The troops were young men, drawn mainly from the Home Counties and the south of England. To the Irish they spoke with a strange English accent. To some, the army was a friend. To others, it was the enemy. In some quarters it was preferable not to take sides at all and have as little to do with the army as possible. They had been there since August, 1969. The troops were nervous.
‘What's going on? Why have we stopped?’ shouted the army sergeant moving his fingers to release the safety catch on his assault rifle as he raised it across his chest in readiness.
Sitting on the crown of the road in the middle of Shantallow were a group of children. Aged about twelve, they wore short trousers, long-sleeved grey pullovers and scuffed, worn-out shoes. They were children at play, positioned across the road, as pearls on a rope.
The Land Rover was prevented from continuing its journey.
One of the children sang a gentle haunting song, ‘God made the land and God made the sea. To be sure, I hope He shines down on me.’
Removing his cap, Gordon leaned out of the Land Rover and shouted, ‘Clear off! Get off the road, will yer?’
Mumbling something softly to his partner about Catholic kids, Gordon reached into the rear compartment for his weapon. He favoured a habit of never leaving the vehicle without his gun. As he was about to get out of the Land Rover he heard the faint sound of an old Irish melody drifting towards him again.
‘God made the land and God made the sea. To be sure, I hope He shines down on me.’
The young child singing bathed in light from a nearby street lamp and remained seated cross-legged on the road, apparently oblivious to the policeman. The other children slowly moved from the roadway to the footpath.
The Land Rover idled about forty yards from them, its headlights illuminating the scene.
The engine continued to tick over. Gordon gently pressed the accelerator with the gear stick in neutral whilst his hands rested firmly on the steering wheel.
From the window of a high rise building overlooking the street, a middle-aged man in a long black coat put down his binoculars and pressed the transmit button of his walkie-talkie radio. The man spoke quietly, ‘Now!’
It was all over in a matter of seconds.
On the wasteland, approximately fifty yards from the Land Rover, two young volunteers hoisted a home-made mortar tube out of a battered old blue suitcase and aimed it slightly above the roof of the Land Rover.
The taller of the two laid his walkie-talkie radio to one side and rested the mortar tube on his shoulder, whilst the other youth loaded it. He pulled the trigger.
There was a loud explosion and in less than a second a shell pierced the air and collided with the front offside of the Land Rover. The vehicle erupted into a ball of fire as the impact of the lethal home-made device lifted it off the ground and spun it round so that it turned at a right angle to its original axis.
The two young occupants of the Land Rover were heard screaming in the face of death when they were thrown about like peas in a drum.
A cloud of black smoke climbed the sky, billowing upwards in a horrible spiral.
The man in the long black coat stepped away from the window and pocketed his radio. As he walked quietly out of the room that had been seized only hours before for the ‘hit’ a motor bike rode off at high speed.
Simultaneously, a door opened nearby and an anxious mother gathered up her twelve-year-old son and took him indoors.
The voice of the twelve-year-old asked, ‘Did Ah do alright, Ma? Did Ah do what you wanted, Ma? Did ya like ma song, Ma?’
His mother listened for the sound of approaching footsteps and men running. She heard nothing. She held the child closely, saying, ‘Hush, Liam Connelly, will yer now? It's late. Now, go yerself ta bed before yer da' gets home.'