An Appalling Crime

Before setting out on a pub crawl through Belfast with two young friends from Scotland's Royal Highland Fusiliers, Dougald McCaughy, 23, dutifully telephoned his aunt in Glasgow. "Is everything quiet?" she asked anxiously. He laughed. "Are you kidding?" Three hours later Dougald's aunt received another call from Belfast. On a narrow roadway on Squires Hill, four miles west of Ulster's capital, a pair of schoolboys had found the bodies of Dougald and his two friends, brothers Joseph, 18, and John McCaig, 17. The corpses were heaped grotesquely on top of one another. Two of the fusiliers had been shot pointblank through the head, the third through the body. Two empty beer glasses lay near the bodies. The violence that has marked clashes involving the Protestant majority, the Catholic minority and the 8,500 British troops stationed in Ulster had suddenly taken on a terrible new aspect.

Revealing Burrs. Police believe that the young Scots, unarmed, dressed in civvies and carrying five-hour passes from their battalion, had decided to down a few pints in Kellys Cellars, a picturesque Belfast pub that dates from the early 1800s and is frequented by Catholic Republicans. Even out of uniform, the young soldiers would have easily tipped their identities with their burrs. Belfast Catholics hate the Scottish troops even more than the English because the Scots have been in the vanguard of many of the arms searches in Catholic homes. Besides, they are predominantly Protestant. The three fusiliers were probably lured away from Kellys by their assassins, posing as newfound drinking chums. On the city's outskirts, a few residents heard gunfire, then saw a red Mini car, carrying men whose heads were covered by a blanket, speeding away from the area.

Though it was widely assumed that terrorists of the outlawed Irish Republican Army had killed the Scots, no one wanted credit for the act. Both I.R.A. factions denied responsibility --the regulars who want a political revolution and the breakaway Provisionals who openly advocate guerrilla warfare until the six counties that make up Ulster are united with the Irish Republic to the south. The I.R.A., however, has pledged "two soldiers for every one Irishman killed." I.R.A. Chief of Staff Cathal Goulding warned recently: "Things are going to get worse. British soldiers are going to get killed."

Until last week's murders, only three soldiers had died since the troops arrived 18 months ago. The deaths occurred in the last six weeks in armed clashes with rioters. But 53 people have been killed since August 1969, and a growing number of the deaths are attributed by police to internecine warfare in a power struggle between the rival I.R.A. factions. Earlier last week a Belfast youth was shot dead and three others seriously wounded in a midnight gun battle when the Provos fought I.R.A. regulars near Catholic Falls Road. Twelve hours later, a milkman believed to be connected with the Provos was shot in the face, presumably by an official death squad, while sitting in his milk truck in the Ballymurphy area of Belfast.

Risks of Revenge. In both Britain and Ulster, a wave of revulsion followed the murders. Some 3,000 Protestant and Catholic shipyard workers united to march through Belfast's streets in an expression of outrage at the crime and sympathy for the slain Scots' families. Ulster's Prime Minister James Chichester-Clark, trying to cool off Protestant hotheads bent on reprisals, warned of "the appalling consequences of murder and outrage, the risks of revenge and the chain reaction that follows."

The Rev. Ian Paisley, Ulster's fiercest Protestant militant, demanded the Stormont government's resignation. Thundered Paisley: "We can no longer tolerate your weakness. You must go before the whole land is deluged with the blood of innocent men and women." The government also faced increasing pressures to invoke the Special Powers Act of 1922 and incarcerate I.R.A. ringleaders. In Britain, Home Secretary Reginald Maudling described the killing as a "coldblooded and an appalling crime." Though the British announced that they were withdrawing all soldiers under 18 years of age, Maudling told the House of Commons that the government is prepared to back its garrison in an effort to crush the I.R.A. gunmen once and for all.

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