British Army fatal casualties--Ulster troubles, 1969-1998.

Introduction

With the easing of tensions in Northern Ireland in recent years, it is timely to examine the cost borne by the British Army during the Ulster troubles from 1969-1998.

The Troubles in Northern Ireland can be traced back to the 16th Century, but Cromwell's invasion of Ireland in 1649, and his ruthless suppression of Roman Catholics, and the creation of a strong Protestant enclave in what became Ulster, led to much political agitation over the coming centuries. The 1801 Act of Union (Ireland) united the Parliaments of Ireland and Great Britain, an unpopular move with the southern counties. The formation of the Sinn Fein in 1907, and its complementary paramilitary wing--the Irish Republican Army (IRA), aimed to break ties with Great Britain and declare Ireland a republic. The Easter Rebellion of 1916, and the subsequent terror campaign against the Royal Irish Constabulary and its 'Black and Tan' reservists, led to the Anglo--Irish Treaty of December 1921, which saw the formation of the Irish Free State, a self governing Irish Dominion still tied to the British Crown. A

bloody civil war erupted in 1922 over the provision that six, mainly Protestant, counties of Ulster remained part of Britain.

In 1948, the Irish Free State declared itself a republic, and a year later, Westminster passed the Ireland Act which confirmed the constitutional position of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom. In 1956, the IRA launched a bombing campaign which lasted until 1962. Nor was the violence one sided. Protestants formed Loyalist volunteer units to combat what they saw as fresh attempts by the IRA and Sinn Fein to drag Ulster into the Irish Republic. By mid-1968, the street violence had increased to such a level, that Harold Wilson, the British Prime Minister, reluctantly committed regular British troops to Ulster.

In August 1969, the British Army deployed units to northern Ireland or Ulster as it is often known, in response to widespread rioting which was beyond the capacity of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC, which was formed in 1922) to contain. The first British Army units sent to Ulster included the 1st Battalion, The Prince of Wales's Own Regiment of Yorkshire, the 1st Battalion, The Royal Regiment of Wales and the 2nd Battalion, The Queen's Regiment. On October 1969, the local B Special Constabulary which had been formed years earlier as a part-time reserve of Protestants capable of assisting the RUC when needed, was disbanded, and replaced by a new regular/part-time force-the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) which would be part of the British Army. Over the next thirty years, the British Army maintained a presence in Ulster, and although a fragile peace agreement was reached in 1998, the refusal of the IRA to destroy its many weapons dumps leaves open the option to revert to violence at some future date. With this threat in mind, the British Army, albeit diminished in numbers, remains in Ulster, but leaves policing of the streets to the local Ulster security forces.

A Long And Costly Campaign

An analysis of the 719 British Army deaths resulting from the so-called Troubles in Northern Ireland during the period from 1969-1998, provides a powerful insight into how a terrorist enemy operates, and the enormous difficulties that face any army charged with enforcing the peace within a civilian community suffering from divided political loyalties as is stiff the case in Ulster.

Casualties by units

Units of the British Army which suffered fatal casualties, are listed along with the number of Officers and Other Ranks killed, and the average age of the casualties. The average age of fatalities in cavalry units was 26.4 years, and in infantry units (including the Parachute Regt)--23.8, as against only 22.5 years in the Guards Brigade. The average age in corps units was as expected, somewhat higher at 26.6 years, whilst the Ulster Defence Regiment had an average age of 35.6 years, due to the fact that the unit included many part-time soldiers who were usually older than their counterparts in a Regular Army battalion.

                                                              Average
                                               Officers  ORs  age

Cavalry Regiments
     The Life Guards                                       1  26
     The Blues and Royals                         1        6  24.2
     1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards                        1  35
     The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards                        1  19
     4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards                          1  24
     5th Royal Inniskilling Dragoon Guards                 1  25
     16th/5th The Queen's Royal Lancers           1        1  21.5
     The 9th/12th Royal Lancers                            3  26
     The Royal Hussars                                     1  35
     14th/20th King's Hussars                     1        3  30.7
     15th/19th The King's Royal Hussars                    1  22
     17th/21st Lancers                                     2  28.5
Royal Armoured Corps                                       3  23.3
Royal Regiment of Artillery                       3       53  23.4
Corps of Royal Engineers                          2        9  28.5
Royal Corps of Signals                                    15  24.1
Regiments of Foot Guards
     Grenadier Guards                             2        4  23.1
     Coldstream Guards                            1        6  23
     Guards                                               14  22.2
     Irish Guards                                          1  21
     Welsh Guards                                          3  23.3
Line Regiments of Infantry
     The Royal Scots                                       4  23.5
     The Queen's Regiment                                  9  22.3
     The King's Own Royal Border Regiment                  5  23.4
     The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers              1       22  25.3
     The King's Regiment                                  15  21.6
     The Royal Anglian Regiment                   2       16  23.1
     The Devonshire & Dorset Regiment                      6  24.1
     The Light Infantry                                   25  20.7
     The Prince of Wales's Own
       Regiment of Yorkshire                               2  23.5
     The Green Howards                            1        8  25.3
     The Royal Highland Fusiliers                          5  21.4
     The Cheshire Regiment                                 9  22.3
     The Royal Welsh Fusiliers                    1        5  23
     The Royal Regiment of Wales                           7  23.2
     The King's Own Scottish Borderers                     5  25.4
     The Gloucestershire Regiment                          5  21.2
     The Royal Gloucestershire Berkshire
       & Wiltshire Regiment                                1  29
     The Worcestershire & Sherwood Foresters               4  23.2
     The Queen's Lancashire Regiment                       7  20.8
     The Duke of Wellington's Regiment            1        5  22.3
     The Royal Hampshire Regiment                          3  21
     The Staffordshire Regiment                   1        3  24.2
     The Black Watch                                       2  20
     The Duke of Edinburgh's Royal Regiment                6  25.3
     Queen's Own Highlanders                      1        3  28
     The Gordon Highlanders                                5  30.4
     The Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders          2        4  29.8
     The Parachute Regiment                       3       39  23.8
     The Royal Green Jackets                      2       30  24.2
Royal Army Chaplains Department                   1           38
Royal Logistic Corps                                       1  25
Royal Corps of Transport                                  12  23.5
Royal Army Medical Corps                                   1  33
Royal Army Ordnance Corps                         6       16  28.9
Corps of Royal Electrical
  and Mechanical Engineers                                 7  27
Corps of Royal Military Police                             4  28.7
Royal Army Pay Corps                                       1  18
Royal Army Veterinary Corps                                1  34
Royal Army Dental Corps                                    1  25
Royal Pioneer Corps                                        3  22
Intelligence Corps                                         1  27
Army Physical Training Corps                               1  31
Army Catering Corps                                        3  19.3
Women's Royal Army Corps                                   2  18.5
Territorial Army                                  2        7  32.6
Ulster Defence Regiments (1)                     18      180  35.6
Royal Irish Rangers                               1        2  32
Royal Irish Regiment                                       7  32.7

Royal Navy                                        1           45
Royal Marines                                             23  25.2
Royal Air Force                                            4  24.2

Fatal casualties

murder                                      157
booby-trap devices                           97
gun-fire and attack on foot patrol           51
sniper fire                                  40
abduction and murder                         19
ambush of foot patrol                        14
foot patrol under machine-gun fire            7
attack on a border post                       5
undercover intelligence operations            5
mortar attack                                 3
helicopter under fire                         1
bomb attacks                                140
mobile patrol was shot at                    63
land-mines                                   49
sniper engaging a foot patrol                28
detonation of explosive device               15
'friendly fire' (includes 2 shot by RUC).     8
soldiers on guard duty shot by snipers        6
para-military Loyalist attacks                5
rocket attack                                 3
civilian attack on foot patrol                2
APC crushed soldier                           1

TOTAL--719 Fatal Casualties.

Casualties by rank:

A total of 55 officers were killed: Colonels--2; lieutenant-colonels--3; majors--15; captains--18; chaplain--1 ; lieutenants 7; 2nd lieutenants--9.

Other ranks killed were: Warrant officers--17; staff sergeants--13; colour sergeants 7; sergeants--52; corporate 93; lance corporals--97; privates--375.

Approximately 2000 civilians and 296 members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary were killed. There were 7,000 wounded or injured. Five female soldiers were killed (0.6%), two from the Women's Royal Army Corps and three from the Ulster Defence Regiment.

How Casualties Occurred

The long drawn out conflict in Ulster lent itself to terrorist activity by the IRA, and on occasions by the Protestant Loyalist groups, many of the casualties occurred in the built-up areas of Belfast and other Ulster towns, but also on country roads. Being able to choose targets and operate with impunity in some localities due to the level of local support, meant that the IRA had an advantage over the British Army, which could only be diminished by sound tactics, good training, military intelligence and co-operation with the RUC. As the terror campaign continued, the IRA through a series of bombings which inflicted heavy casualties an the civilian population, found that the level of public support had significantly diminished, and found itself marginalised and forced to seek a political rather than a violent solution. Having resisted the terror campaign without resorting to massive reprisal attacks, the British Army made a valuable contribution to the reduced level of violence that prevailed in Ulster to the late 1990s, and enabled discussions to be held which led to a form of peace not seen in Ulster for generations. The following list shows the various methods used by a terrorist body such as the IRA, and highlights the enormous difficulties faced by the British Army in dealing with such an enemy. Some 176 members of the British Army were murdered by the IRA (24.4% of all fatalities), many of whom were part-time members of the UDR who were killed on their way to and from work. Casualties which resulted from a direct operational contact with the enemy only accounted for 26.2% of the total, as most casualties were caused by bombs, land-mines and booby-trap devices operated from a safe distance. These figures do not include the many soldiers who were wounded in the course of their duties.

Conclusion

In his book of The British Army in Ulster, Colonel Dewar (2) observed that the British Army 'has maintained a remarkable degree of restraint, often despite extreme provocation'. The above statistics illustrate the tragic cost sustained by the British Army in attempting to maintain order during its long campaign in Ulster, and should provide a salutary lesson to any future Government wishing to commit its Regular Army to deal with a terrorist enemy operating in a mainly urban environment.

(1) The Ulster Defence Regiment and the Royal Irish Rangers were on 1 July 1992, merged into a new unit--The Royal Irish Regiment.

(2) M Dewar, The British Army in Northern Ireland, Arms & Armour, London 1996

Other references:

* N Curtis, Faith and duty, Andre Deutsch, London 1998.

* J Potter, A testimony of courage, the History of the UDR, Leo Cooper, Barnsley, 2001.

* J Rennie, The Operators, Century, London 1996.

* P Taylor, Brits, The war against the IRA, Bloomsbury, London 2001.