British Soldiers Gloat Over Massacre

Posted by Jim on May 12, 2018

Former members of the British Crown Forces have been sharing photographs
of the assassinated IRA Volunteers of Loughgall and gloating about how
they held “parties” in the van in which three of the martyrs were
killed, it has emerged.

Pictures of the dead Volunteers in the bullet ridden van have been
posted on the Facebook page of the ‘Hereford Veterans Association’.
Hereford is home to the British Army’s SAS regiment, which carried out
the ambush.

The IRA men who died in the pre-planned massacre in 1987 were Jim
Lynagh, Padraig McKearney, Gerard O’Callaghan, Tony Gormley, Eugene
Kelly, Patrick Kelly, Seamus Donnelly and Declan Arthurs. They men were
preparing an attack on a nearby RUC base at the time. Civilian Anthony
Hughes, who was travelling through the village in a car with his
brother, was also shot dead by British soldiers.

Two pictures were posted on the page under the name of Ernie McGookin, a
former British soldier and former cartoonist for the Belfast Telegraph
group. They appear to show three of the victims lying in blood on the
ground beside the van. A number of other former British soldiers clicked ‘like’
on the images.

Another photograph appears to show the rusting van, which was struck by
more than 125 bullets, pictured sitting in Gough Barracks in Armagh
around 10 years after the ambush.

Comments on the photos, as reported by the Irish News, include one by a
former RUC policeman, who claimed that he and colleagues held “parties” in the
van.

“During continuity training in 1988 we’d have parties in the back of
it,” he said. “The orange lights of HG (Gough Barracks) made for an
interesting spectacle as they shone the very many bullet holes…..”

Several other posters to the page also gloated about the deaths of the
men, while one appeared to admit direct involvement.

A former soldier, who says he drove two dog teams into the area in a van
on the night of the ambush, describes it as “one of the best nights of
my army career playing a little part in the night….”

Unionists have again this year erected SAS flags close to where the nine
men died in an annual attempt to provoke local nationalists.

Patrick Kelly’s sister Mairead said she was shocked by the latest
development.

“If you make fun of people who are killed it shows the nature of the
people doing it,” she said.

“Nobody with common decency would make fun of anybody who was killed.

“From a personal point of view it is absolutely disgusting and it is
depraved, there’s no other way to describe it.”

Former republican prisoner Brian Arthurs, whose brother Declan was
killed, said “any loss of life is regrettable in war or otherwise. These
men gave their lives in a struggle for the freedom of their country.”

He said the actions showed the sectarian nature of the RUC and “the
dehumanisation of a whole race of proud honourable people.”

“We look on this behaviour with contempt and it reflects the true nature
of the state they profess to protect.”