The Troubles in Bessbrook

The Troubles in Bessbrook recounts incidents during and the effects of the Troubles in Bessbrook, County Armagh, Northern Ireland.

Bessbrook saw some of the worst violence in the Troubles. 25 British soldiers and local Protestants, all male, lost their lives. Four soldiers died in a non-combat related air accident, but the rest (21 men) were killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA).

The linen mill was converted by the British Army into a major military base. A helicopter landing area was established to supply other military outposts in the area since road-borne movements of troops and supplies were vulnerable to landmine attack. At one stage the little village was reportedly the busiest helicopter airport in Europe, more so than the major heliports supplying the North Sea oil rigs. For many years British Army helicopters would take off and land every few minutes. To avoid the risk of missile attack they would fly at rooftop level over the village. For a time, direct access to much of the village was sealed off by security barriers to minimise the risk of vehicle-borne bomb attacks on the security forces. Some have claimed that this contributed to the commercial decline of local businesses.

Incidents in Bessbrook during the Troubles:

1975

  • 4 June 1975 - Francis Jordan (21), a member of the Provisional IRA, was shot dead by the British Army while planting a bomb at the Pit Bar, Mill Vale, Bessbrook.[1][2]

1976

  • 5 January 1976 - John McConville (20), Walter Chapman (23), Reginald Chapman (25), Joseph Lemon (46), James McWhirter (58), Kenneth Wharton (24), Robert Chambers (19), John Bryans (46), Robert Freeburn (50) and Robert Walker (46), all Protestant civilians, were shot dead by the South Armagh Republican Action Force shortly after their firm's minibus was stopped at a bogus vehicle check point at Kingsmills, near Bessbrook and Whitecross,[3] while travelling home from work at the textiles factory in Glenanne. The men were ordered to state their religious denomination. The driver, a Catholic, was released, while the passengers, all Protestant, were shot with automatic weapons. Ten died at the scene and one man (Alan Black) survived despite being struck eighteen times. For more information see Kingsmill massacre.

1979

  • 17 April 1979 - Paul Gray (25), Robert Lockhart (44), Richard Baird (28) and Noel Webb (30), all Protestant members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), were killed by a Provisional IRA remote-controlled bomb hidden in a parked van, and detonated when their mobile patrol drove past, Bessbrook.[4] The bomb was estimated at 1,000 pound and was believed to be the largest bomb used by the IRA up to that date.[5] In January 1981, Patrick Joseph Traynor (27) from Crossmaglen was found guilty of the four murders and a range of other charges. He was jailed for life on each of the four murder charges and was sentenced to 12 years for the related crimes.[6]

1981

  • 19 May 1981 - Andrew Gavin (19), Paul Bulman (19), Michael Bagshaw (25), John King (20) and Grenville Winstone (27), all members of the British Army, were killed in a Provisional Irish Republican Army land mine attack on their Saracen armoured personnel carrier on the Chancellors Road near Bessbrook.[7]

1993

  • 1 March 1993 - The RUC barracks was struck by a "barrack buster" mortar. There were no fatalities, although four people were injured, and extensive damage was caused to some fifty homes and the neighbouring Anglican church.

1997

  • 12 February 1997 - British Army Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick (23) was killed by a Provisional Irish Republican Army sniper's bullet while manning a vehicle checkpoint on Green Road, Bessbrook.[8] He was the last British soldier killed in Northern Ireland until 2009 when two soldiers were killed by the Real Irish Republican Army in County Antrim.[9]
gollark: > `globals()[Row + Row] = random.randint(*sys.version_info[:2])`Never actually got used anywhere.> `ε = sys.float_info.epsilon`Also not used. I just like epsilons.> `def __exit__(self, _, _________, _______):`This is also empty, because cleaning up the `_` global would be silly. It'll be overwritten anyway. This does serve a purpose, however, and not just in making it usable as a context manager. This actually swallows all errors, which is used in some places.> `def __pow__(self, m2):`As ever, this is not actual exponentiation. `for i, (ι, 𐌉) in enumerate(zip(self.bigData, m2.bigData)): e.bigData[i] = ι + 𐌉` is in fact just plain and simple addition of two matrices.> `def subtract(forth, 𝕒, polynomial, c, vector_space):`This just merges 4 submatrices back into one matrix.> `with out as out, out, forth:`Apart from capturing the exceptions, this doesn't really do much either. The `_` provided by the context manager is not used.> `_(0j, int(0, 𝕒.n))`Yes, it's used in this line. However, this doesn't actually have any effect whatsoever on the execution of this. So I ignore it. It was merely a distraction.> `with Mаtrix(ℤ(ℤ(4))):`It is used again to swallow exceptions. After this is just some fluff again.> `def strassen(m, x= 3.1415935258989):`This is an interesting part. Despite being called `strassen`, it does not actually implement the Strassen algorithm, which is a somewhat more efficient way to multiply matrices than the naive way used in - as far as I can tell - every entry.> `e = 2 ** (math.ceil(math.log2(m.n)) - 1)`This gets the next power of two in a fairly obvious way. It is used to pad out the matrix to the next power of 2 size.> `with m:`The context manager is used again for nicer lookups.> `Result[0] += [_(0j, int(e, e))]`Weird pythonoquirkiness again. You can append to lists in tuples with `+=`, but it throws an exception as they're sort of immutable.> `typing(lookup[4])(input())`It's entirely possible that this does things.
gollark: > `def __eq__(self, xy): return self.bigData[math.floor(xy.real * self.n + xy.imag)]`This actually gets indices into the matrix. I named it badly for accursedness. It uses complex number coordinates.> `def __matmul__(self, ǫ):`*This* function gets a 2D "slice" of the matrix between the specified coordinates. > `for (fοr, k), (b, р), (whіle, namedtuple) in itertools.product(I(*int.ℝ(start, end)), enumerate(range(ℤ(start.imag), math.floor(end.imag))), (ǫ, ǫ)):`This is really just bizarre obfuscation for the basic "go through every X/Y in the slice" thing.> `out[b * 1j + fοr] = 0`In case the matrix is too big, just pad it with zeros.> `except ZeroDivisionError:`In case of zero divisions, which cannot actually *happen*, we replace 0 with 1 except this doesn't actually work.> `import hashlib`As ever, we need hashlib.> `memmove(id(0), id(1), 27)`It *particularly* doesn't work because we never imported this name.> `def __setitem__(octonion, self, v):`This sets either slices or single items of the matrix. I would have made it use a cool™️ operator, but this has three parameters, unlike the other ones. It's possible that I could have created a temporary "thing setting handle" or something like that and used two operators, but I didn't.> `octonion[sedenion(malloc, entry, 20290, 15356, 44155, 30815, 37242, 61770, 64291, 20834, 47111, 326, 11094, 37556, 28513, 11322)] = v == int(bool, b)`Set each element in the slice. The sharp-eyed may wonder where `sedenion` comes from.> `"""`> `for testing`> `def __repr__(m):`This was genuinely for testing, although the implementation here was more advanced.> `def __enter__(The_Matrix: 2):`This allows use of `Matrix` objects as context managers.> `globals()[f"""_"""] = lambda h, Ĥ: The_Matrix@(h,Ĥ)`This puts the matrix slicing thing into a convenient function accessible globally (as long as the context manager is running). This is used a bit below.
gollark: * desired
gollark: I can write some code for this if desisred.
gollark: Surely you can just pull a particular tag of the container.

References

  1. "Sutton Index of Deaths, 1975". Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN). Retrieved 4 December 2011.
  2. "Volunteer Francis Jordan". South Armagh Memorial Garden. Retrieved 4 December 2011.
  3. "Sutton Index of Deaths, 1976". Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN). Retrieved 4 December 2011.
  4. "Sutton Index of Deaths - 1979". Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN). Retrieved 29 January 2010.
  5. "A Chronology of the Conflict, 1979". Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN). Retrieved 4 December 2011.
  6. "The Victims". Belfast Telegraph (12 February 2007). Retrieved 4 December 2011.
  7. "Sutton Index of Deaths, 1981". Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN). Retrieved 4 December 2011.
  8. "Sutton Index of Deaths, 1997". Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN). Retrieved 4 December 2011.
  9. "A Chronology of the Conflict, 1997". Conflict Archive on the Internet (CAIN). Retrieved 4 December 2011.
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