The reality of what British soldiers went through during the Troubles
SIR – Amid the anger over the collapse of charges against ex-soldiers (report, May 5), please remember Staff Sergeant Malcolm Banks, Royal Engineers, acting as infantry.
In 1972, reacting to a blast bomb incident near the Short Strand, east Belfast, he rapidly arrived on the scene with his men, two minutes before the IRA ceasefire was to begin at midnight. He was killed: shot in the back.
No follow-up by his men, sent to protect the public, could therefore take place, so they carried his body into the hall where he and they were stationed – in St James’s church – and laid him down. Like them and the church, he was a Catholic.
Lt Col Frank Stewart (retd)
Poole, Dorset
SIR – While it is most welcome that the High Court in Belfast has thrown out the case against the former Paras, this is sadly no thanks to Her Majesty’s Government, which has persisted for years in denying these men the quiet retirement to which they were entitled. In 2017, the prime minister, Theresa May, responding to my concerns about this very prosecution, said it had to be a matter for the courts.
However, she assured me that she recognised there was “an imbalance in the investigations and cases relating to the Troubles that are before the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland. The current legacy-related … investigations almost exclusively focus on the actions of the military and police, while many hundreds of unsolved terrorist murders are left uninvestigated … This imbalance is wrong and needs to change.”
The appalling betrayal of soldiers who were subject to investigation at the time – half a century ago – must now stop. What legal proceedings have been taken against the terrorists responsible for 90 per cent of the deaths? These are nowhere to be seen – because, surprise, surprise, the IRA did not keep records, let alone hold inquiries. Sir Gerald Howarth Chelsworth, Suffolk
SIR – I am heartened that soldiers A and C have been acquitted of murdering Joe Mccann of the Official IRA.
It was entirely unjust to continue pursuing soldiers over deaths during the Troubles after Tony Blair’s government gave “letters of comfort” to 156 terrorist suspects under the Good Friday Agreement. According to Drew Harris, commissioner of the Garda, 100 of the recipients were suspects in over 300 murders.
Northern Ireland is not the only conflict where our service personnel have faced terrorist opponents hiding among the civilian population, and then had the British government turn on them. After the Iraq war they had to contend with repeated investigations and frequently bogus evidence.
Our soldiers risk their lives, limbs and sanity in asymmetric conflicts on our behalf. It is only right that afterwards we should watch their backs. If we don’t, who will volunteer to guard us while we sleep? Otto Inglis Crossgates, Fife