A Nation Mourns Its Loss

The troubles"in Ulster take a terrible toll

It was a brilliantly sunny, almost windless day at the little fishing village of Mullaghmore overlooking Donegal Bay on Ireland's northwest coast. Lord Louis Mountbatten, 79, the distinguished war hero, diplomat and elder statesman of Britain's royal family, was summering as usual at his turreted stone castle, Classiebawn, in the green hills. Dressed in faded corduroys and rough pullover, Mountbatten was a beloved and folksy figure around Mullaghmore, where he had vacationed for 35 years. He could sometimes be seen standing knee-deep in the waters offshore, fishing for shrimp, and occasionally took local children for a ride on his 27-ft. fishing vessel, Shadow V. This day he pulled up to the boat dock around 11:30 a.m. for what promised to be a superb day of cruising. Joining him were his daughter, Lady Patricia Braourne, 55, her husband Lord Brabourne, 54, their twin sons Timothy and Nicholas, 14, and Lord Brabourne's mother, the Dowager Lady Brabourne, 82. An Ulster schoolboy, Paul Maxwell, 15, whom Mountbatten had given the coveted summer job of boat boy, cast off the moorings, and the Shadow V, powered by a three-cylinder diesel engine, slowly eased beyond the harbor's protecting stone walls until it cleared the long jetty.

The party proceeded along the coast, still only a stone's throw from shore, for a few hundred yards, then stopped to inspect Lord Mountbatten's lobster pots.

Suddenly, an enormous explosion shattered the summer stillness of the harbor. The blast blew the boat "to smithereens," in the words of one eyewitness, and hurled all seven occupants into the water. Nearby fishermen raced to the rescue. Still breathing, Lord Mountbatten was pulled into one of the boats. He died, his legs nearly blown off, almost immediately. Two Belfast doctors on holiday hastily set up a makeshift aid station on the wharf, using old doors for stretchers, broken broomsticks for splints and ripped-up sheets to bind up wounds until ambulances arrived to rush the victims to Sligo General Hospital. Both Mountbatten's grandson Nicholas and the Maxwell youth had been killed in the blast. After a nightlong struggle to save her life, the Dowager Lady Brabourne died the next morning.

A few hours after the explosion came the dreaded confirmation of what many already suspected. "The I.R.A. claim responsibility for the execution of Lord Louis Mountbatten," said a statement issued by the Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army in Belfast. "This operation is one of the discriminate ways we can bring to the attention of the English people the continuing occupation of our country." The assassination of Lord Mountbatten, a patriarchal figure who seemed as much a part of the public life of Britain as Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, sent shock waves of anguish and indignation through Britain and Ireland. "His life ran like a golden thread of inspiration and service to his country throughout this century," said Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as she joined the nation in mourning. In India, where Mountbatten had helped fashion the subcontinent's independence in 1947, a week of mourning was declared.

Ironically, one question of British policy in which Mountbatten had never played a role was that of Northern Ireland. Yet his death, following hard on the tenth anniversary of Britain's dispatch of troops to the province, inevitably threw into grave relief the unremitting tragedy of Britain's most enduring dilemma. Simply because of his stature, Mountbatten had been considered an obvious if illogical target for the I.R.A. Mullaghmore is only twelve miles from Northern Ireland, near an area known as a refuge for Provos fleeing across the border. Thus local police kept watch on the castle for the one month a year Mountbatten spent there (the rest of the time it was rented), and an unobtrusive personal security detail rotated shifts throughout the day.

But the boat, surprisingly, was left unguarded. It was moored with (about a dozen other small craft at the public dock, and it would have been a simple task for a terrorist to slip through the shadows and plant a bomb on it. That apparently is what happened. Police last week charged two men from the Irish Republic, Francis McGirl, 24, and Thomas McMahon, 31, with Mountbatten's murder. In a strange twist of circumstance, both men had been detained two hours before the bomb on Mountbatten's boat went off, at a routine roadside checkpoint 70 miles away, on suspicion of driving a stolen car. At the police station, a check revealed the two had possible connections with the I.R.A. Police theorized that the bomb was detonated by a timing device or by remote control and were searching for other suspected accomplices.

The bloodshed had only begun. Late that same afternoon a three-vehicle convoy of British soldiers moved along a highway just inside the Ulster border. On the one side was Narrow Water, a peaceful estuary of Carlingford Lough; on the other a golf course. When the convoy passed a trailerload of hay parked beside the road, a huge bomb exploded, blasting a three-ton army truck across the highway and spewing wreckage and human bodies into the air. Surviving paratroopers radioed for help, and a contingent of the Queen's Own Highlanders, including its commanding officer, Lieut. Colonel David Blair, 40, arrived by helicopter. Moments later a second blast went off, ambushing the Highlanders rescue force, this time detonated in a vacant gatehouse near by.

"Narrow Water became like a scene from some fictional war film," reported TIME'S Ed Curran from Belfast. "Everywhere in the debris was blood and human flesh. Overhead the late afternoon sky was obscured by dense smoke rising from the wreckage. The soldiers who had survived staggered around and some opened fire across the Lough at two young men whom they apparently took to be the bombers. The tragedy of Narrow Water was now complete. The two were merely gawking at what had happened. One was shot in the arm; the other was killed. In addition, 18 soldiers, including Blair, had died --the largest number of British troops lost in a single incident in Ulster."

Stunned and grieving, a thousand residents of the nearby coastal village of Warrenpoint gathered tearfully in the town square for a hastily arranged vigil presided over by both Protestant and Catholic clergy. Afterward some walked to the scene of the explosions to lay flowers by the roadside even as the military still searched for remains.

Next day yet another bomb went off, this time at a bandstand in Brussels, where a British military band was to give a concert as part of the Belgian capital's millennium celebrations. The I.R.A. is suspected of having planted it. The bomb injured four band members and twelve spectators; no one was killed. Intelligence experts have believed for some time that Irish terrorists have a base in Europe, whose operatives were responsible for the gunning down last March of the British Ambassador to The Netherlands, Sir Richard Sykes, and possibly the car bombing from which outgoing NATO Supreme Commander General Alexander Haig narrowly escaped on June 25.

"We are very angry, and I am cold and numb," said Ulster Paratroop Commander Colonel Jim Burke, "but we will not overreact because we pride ourselves in being professionals in every respect." Prime Minister Thatcher also recognized that the violence could trigger an eruption of much wider sectarian strife and avoided any display of emotionalism. In a bold, compassionate gesture, she flew to Belfast, where she strolled through the city's main shopping street to hear firsthand reactions to the killings.

Among the applause and cheers was some harsh heckling from a woman partisan of I.R.A. prisoners who are currently engaged in a "dirt strike," a euphemism for a protest in which they wear no clothes and refuse sanitary facilities. Later Thatcher helicoptered to the British army's most beleaguered Irish outpost, Crossmaglen, a heavily fortified and often attacked base in an area notorious for I.R.A. activity. Her speedy show of the flag in Ulster met with a sturdy rebuff from the I.R.A. Said a statement from the Provos: "The Iron Maiden's declaration of war is nothing but the bankrupt rattling of an empty tin."

The weakness of the I.R.A's own policy was apparent from its statement claiming responsibility for Mountbatten's murder; the language constituted a veiled admission that the almost daily round of violence in Northern Ireland has made little headway on British public opinion, despite nearly 2,000 dead and 21,000 injured in the past ten years. Roy Mason, Ulster Secretary in the last Labor government, said he believed Mountbatten's death signaled a frightening new dimension in terrorism, that is, competition among the assassins. "After the Irish National Liberation Army killed M.P. Airey Neave [last March]," said Mason, "the Provos felt they had been made to look incompetent. Apart from the Provos' own cause, they have now been whipped into a new frenzied aim of neutralizing the success of the breakaway militant faction, the I.N.L.A."

The Provisional I.R.A. has its roots in the trouble-torn days of August 1969, when British troops first began patrolling Ulster. It started as a small band of dissident Catholic militants, an offshoot of an amateurish, ill-equipped and disorganized I.R.A. whose tiny membership strove vainly to maintain the much-vaunted memories of Ireland's "war of independence" of 50 years before. The early Provos soon displayed a ruthlessness all their own. They capitalized on the popular Catholic campaign for civil rights, orchestrated protests and street violence.

Even old-fashioned Irish republicans were shaken by the young militants' tactics. Bombs were left to explode without warning in restaurants, bars and shopping arcades. The Provos imposed a ruthless discipline in Catholic areas, organizing their own brand of kangaroo-court justice. People who stepped out of line were "kneecapped." By 1972 the Provos' war had entered a crescendo of barbarity. The indiscriminate killings brought bitter condemnation from the Catholic Church and political leaders. But in Ulster's impoverished Catholic enclaves the sight of a British soldier at the end of the street remained a sufficient spur to militance in a conflict that Irishmen track back for centuries. Soon the Protestant backlash added to, and in many cases surpassed, the Provos' terror.

In 1972 numbed British officials sought out I.R.A. leaders for discussions on a truce. The I.R.A. outlined its demands, including British withdrawal by the mid-1970s. The British government refused, distrustful of the I.R.A. Since then, the Provos and the much smaller I.N.L. A. have forged closer links with other international groups, notably the Palestinians and the Basques, and received assistance in obtaining weapons and guerrilla training. They have also gained more sophisticated expertise in explosives. Last week's deadly precision was a far cry from the crudely made devices of earlier times that often proved more dangerous to those who planted them than to their victims.

The problem of dealing with "the troubles" continues to bedevil the governments of the Irish Republic and Britain. There had already been rumblings that security had slackened in Eke since Prime Minister Jack Lynch and his Fianna Fail Party were returned to power two years ago. Lynch's failure to return from a vacation in Portugal until late last week did nothing to stem the criticism, though he vigorously condemned the I.R.A. as the "real enemies of Ireland." Thatcher is being urged to push for tougher security measures when she meets with Lynch following Mountbatten's funeral this week.

Late last week, as plans were laid for the ceremonial funeral in Westminster Abbey this Wednesday, the bodies of Mountbatten, his grandson and the Dowager Lady Brabourne were flown to Broadlands, his Hampshire estate, to lie in state in the white porticoed mansion. Britons would not soon forget that the distinguished old sea dog, when asked not long ago if he feared an I.R.A. attack, gruffly replied: "What would they want with an old man like me?" A man of civility and simplicity who tried to build bridges instead of exploiting divisions, he could not conceive that his death could be twisted into a violent statement. "I am a man plump in the center," he told TIME'S Frank Melville last year. " loathe all manifestations of extremism, and I believe we should strive, above all else, for the dignity and human rights of mankind, regardless of race, color and creed." sb

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