JANUARY 30th will be the 50th Anniversary of events in Derry that so pleased the British Monarch that she awarded Orders of Chivalry to Lt Col. Wilford, commanding the 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment, and the then Brigadier General Frank Kitson, the mastermind of the failed British terrorist campaign to crush Irish resistance to tyranny. Wliford’s Battalion and the assassins of the Force Research (or Reconnaissance) Unit were Kitson’s pet instruments.
February 15th will we the 50th Anniversary of Kitson being made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by his grateful Monarch for his services to her In Ireland during the previous year.
October 3rd this year will be the 50th Anniversary of Colonel Wilford’s OBE (an Order of Chivalry) for his work in Derry. The award was delayed,because England’s “Lord Chief Justice” Widgery, (a former Brigadier General) had first to clear him of culpability for the atrocity there.
I would be surprised if Kitson, Wilford and their successors do not have a knees-up for the Golden Anniversary of Bloody Sunday. They might even commission a painting to commemorate it.
Not long ago HISTORY TODAY featured THE KING’S OWN SCOTTISH BORDERERS and its celebrations of an encounter with the IRA in Belfast in the recent war, Including a painting commemorating it.
And I, in my ignorance. imagined that that outfit had died from shame for murdering by rifle-fire, unarmed Dubliners before the First World War.
There’s quite a lot on the Internet on General Kitson, Colonel Wilford, and the grisly Force Research Unit led by James Gordon Kerr, and their contribution to human happiness in many theatres.
You might say that, like Downing Street Party-Goers they Take Their Own Battles and their Political Bosses weasel their way out?
Comments are closed.