Derryard, 1989: The IRA Attack on a British Army Base

The IRA attack on the British Army checkpoint at Derryard, in County Fermanagh, on the thirteenth of December 1989, was the biggest operation the IRA had mounted in more than two years. It came in an armoured lorry, with at least twelve men hidden under a tarpaulin, two machine guns, rockets, a flamethrower, and a van bomb following behind. The IRA said afterwards that it had set out to destroy the position completely. About ten minutes later, two young soldiers of the King's Own Scottish Borderers were dead and a third was wounded. But the lorry was heading back to the border with a bomb still on board, and the checkpoint was still standing. It was a post built for searching cars, not for fighting a battle. So how did a handful of soldiers from a Scottish regiment, and a patrol the IRA did not know was there, stop it? On the afternoon of Wednesday the thirteenth of December 1989, Private James Houston was working the road at Derryard. The checkpoint stood on a country road north of the village of Rosslea, in County Fermanagh, about two kilometres from the border with County Monaghan. Its job was to stop and check the traffic coming up from the Irish Republic. One author, himself a former soldier, describes it as a post used to watch over and control the traffic that flowed across the border. Houston was the roadman, the soldier who walked out to each vehicle. He belonged to Support Company of the First Battalion, the King's Own Scottish Borderers. Two of the company's teams were stationed at the checkpoint, and at any one time four men ran it. The commander, Corporal Robert Duncan, was in the command sangar, the small fortified post from which the checkpoint was watched and controlled. Private Whitelaw was in the rear observation sangar. Another private, whose surname was also Harvey, acted as runner. A staff sergeant of the Royal Engineers, named Bradley, was in the command sangar too, carrying out maintenance. The checkpoint's second in command, Lance Corporal Michael Paterson, was twenty-one. He was off duty, asleep with his team in one of three small portakabins inside the base. That day, a vague warning had gone out of a threat to all positions along the border, and Derryard had been reinforced by a third team of four under Corporal Ian Harvey. Harvey's team was not inside the base. It was out on a security patrol, on the high ground to the north: Corporal Harvey and Privates Dunn, Common and Maxwell. The regiment would later call what happened next the Derryard Action. Its commanding officer wrote an account of it for his battalion, and that account, published by the regiment, is a detailed record of the fight. It gives every man's position and nearly every move.