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

We didn’t know then, before leaving the IDP camp, that the sniping and roadblocks earlier had been from a small Dissident group that had been themselves following the Carsonites into the area, but hadn’t been strong enough in numbers to engage them. The Carsonites themselves had infiltrated the high ground with about one hundred and fifty or so fighters, but crucially, they’d brought almost all of their heavy weapons – machine guns, RPGs and whatever few mortars they had left. I’m not sure if they had planned to engage so many of us, but they must have made the decison; correctly, that we would be hamstrung by trying to protect the civilians. We got about half way through the hills… ‘

Cpl Diane Keane

‘We’d been on the road for about an hour and a half by this point – if you were driving a car on your own, you’d be there by now, but a convoy of three APCs and a two dozen trucks on small roads… everything takes longer. We had ourselves plus about three hundred civilians. Every time a car came the other way, we’d end up stopping. Every time we stopped, we’d deploy security. Get the car out of the way, then you had to get security on board again. We probably should have pinged it when the cars stopped coming that they were being stopped further down the road by something else. I was in one of the trucks about half way back down the convoy, so alot of what I was getting in terms of knowing what was going on was just listening to the radio, or when we dismounted to do security.

Big picture? What happened was that the Carsonites had gotten into the hills and taken a gamble that we’d go this way rather than force the roadblocks the nationalists had put in on the main road – they could listen to the news as well as anyone and knew the restrictions we had. Little picture? They just picked a good spot for an ambush and set themselves up.

We were at a spot where we had ground rising on the right of the convoy – the northern side – and pretty flat to the left with ditches on both sides of the road so that manouvering would be difficult. They dug themselves in on a long, well ridge would be too much of a word, but basically where the line of the incline on the right went flat and met the horizon. Apparently, the trigger of the whole event was a tractor stopped at an angle across the road, no driver. That was what had turned around any other cars coming down, although undoubtedly some of those cars were Carsonites checking our progress, how long the convoy was, that kind of thing.

The first Mowag stopped well back from the tractor and that I think saved a lot of lives. There was a minute where nothing was happening, the majority of C Coy were put out on the right and a Platoon of A Coy went in the ditch on the left because you could already see everything that way. Looking back now, I’d say, maybe the Carsonites were having a ‘what do we do now?’ moment. C Coy got about half way up the field, the front vehicles were still well back from the obstacle and then it just all… it all happened very quickly.

The plan obviously, had been to hit our first and last vehicles, trap us in. They’d stuffed rocket warheads in the tractor and more a few hundred metres back where they expected the last APC to be. When they decided to go with it, the tractor exploded and fragged a few of our own, but apart from the shock, the Mowag and crew were alright. That second explosion though, the one that was supposed to be at the back? That was buried in the ditch on our right and hit one of the trucks a few vehicles back from us. It just disappeared in flash and was gone. The vehicles either side got it pretty bad and were effectively disabled, the cab of the one behind took the worst of it for them, but the one in front… They were all killed, soldiers and civilians alike, thirty people gone just like that. There were another fifteen in the one that was, I don’t know the right word for it, atomised I suppose.

Look, I’m describing this one after another, but it all happened at once, okay? When the IEDs went off, they also opened up with machine guns and RPGs. The just swept the whole line of vehicles. The tarp on the side of ours, you could hear it making that noise it makes when you hit a taught plastic like that, like a ripping and ticking noise at that same time.

With the bombs going off, I froze for a second, but when the bullets started hitting the sides, we hit the bed of the truck first and then all piled out the tail gate when it became apparent the truck wasn’t moving anywhere – we weren’t driving through the ambush. Four died in that truck and six more were injured. Tom McIntyre, Pte Tom McIntyre was one of the dead. First burst of fire through the side of the truck, he was hit in the back and neck, dead instantly. The others were civilians that stood up in panic to get out. We rolled out the back and into the ditch on the right. That was the first chance I had to look around me, really. That scene was grim. There at least four more trucks burning from RPG hits and mortars were landing in the field just behind us, as much to keep us in place as anything else, but it was the machine guns that were doing the damage. You could hear the rounds snapping overhead and see the little, barely visible, trails of smoke if an RPG went overhead. Being honest, I wasn’t even paying attention to the mortars by then.They seemed like a ‘I’ll deal with that later’ kind of problem.

From where we were, we couldn’t fire back because C Coy were in the line of fire, half way up the hill and really, they looked to be all either pinned down or dead by that point. We were there, I don’t know, it can’t have been long but there was obviously a minute where we didn’t have control of things. Then the Mowag at the rear of the convoy opened up. They’d gotten over the ditch on the right and were in the field on that side firing their.50 calibre machine gun into the line of enemy. At that point, some semblance of command and control came back online. The convoy was split behind, we couldn’t get forward with any speed because of the remains of the tractor and a sizable crater. So what do you do? You attack.

To my front, there was the remains of a stone wall that might give us some cover, so I moved my guys up behind that. The Mowag was drawing some of the fire, but there was still plenty for everyone so we were staying low. It finally gave us an angle where we could fire without hitting C Coy. It was only fleeting shots we were getting in before another nest would open up, but we started to get effective fire down on them after a while. It was from there that I actually looked back properly for the first time, still lying down behind this crappy broken wall only one stone high by then. What I saw. There’s that picture that ended up in the media that, well it’s going to be the one that is always used when people talk about this, isn’t it. What I saw was just like that. The lines of trucks, one Mowag burning at the front by that time, and the other trying to manuevre around it under fire… And the bodies. The piles of bodies at the backs of the trucks, everyone all mixed together… That’s just one of those snapshots in your brain that’s there forever.’

Still, it is unclear who initially ordered C Coy to advance into the withering fire of the ambush. Most likely, they are dead themselves or have chosen to remain silent. What is clear, is that when the company comprised of reservists and regulars, entered the field on the northern side of the ambush site,there were one hundred and twenty two men and women amongst them. When they reached the firing line at the top of the incline following their mad dash up the middle of the ambush, protected only by a few smoke grenades, there were fewer than fifty remaining. By the time they swept through the nearest positions with a rage, there was only forty one people left unharmed.