On This Day PIRA

The three Rudman brothers were from West Hartlepool in Co Durham. Two of them, Thomas and Jack, were twins and all three joined the Light Infantry, a regiment with historic connections to Co Durham. It was formed by the amalgamation of the four remaining light infantry regiments of the Light Infantry Brigade including the Durham Light Infantry in 1968. John Rudman On 14th September 1971 21 year old John Ronald Rudman was among soldiers dispatched to Coalisland following disturbances in the town.  IRA murderers opened fire on the lead Land Rover with pump action shotguns, a rifle and a Thompson submachine gun.  Four women had what the News Letter at the time described as "miraculous escape" when their car was caught in the ambush.  They were returning from a party at Granville when they overtook the army convoy only to come under a hail of gunfire. The soldiers in some of the vehicles jumped out and took cover on the side of the road shouting anxiously for the w...

John Proctor The 14th September 1981 hadn’t been an easy day for John Proctor. Earlier he had served as a pallbearer for his friend and neighbour Alan Clarke, a UDR man shot two days earlier as he walked along Hall Street in the Co Londonderry town of Maghera. The two had been close friends. Paradoxically, however, as the off duty RUCR man arrived at Magherafelt Hospital his thoughts were of new life. He was going to visit his wife June who had just given birth to a baby boy, the couple’s second child, and his wife recalled some thirty years later how they teased one another over how fast she had been in getting back to her ward to watch her husband from the window after leaving him to the front door of the hospital. She said that as he passed the hospital ward window, he joked: "You're very fast tonight", to which she joked back: "I'm not as fat as what you are”. As her husband walked on, she told him for the last time: "God ble...