From the Archives: August 29th, 1979

Carlingford Lough is so narrow at Narrow Water that the Irish soldiers searching the undergrowth yesterday could see the faces of British army divers searching the water for human remains. Their faces were very different.

On the Northern side of the lough soldiers and police seemed very close to open anger. They snapped at motorists who were slow to understand diversions around the ambush spot and there was none of the small talk that happens when the first shock wears off after most bombings and shootings.

On the Northern side no-one but the Army, police and Mr Humphrey Atkins [the Northern Ireland secretary] was allowed within two miles of the little loughside keep where the bombs went off. On the Southern side it was possible to drive to within a couple of hundred yards of the spot where Mr Michael Hudson died.

And there was no tension there. A friendly garda and a soldier, bare-headed in the heat, leaned on a wall and chatted. Down the wooded lane from them, off the main Newry-Omeath road, soldiers ducked through the bushes apparently guarding their superiors, who were finishing a preliminary search of the area for evidence of gunmen.

Mr Hudson’s body was removed in the early afternoon from the spot where it had lain all night. Senior local Gardai on the spot said it seemed he had gone to the water’s edge just after the second explosion with his cousin who’d been running a touring fun fair in Omeath. Immediately both were fired on from the Northern side and Mr Hudson died instantly.

Local people, gardai said, maintained there was no shooting from the southern side of Narrow Water but instead are bitterly complaining about bullets from across the water hitting their houses. The gardai had no theories to offer on what had happened – there was no evidence of gunmen in the bushes.

A senior Irish Army officer thought the British soldiers might have fired "almost as a reflex" when their friends were killed. That, he said, "would be natural enough if you lost four or five men." Or ammunition could have exploded beside them in the heat of the blasts, making them think they were being attacked.

No evidence either to suggest the bombs had been detonated from the South – it could have been done from anywhere, he suggested. There would be a full investigation, he said, getting into a car with another officer and driving off slowly down the leafy lane. No salutes, no fuss.

The lane is heavily wooded, as is the whole immediate area. A lover’s lane, say locals. In the pub back on the road they didn’t want to talk to strangers at all, much less about the night before. In Omeath it looked as though the bulk of the holidaying population had left in the night, and nobody wanted to talk there either beyond saying it was a terrible couple of bangs and they thought it was on their side of the water at first. Had I heard people got their windows broken by Brit bullets?

Directly across from Omeath and even quieter yesterday predominantly Catholic Warrenpoint had nothing to say either – except for SDLP councillor Jim McArt who said the town was "stunned, sickened, saddened and ashamed," and he knew he would probably get threatening phone calls again for saying so.

Elsewhere in the town a couple of the part-time firemen who had rushed to the ambush on Monday said they were still sure they had been fired on from the Omeath side of the water, as they bent over broken bodies. Mr McArt vouched for their integrity: “If they said they had to duck, they had to duck.”

Not that it mattered very much in the end yesterday who was right about the gunfire. They took away the body of English tourist Mr Hudson on the Omeath side. And across the Narrow Water, still beautiful despite helicopters dipping, a crane by a wrecked lorry, a covered tender waiting for more bits of bodies and the divers in their black suits, the small figures of RUC and British soldiers gathered the dead.

Back along the peaceful road into Newry, a summery Customs-man in shirt-sleeves stood by his little hut, waving cars by, marking the Border.

Read the original here

Selected by Joe Joyce; email fromthearchives@irishtimes.com