Award-winning military historian examines the activities of East Tyrone IRA

Jonathan Trigg served as an infantry officer in the Royal Anglican Regiment, completing tours in Northern Ireland and Bosnia, as well as the Gulf.

This is the first book to look at the origins of the IRA in East Tyrone, its increased operation in the 1970s, its vigorous, deadly campaign through the 1980s, and its significant degradation in the 1990s.

The author draws on the people involved, including veterans from all sides and former members of the security forces.

With the advent of the Troubles, the Provisional IRA became active in the towns and villages of East Tyrone, the volunteers forming the East Tyrone Brigade and carrying out attacks on members of the security forces.

Drawing volunteers from the region’s tight-knit Catholic communities, many with republican sympathies dating back generations, the Brigade became renowned for the deadly nature of its attacks and its operational and technological innovations.

By the mid-1980s, with a hard core of experienced volunteers and a mass of weaponry from Colonel Gaddafi’s Libyan government, the East Tyrone Brigade were successfully prosecuting a ‘no-go zone’ strategy designed to change the face of the war in Northern Ireland.

The Brigade were now recognised across the IRA and by British forces as akin to the South Armagh Brigade in terms of effectiveness.

Then, one spring night in May 1987, the Brigade launched an attack on the RUC station in the Armagh village of Loughgall. The British were waiting.

All eight members of the East Tyrone Brigade ‘A Team’ were killed. From then onwards the Brigade was fighting for its life, and by the time of the IRA ceasefire in 1997, the PIRA’s feared East Tyrone Brigade was a shadow of its former self.

This is the story of the war in the fields, towns and villages of East Tyrone, as told by the people who fought it.

Jonathan Trigg is the author of over a dozen books of military history. His book on the destruction of Hitler’s Axis allies in Russia, Death on the Don, was nominated for The Pushkin Prize for Russian history in 2014.

The book is published by Merrion Press (£16.99).