The IRA provided sandwiches and cups of soup - and rooms full of Armalites and explosives. Mark Hennessy hears how the decommissioning of its arsenal was carried out
Picking up a box of IRA bullets late one night last week, Gen John de Chastelain turned to Fr Alec Reid, "Do you see these? They are very vicious. They spin when they are fired. When they hit the person, they rip them open. Every sixth one is a tracer. It tells you whether you are hitting the target, or not."
The Canadian general, who has spent eight years of his life attempting to rid Northern Ireland of such weaponry, sighed and put the box down.
For more than a week up to last Saturday, de Chastelain had travelled hundreds of miles to IRA dumps in a blacked-out van.
Sitting in the van on the first day, driven by an IRA man, he turned to Fr Reid and said gently, "When you get the chance to sleep, sleep." With that, the general turned away and closed his eyes.
The soldier's advice was taken by the priest, a 35-year veteran of the Troubles and, for many, one of its symbols from the day when he gave the last rites to two British soldiers beaten and shot dead by the IRA after they blundered into a funeral cortege in Andersonstown in 1988.
"I spent a lot of the time on the road asleep. We could not see where we were going. We did not know where we were going. And we didn't want to know," Fr Reid says.
The journeys, shrouded in secrecy, to witness the IRA's promise to completely decommission its weaponry almost certainly crossed the Border, though even high-level security sources in the Republic profess not to know where.
The theories abound. One says that much of the weaponry was moved into dumps in south Armagh where decommissioning work could be guaranteed to be interruption-free. Another places the dumps in the midlands, or north Tipperary. However, it is clear that weeks of work went into consolidating all of the organisation's arsenal.
Accompanied by his Independent International Commission on Decommissioning colleagues - US diplomat Andrew Sens and Finnish brigadier general Tauno Nieminen - Gen de Chastelain was joined in the van by Fr Reid and the Methodist clergyman Rev Harold Good.
On the other side, a core IRA team, responding to orders from a "highly professional" leader, were present at each of the locations, joined by local "helpers", said Fr Reid. "Many of the local people who came were in their 20s," he added. The locations were varied. Some were in warehouses, some in outbuildings, some even in houses. "It was mostly covered buildings," he said.
In each, the IRA's arms, ranging from rifles, flame-throwers, surface-to-air missiles to deadly Semtex plastic explosives, were lined up neatly along walls. Pistols and revolvers lay on the floor.
Each was numbered with green tags of the type found in cloakrooms, with the numbers recorded in manifests supplied to de Chastelain.
"The IRA was absolutely meticulous, so was the general and his colleagues. So were we. Each time the general picked up a weapon its number was read out and Andrew Sens compared it with the list," Fr Reid said. He watched as de Chastelain started removing bolts from rifles in the first phase of the decommissioning process.
Hundreds of rounds of ammunition, some still sealed in boxes, some in belts, some of it loose, had to be recorded by the IICD team.
"Usually, they picked up 10 or so rounds. They had a small weighing scales on which they weighed them and then they worked out the total amounts that were there," he said.
The Semtex, part of the 1980s arms cache sent by Libya's Col Gadaffi, was held in six inch by four inch brown sealed packets.
Once they had been properly recorded, the arms were "put beyond use", to quote the decommissioning legislation - though the exact means used to achieve that remains highly secret.
Though intelligence reports vary, it is believed by Irish security sources that the IRA had between seven and 11 surface-to-air missiles; six to 11 rocketpropelled grenade launchers and 30 to 35 grenades for them; between three and five flame-throwers; 30 to 35 shotguns; one, two or three high-powered sniper rifles; 150 to 200 handguns; 420 to 620 assault rifles, including AK-47s; 40 machine-guns; between 1½ and two tonnes of Semtex and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition.
Each night, De Chastelain, Sens and Nieminen pored over records gathered during the day, checking and cross-checking them against intelligence reports received from the Irish and British governments.
"I could hear the three of them going over the lists late into the night. They were absolutely meticulous about the way they did their work," said the Clonard-based Redemptorist.
Remembering Danny Morrison's call to republicans to take power in Ireland using "the Armalite, and the ballot box" as he held one of the US-made assault rifles, de Chastelain said wryly, "You know the political connotations of these, don't you?" Later, he picked up a Sten sub-machine gun, the early version of which was used in the second World War, and said, "God, I haven't handled one of these in a long time."
After nearly 50 years in uniform, the general easily recognised each of the weapons in the IRA's arsenal, and when he did not, as in the case of a home-made coffee jar bomb, the IRA man in charge was quick to offer an explanation for a weapon often used for car-bomb assassinations.
Despite Democratic Unionist Party doubts, Fr Reid remains certain that he and his colleagues last week witnessed a defining moment in Irish history.
"I have had 35 years of contact with republicans and the IRA. I know these people," said Fr Reid.
"There was a good atmosphere during each of the days with the IRA people. They were very respectful towards Harold and myself.
"I know it causes problems when I say that, but you have to be honest. They wouldn't be going through the preparation and the work that went into it while they were there otherwise.
"There was a 100% co-operation. It creates a spirit which convinces you that this is for real. You would know by being with them that this was the real thing, that they were dumping all their weapons, but it is hard to convey that to people who weren't there, especially if they are unionists. There was no question of it.
"There was a little incident that struck me from the first conversation that I had with the IRA leader, the main organiser. He said, 'We got worried yesterday. A man came to us yesterday with two guns. And we thought that we had got them all. We didn't know that they were there.' I thought that was a significant remark.
"We were very looked after, I can tell you that, very well looked after. We had two, or three picnics. We would be working away and one of the IRA people would shout, 'Come on, we'll get a few sandwiches.' They had sandwiches, flasks of hot water, coffee and all kinds of bits and pieces, cups of soups. We might take 20 minutes. The general and his people didn't hang around. They might take 10 minutes, but we would chat."
Acknowledging the DUP complaints that unionists had no chance to nominate their own representative, Fr Reid pointed out that both he and Rev Good had been selected to witness last December's planned decommissioning.
"I thought when that didn't go ahead that we had lost our chance to witness history, and I told Harold that. But, then, we were contacted two, three weeks ago again. I thought we had been cleared with the Irish and British governments," he said.
Despite the criticisms levelled at him by the DUP, the Clonard priest was complimentary of both them and the Ulster Unionists for their conduct during meetings on Thursday.
"I told Dr Paisley that if Harold Good had been in the Catholic Church that we would have had no problem making him pope. Dr Paisley laughed and said, 'Well, he would be infallible then, wouldn't he?'"
Though he believes his meetings with unionist politicians went well, Fr Reid remains worried: "I am concerned that people will miss the point, that they are going to get wrapped up in who appointed the witnesses and miss the bigger picture."
"You remember the Thomas Hardy poem with the lines, "Blessings emblazoned that day/Everything glowed with a gleam/Yet we were looking away"? I am worried that we are looking away."