Gunner Robert "Geordie" Curtis

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We will not forget them,

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We will not forget

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Gunner Robert Curtis of 156 (Inkerman) Battery, 94 Locating Regiment, Royal Regiment of Artillery.
6 February 1971 New Lodge, Belfast.

In the early hours, a troop from 156 Battery were deployed in anti riot formation across Lepper Street at the junction of New Lodge Road tasked with preventing a mob from attacking people at the interface with Tiger Bay. A nail bomb was thrown at the troop and in the aftermath of the blast, the crowd split allowing a gunman to fire a long burst of automatic fire from an SMG. The crowd then reformed allowing the gunman to escape. Gunner Curtis was hit and died almost instantly. Four other troop members were wounded, one seriously.
This was the first officially recognised fatality that the army suffered as a direct result of terrorist action.

R.I.P. Geordie.

We Will Remember Them.

My memory of the evening is a little distant now but I was actually there at the time.

There were two troops deployed in the street both in anti riot formation. The Battery Commander was Barry Marsh with Dave Hughes as the Tp Comd of Curtis' troop. My troop was also deployed alongside Dave's and we were ordered to advance towards the junction and the rioting crowd. Our objective being to prevent them from reaching Tiger bay. It was our very first deployment in Belfast having been based in Armagh for the first few weeks of the tour.

The mob was angry and various missiles were hurled towards us including a nail bomb. We kept formation as ordered; the crowd suddenly opened and the automatic weapon sprayed the street. It was miraculous that so few were hit. We took cover but were unable to return fire because the crowd drew together again and the gunman disappeared. The injured lay on the road and we gave first aid as best we could until backup arrived.
It was a very long night as we stayed in the area after casevac to see if we could find the killer. We eventually returned to HMS Maidstone exhausted and the realisation of what had happened then hit home to me. The nature of future engagement would change forever and the long violent year of 1971 had begun. Soldiers across the city and beyond knew the campaign as going to be a long and determined one.
My own experience of the night has never left me and I cannot describe my emotions when the gunman was killed shortly afterwards: poignantly in Curtis Street.

A damn good soldier was lost that night.

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It was a happy day for me when Reid got his.
I was with Yankee Troop under Rodney Walker and we were in the Ardoyne that night. We also got our baptism of fire but were luckier than you lads. We had one rifle between the lot of us. The rest were kept in the Bedford guarded by two lads.
Our innocence ended that night.

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Looking back on those days now, I really cant believe how we got away with it so lightly. The stupid ass tactics we were being ordered to use came out of the Indian Mutiny textbook, and it was only the NCOs good sense that kept our fatalities down.
I bet there was some teeth gnashing in the MOD when they realised that they would have to acknowledge the first 'official' death of a British Soldier. Bastards.

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Always remembered.
R.I.P. Bob.

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RIP

I realise that I am late to this thread, but this is from my second book 'Bullets, Bombs and Cups of Tea'

On that night of February 6, 1971, a patrol of the Royal Artillery was engaged in a brief fire fight with members of the IRA in Lepper Street, near the interface between a fierce Loyalist area and the republican New Lodge. Gunner Robert Curtis was hit several times and died very quickly after the shooting. Curtis was aged 20 and was due to become a father for the first time, later on in the year.

Curtis’s death is seen as a tragic milestone in the history of the troubles, as it was the first officially admitted death of the Northern Ireland conflict. Readers should refer to the Roll of Honour in both this book and also in ‘A Long Long War; Voices of the British Army in Northern Ireland’ where the evidence of 21 earlier deaths through the MOD’s euphemistically termed expression ‘violent or unnatural causes’ is demonstrated. One of the killers was a local New Lodge IRA gunman, William ‘Billy’ Reid, killed in a shoot out with a soldier from a Scottish Regiment. With a supreme irony, Reid was shot and killed in Curtis Street after an ambush on an Army vehicle in Academy Street.On that night of February 6, 1971, a patrol of the Royal Artillery was engaged in a brief fire fight with members of the IRA in Lepper Street, near the interface between a fierce Loyalist area and the republican New Lodge. Gunner Robert Curtis was hit several times and died very quickly after the shooting. Curtis was aged 20 and was due to become a father for the first time, later on in the year.

I interviewed the soldier who killed Reid and was honoured that he chose to write for me. RIP, Gunner Curtis

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We will remember them all.