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

This changed after the IRA decided that they needed to curtail or remove Defence Forces capabilities in the area, a total step change in comparison to the Troubles, where they sought to move under the radar as much as possible. This seems to have been borne both from increasing confidence in their new recruits and new weaponry and from the pressure they were under further North, whereby they had to have a secure route deeper into the Republic than the other groups could reach. Either way, a concerted effort was made through mortar fire, IEDs and heavy machine guns to render Starfort 4 ineffective, with this effort commencing in the second week of November 2020.

The Defence Forces pushed back of course and introduced both mortar and javelin missile support to the belegured fort. In addition, GPS jammers were quickly bought and pushed into service to deter drone attacks, much to the annoyance of the Air Corps who used GPS extensively in their helicopters, which constantly flitted about the border moving troops and supplies between forts and into the field.

It was worth pointing out that crews for both javelins and mortars were in short supply and high demand as pressure ramped up, both operationally and from the schools which required experienced trainers to push out reinforcements. A combination of indirect and direct fire reduced the effectiveness of direct attacks on the forts but did not stop them entirely. One favoured tactic of the local IRA, who had been given the task of opening this area for the overall use of their organisation, was to attack, withdraw and try to draw out the QRF into an ambush. To counter this, a system of ‘leaving out’ patrols at all times developed. If the attack happened close in, a ‘left out’ patrol would react before the QRF sometimes, grimly acting as a trip wire in case there were trip wires. Sgt Andy Cunningham relates one an account of one such patrol which went unexpectedly ‘hot’.

Sgt Andy Cunningham

‘So we were on a left out patrol, if you look North from Starfort 4, we were on the hills to the West, being about a kilometre and a half away maybe at the most from the Fort itself, and these hills formed nearly a continuous ridge around it, though it did have some low lying ground in between the hills, but generally the high ground went all the way around the fort on the Northern side.

It was a night patrol where it was raining, of course, being Cavan. We were, I suppose, 7 seven or maybe eight weeks into our allegedly three month stint up there now at this stage. People were getting into the swing of things, obviously we'd had some serious setbacks with the fatalities that had occurred by that stage and, yeah, it hadn't been a happy trip per se but I think people were still motivated about what we were doing there, you know. That was important too. Anyway tangents aside, we were on the top of the hills to the West,kind of bedded down in some gorse which covered the entire top of that Hill, it was uncomfortable but kind of kept some of the rain off,was a bit of concealment if not cover and we were just generally doing the usual, just waiting to see what happened to the front or in case anything else happened during the night back down towards the Fort itself.

Anyway it was after midnight. It was dark, so dark because there was no moon, very overcast and misty and rainy, as I say, when from the forward facing hill, that is to say that the side of the northern hill that was in view from Starfort 4, there was what appeared to be a mortar and machine gun attack from the clearing in the centre of that wooded area.

Now obviously from day one, that area had been well laid in as an area from which enemies could approach the fort quite closely. It was no more than about 300 meters away at its closest point, maybe about 500 from the from the clearing in the center of that wood. So obviously mortar, machine guns, everything was all laid in that area already, not really with the expectation that someone would attack from there. Prior to this, all the attacks had been from, you know kind of, I suppose sensible areas, tactically sound areas further out on the reverse slope of the hills where they couldn’t be engaged directly with machine gunfire or even spotted immediately for mortars. For whatever reason, and I suppose it just indicates that even at this stage they were learning too maybe, for whatever reasons they hadn't properly taken on board some of the lessons that they had been instructed on and they attacked from this front slope of the hill.

From our position we obviously heard the thump of the mortars going off and the machine guns too but, like, no flash from the tubes or anything like that, it was just we weren't looking directly at it, you know, we were looking outwards onto the reverse side of the slope trying to cover off any approaches more so than anything else. So when we look over our shoulder, when we look back towards it, all we saw was the whole area lit up from the Starfort itself, we could you could hear the ‘Tom Tom Tom Tom Tom’ of the two Mowags engaging with the cannons and they seem to be engaging pretty much centrally in the clearing area, so the big flash of our mortars lighting up the area as well, you know you're trying to close one eye while you're looking at this to preserve your night vision.

As well as that, you could hear the clatter of the MAG SFs, that's a machine gun in the sustained fire role as it’s called. These were mounted on tripods at the end of each point in the star of the fort and they were just working the whole area and you had what was clearly lads further back in the arms of the star engaging with GPMGs, that’s General Purpose Machine Guns as well, the normal infantry GPMGs that you carry around and they seem to be just sweeping the outside area to try and catch anyone that tried to escape. So, in terms of the firepower going in there, you had 25mm Bushmaster cannons, 80mm mortars all centered on the area where the attack itself came from, and then you had 7.62mm sustained fire and infantry fire all just sweeping that whole wood. It would have been would have been a pretty horrible place to be I think, but I don't think any of us were feeling sorry for them at that stage.

Anyway, this went on for a good two minutes, which is a lot of ammunition. Especially when you talk about the heavy stuff. It died off bit by bit, first one then the other cannon and you could see the order going around by the tracer fire stopping, you know obviously lads we're having to get shouted at to stop shooting. I think everyone was, ah, everyone was keen to have a bit of a go back after what we’d been through over the last couple of weeks.

I'll be honest we were kinda cheering a little bit ourselves, the four of us in the patrol, until inevitably; because it was from the front slope it just looked like a come on, as if they had remotely fired because you wouldn't expect someone to go into that area and shoot. It looked like this had been remotely fired as a come on to get QRF out and engage them with something heavier, which was going to be scary if they were going to engage him with something heavier than what had already come out of the clearing.

So instead, we were told to patrol into the area confirm whether it was a remote attack or not, and then pull out leaving it for the QRF. Remote attacks, that happened. One of their favorites was to stick an old weapon, pre ceasefire era weapons into a tube then cut off the trigger guard and it have a little battery and an irregularly shaped cam that would be activated by mobile phone, and this cam would turn around and would actually hit the trigger, release it, hit the trigger, release it so that it seemed like you were getting the kind of bursts of twos and threes, making it look like there was a human behind it but when you got close it was just a pipe. Very hard to find and of course generally there was some form of IED underneath when you did get close, just in case you were stupid enough to pick it up.