This is a memory I have carried with me for nearly fifty years. I did not serve in the security forces or in any of the paramilitaries; I did not lose anyone close to me in the Troubles; I came back to my homeland in 1974 and began a teaching career, got married and raised a family. I lived through the violent decades and hoped for better times to come. This true story reminds me of what it used to be like and how lucky I was to live through it.

It was September 1971 and I had come home.

I was a student in London at the time, had spent my summer picking peaches in Ontario but now was home in Belfast with my parents for a short while. My father had worked as a lorry driver for years and now was senior foreman for the same firm, Wordies (Wordie and Cowan), a carriers, hauliers and warehouse keepers. In fact, I had briefly worked there myself in the summer of 1969 at their Belfast base in Divis Street, loading and unloading the lorries to help finance my schooling at Atlantic College in Wales. So, strangely my first union membership had not been the National Union of Students but the Transport and General Workers’ Union, Belfast Carters’ Branch.

My grandfather had been senior foreman there too at the start of the century when he had emigrated from Scotland with his family. My late uncle Johnny, my father’s elder brother, had held the same job sometime later. 

My mother went back to work when my elder sister and brother left home in the early sixties and used the money she made making shirts in a local factory to fund her summer trips to Canada to see them and their families. Actually, we had all been together in Canada that summer in July, for the first time in years with my parents coming home before me as I stayed on in August to pick more peaches, clean factory windows and make a bit more money. They still lived in the wee Belfast terraced house that they had rented when they were married in 1936 and in which my sister, my brother and I were born.

So that is where I was that night, at home and a bit bored, spending some time with the folks.

A knock on the door

We could hear intermittent shooting and a few muffled explosions over the noise of the television during the evening, but that was to be expected. The Troubles were rumbling on around us, and that was then normal. I think there was one big bang around nine o’clock but sometime later we were all getting ready for bed and I was counting the days until I could get back to my student life in London. That is when the knock came to the door.

The big Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) sergeant asked to speak to my dad (or, da) and checked whether he was the key holder for Wordies. He asked da to come to the depot at once, to open up for the security forces as there had been an explosion. As my old man went for his coat my mother looked at me intently and told me to go with him.

So, we set off in silence for the ten-minute drive through empty streets in our old white Ford Anglia; me in the passenger seat, my da behind the wheel. We were brought to a sudden, unexpected stop approaching Divis Street by an army road block. The soldiers signalled to us to turn off lights and wind our windows down, and as we did so two rifle barrels were pushed in: one against my head and symmetrically, on the other side, one against my father’s. I remember the tartan on the caps of the soldiers who were younger than me, I reckoned. I also noticed with some interest that the one with his gun held to my temple was quite visibly shaking. Licence checked, my father explained who we were and why we were there. They waved us on, much to everyone’s relief.

We were met at Wordies yard, outside the big solid wooden gates, by a police constable and the sergeant who had called at the house. My dad opened up the small personnel door that was cut into one side of the big gates and they went in. The constable told me to wait outside. I didn’t expect that, and stood bewildered looking at the door and wondering what to do next when a voice behind me said, “Get down, mate!”

I turned quickly and couldn’t see anyone until he spoke again. It was a soldier lying on the ground beside me with his weapon trained down the street. 

“What?” I said. “Get down,” he repeated, and then adding by way of explanation, “This might be a set-up… snipers!”

A nervous wait

I quickly hunkered down, somehow managing to feel both foolish and terrified at the same time. It seemed inconceivable that anyone would now want to shoot at me yet it also seemed reasonable to move a few feet further away from the soldier. I spent some uncomfortable minutes squatting nervously on the pavement, as more police and soldiers arrived and went inside. To my great relief the door reopened behind me and my father beckoned me inside.

There was a distinct smell of smoke and petrol in the air. One lorry was parked at an odd angle. From what I could see it was somewhat damaged. I stood around awkwardly as uniformed and plain clothed police, soldiers and a couple of military policemen moved about.

My father answered a few questions and then we went and sat in the little hut which served as an office and tea room for employees, as people came in and out. Indeed, after a while tea was indeed produced.

My father told me that the out-of-place lorry seemed to be getting a lot of attention. It was a flatbed truck with a tarpaulin draped tent-like over a horizontal beam running back along its length parallel to the cab. The tarpaulin looked like it had been cut open. The bomb had been placed near one of the petrol pumps used by the lorries but either had not fully detonated or had been too small to damage the underground fuel tanks. The theory was that the bomber or bombers had stowed away on the back of the lorry, with or without the driver’s knowledge but with their bomb. So they had got into the yard as the driver returned at the end of his shift, waited until the coast was clear then cut their way out, planted the bomb and escaped. My dad told me all this but I also overheard the detectives discussing it in some detail.

Things got a little confused when members of an army bomb disposal team showed up. They checked the yard and remains of the bomb to gather evidence but also made sure it was now safe. Da and I were somewhat concerned that this had not been done before we were all allowed in, but kept our thoughts to ourselves. 

The detectives questioned my dad again about driver movements, schedules and working logs. Someone was taking photographs but then events took a strange turn. A tall Englishman in a dinner suit arrived and seemed to be asking loud questions and giving orders. He also seemed to be drunk. There was a bit of shouting and swearing and another detective, whom I had not seen before, seemed to take a swing at him. They had to be pulled apart by various police and soldiers in a bizarre, confusing scrummage. 

Afterwards, I learned that the detective was apparently the chief inspector from Hasting Street Barracks (the nearest police station to Wordies) and the well-dressed inebriate was thought to be the head of army bomb disposal in Northern Ireland. It seems they had disagreed as to who was considered to be in charge. However, things calmed down, the head of army bomb disposal went away – either back to his dinner or home to bed, I do not know. Da and I may have had more tea and eventually were allowed to leave. My mother had stayed up to welcome us home  and see we were safe; we got to bed sometime after three in the morning.

An unusual letter

I checked the news for the next couple of days to see how my exciting close brush with “the Troubles” was being reported. To my great disappointment and surprise, actually I could find no real mention of it on TV, radio or the press. Clearly, a small failed bombing did not warrant significant coverage at that time. Bigger bombs and more significant atrocities had deservedly attracted the attention of the news media. Anyway, I flew back to London a short while afterwards and resubmerged myself in lectures, labs and my life as a zoology undergraduate. This was of course a world away from war-torn Belfast which I glimpsed only briefly on the TV news from time to time, usually in the pub.

So, it was a week or two later that I received a letter from my mother. It was she who always wrote to me anyway and occasionally we talked on the phone but that had to be organised in advance as my parents had no phone in the house and she had to go to a neighbour’s to do it.

But this letter was different from the usual ones she sent which were often filled with family news and the goings-on in the neighbourhood. In it, she explained that three days after I left they had found the second bomb in a small cleaning cupboard off the hut in Wordies Yard, just beside where da and I had been. The bomb disposal squad had to be called out again, this time to defuse it, as this one had completely failed to detonate. 

The police understanding was that the timer had been set to go off a few hours after the original explosion, the intention being to take out all the security personnel whom they knew would then be in attendance. The first bomb had not “failed” as such. In fact, it was a set-up and had worked perfectly, making enough noise and to do just enough damage to suck in all the people they wanted to kill. 

I guess if the plan had really worked my dad and I would have been collateral damage.

Read more by John Stevenson on Northern Slant: