‘He was a soldier to the end, looking after his men’
Veterans gather with respect and righteous anger at the funeral of Dennis Hutchings
‘I am not proud of how we currently remember those who served in that appalling conflict trying to prevent a bloody civil war’
THEY came in their droves, on Armistice Day, of all days, to pay their respects to a former soldier who had served his country for more than a quarter of a century, only to be “hounded to death” by the authorities towards the end of his life.
The funeral of Dennis Hutchings was always going to be a sad occasion but it was also a celebration of a military life.
His huge family – he had 18 grandchildren and great-grandchildren – mourned their loss, as did thousands of former servicemen for whom Hutchings had become a symbol of their frustration at the treatment of Northern Ireland veterans. The 80-year-old, from Cawsand in Cornwall, died alone in a Belfast hospital last month after contracting Covid while he was in the city to face trial over a fatal shooting in Co Tyrone in 1974.
He was already very sick when he attended court and was on kidney dialysis three days a week – but had wanted to clear his name. He was, of course, never able to do so; the trial collapsed, the accused dead.
Yesterday, Hutchings was given the military funeral that his family had wanted but the Ministry of Defence had tried to resist. Six pallbearers from the Life Guards regiment carried his coffin into St Andrew’s church, the biggest in Plymouth, which was packed with almost 700 mourners. Outside, a further 2,000 well-wishers – they had come from all over the country, many on motorbikes – had gathered to show their support.
This was the funeral, said mourners, that shamed the Government, which had been unable –or unwilling – to halt Hutchings’s prosecution despite the promises of Boris Johnson and his predecessors.
Inside the church, Johnny Mercer, a former Army captain and MP for Plymouth Moor View, who had become Hutchings’s friend and accompanied him to last month’s trial, delivered a devastating eulogy, deriding the “grotesque spectacle of what happened to Dennis in a Belfast court”.
From the pulpit, Mr Mercer, who quit as a defence minister over the treatment of Troubles veterans, described Hutchings as “the quintessential British noncommissioned officer… a fair man. He was compassionate. He was the very opposite of how those who would wish to rewrite history, would portray him”.
Hutchings was the son of a miner from the north east of England, who worked down the pit for two years from the age of 15 until a friend persuaded him to embark on a military career. He had at first declined to join the Life Guards “because he couldn’t swim”, said Mr Mercer, but rose to become regimental corporal major.
Addressing the ranks of veterans, medals worn on jacket lapels, Mr Mercer said their service “cannot be erased”, nor their history rewritten.
In a sideswipe at his own Tory government, he said: “I must tell you that I am not proud of how we currently remember those who served in that appalling conflict trying to prevent a bloody civil war. We can be too quick to forget, or indeed cowered by the rewriting of history into some sort of misplaced shame.
“This Armistice Day, we remember it all, personified in the man we come together to remember today.”
At the end of the service the congregation applauded and Kim Devonshire, Hutchings’s partner, wept as his coffin was carried out to the waiting crowds.
Hutchings’s son, John, 58, said: “This funeral has shown to the Government that people are passionate about soldiers and veterans and we have to stand by them and stop this witch hunt. The turnout has been incredible. He would have been so proud.”
Among the mourners was Charles Goodson-wickes, 76, an Army medic, who had tended to John Patrick Cunningham, a 27-year-old man with learning difficulties who was shot and killed as he ran from an Army patrol in Co Armagh. It resulted in Hutchings being charged with attempted murder decades later.
“I wouldn’t have missed this funeral for the world,” he said. “I had the highest possible regard for Dennis.”
No forensic evidence had ever linked Hutchings to the shooting and another soldier – known only as Soldier B – had told him he had fired the fatal shot. The prosecution had admitted there was no evidence to prove which soldier had done so.
Mr Goodson-wickes, who first served with Hutchings in 1973 and went on to become MP for Wimbledon, said: “Dennis represented the epitome of the best senior British noncommissioned officer. Yet he has been disgracefully treated by successive governments.
“His character was borne out by the fact he could so easily have opted out of attending the trial but he defied medical advice because he wanted to face his accusers and that was typical of the man.”
Philip Barden, Hutchings’s solicitor, first met his client in 2011, after the authorities decided to reinvestigate the 1974 shooting. They became friends. “Dennis was an honest man,” he said. “He was adamant he was innocent and he was adamant he would fight the case so others would not have to go through what he went through.
“He could have avoided the trial because he was so ill but at no point did he ever do that. He said, ‘I will go through this so others don’t have to’. That is what he was all about. He was a soldier to the end, looking after his men. That is how I saw him. We would often say this was his last mission.”
Among the crowds outside was Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the leader of the DUP, who flew in from Belfast and had met Hutchings at numerous veterans’ rallies, campaigning against prosecutions of troops. “It is important we in Northern Ireland continue to support our veterans who have been hounded because they were caught in the middle,” said Sir Jeffrey. “But for their service and sacrifice, Northern Ireland would have descended into a horrible, bloody civil war and the fact we enjoy a relative peace today is thanks to the service of men like Dennis.”
The family had asked that politics be left to one side for the day. But the anger was palpable. “What the authorities have done is criminal,” said Rusty Firmin, 71, an SAS veteran from the Wirral. “They hounded Dennis to death while the real bad guys, the terrorists, who maimed and killed hundreds of people in Northern Ireland and on the mainland walked away under the Good Friday Agreement.”
Hutchings will be cremated today at a private ceremony, his
medals with him in his coffin.