, having blown up the roadblocks and you could still see where everyone was engaging the machine gun nests on the hills as they rolled through, no stopping.

The one that had my eyes popping though was the little thin threads of smoke, missiles, streaking up off the mountains on the West. The PC-9s were meant to hit that LZ with rockets and machine guns. I don’t know if any section of them had rolled in before that, but just after the missiles went up, a barrage of rockets came right back down on top of them. I was craning my head around to see what happened to the missiles, but once I looked up, I could see a PC-9, burning. Wherever the missile had actually hit them, the whole left wing was ablaze with big orange streaks behind them, the fuel was going up, you know? Once they were turned out to sea, they punched out. I didn’t see that happen, but one of the other AW139s went out to pick them up after the second troop drop.

We were only seconds out at this stage, and the rest was actually pretty routine. I didn’t get shot at on that drop, I know a few of the other helis did alright and the Chinooks were real bullet magnets, but we just came into a hover on the right of the formation, everyone else out to the left of us, doors were already open at that point and the troops were nearly gone before I gave the ‘clear deploy’. I think they knew as well as we did it was a fairly high risk approach for a heli to take into an area. We did a spot turn to the east at that stage, nice and light and just dove away down the hill downwind. The gunner on the left side called a target and my copilot gave him the clear engage, they both had eyes on it, but I actually saw none of the enemy up close on the first go.’

The fighting on that first day had mixed results. 2 Cav cleared the road allowing access up as far as Letterkenny, where the ATCP platoon were probably the happiest people in the town to see them. They then concentrated on keeping the road secure – a big ask for one battalion. The airmobile assault on the Bluestacks cost three lives and eleven injured but was succesful in the capturing almost all of the Carsonite fighters who realised that they’re was no way off the mountain for them. Others chose to fight to the death and were obliged, with airstrikes and artillery continuing throughout the day. There was also the loss of a PC-9 to a surface to air missile and one of the EC135s was badly damaged by machine gun fire late in the afternoon. One fixed wing pilot suffered back injuries on ejecting from his burning aircraft, but the heli crew got away unharmed.

The biggest problem of the day however was that, despite hard fighting up the side of the hills, 28 Bn had not been able to dislodge the enemy from the windfarm at the Donegal Cluster. Suffering seventeen wounded, they had been forced to withdraw from the engagement and, along with the Task Group Viking, began to adopt blocking positions around the area. Overnight, an attempted breakout to the east was stopped by the combined efforts of 2 Cav, 28 Bn and TG Viking. While this enegagement was still going on however, approximately one hundred and fifty Carsonite fighters in their vehicles, pushed through the reduced perimeter on the western side and escaped. To make a bad night worse, the weather which had been acceptable so far began to close in. Day two of the fight would be fought in unexpectedly bad conditions, while the fighters that escaped the western perimeter broke into small groups and disappeared.

D+1

Cpl Diane Keane

‘The weather turned worse overnight, I don’t think anyone slept, regardless of whether they were on or off sentry duty. The visibility was terrible, we could hear the fighting going on over on the east side, but you could only see the occasional flash to go with it. Our side on the west, we knew they were getting out in small numbers. It was so frustrating. We had one contact, two jeeps on one of the tracks. We had cleared a roadblock on the first day and advanced passed it and set up an ambush there. We were still overlooked by the hills on our left, so I had two of mine up there for flank security. Couldn’t see them even that little bit away, so it was going to be radio comms with them. We heard the vehicles coming down the hill before we saw them. They were just freewheeling down, no engine noise but you could hear the gravel and tyre noise crunching on the track. They came around a bend to our front, we let them get close enough to even the odds, the front vehicle had what looked like a.50 machine gun on the back. We had just our own personal weapons, nothing like a claymore or anything like that even, so when they got close enough, maybe twenty metres we just opened up on the silhouettes. Once we fired, they put on their headlights and just floored it. The machine gunner was just shooting straight down the track, I don’t think he ever even saw us. That first vehicle got through, and just kept going. The second one, a 40mm grenade hit it in the grill and went off, stopping it dead. We just kept piling in the rounds until there was clearly nothing left to fight. We found four dead there and a mortar lying flat in the back of it. Tough night, but nothing else came down that way.

Next morning, the weather hadn’t cleared. Instead of seeing nothing but black, it was nothing but grey. I don’t think anyone tried to break out that day. There was one or two attempts to push in with platoon size patrols but people were just stepping on top of Carsonite machine gun pits and IEDs. They cut that out after lunchtime and kept pressure on by lobbing in a few mortars now and again, but we stood fast all that day. It was still reckoned there was about two hundred plus support weapons equipped fighters alive in there so you didn’t just wander right in. I know our Coy HQ tried sending in a drone to have a look but it just flew off and crashed.’