Tense atmosphere over killing of British army duo at IRA funeral

The killing of two British army undercover corporals at an IRA funeral in west Belfast in March 1988 was discussed by the Northern Ireland secretary, Tom King and then tánaiste Brian Lenihan according to previously confidential files released today by the Public Record Office in Belfast.

The two soldiers, David Wood and Derek Howes of the Signals Regiment, were surrounded by a crowd when they inexplicably drove into the funeral cortege of Kevin Brady, an IRA man killed in Milltown Cemetery by the loyalist Michael Stone while attending the funerals of the three IRA volunteers shot dead by the SAS at Gibraltar.

One of the beleaguered corporals fired a warning shot before they were overpowered, beaten by a mob and then driven away to be shot dead by the IRA on the Andersonstown Road in west Belfast. The scene was captured in a searing image of priest Fr Alec Reid kneeling beside the corpses as he intoned the last rites.

The deaths of the two corporals were discussed in a phone call from the tánaiste, Brian Lenihan to the secretary of state, Tom King, two days later on March 21st, 1988. Referring to the murders in what he described as “an atmosphere of high tension”, King assured Lenihan that “the two soldiers appear to have been on the Andersonstown Road by inadvertence. The tragedy was that an apparently successful policing policy at the funerals now looked untenable.”