Qualla: Altnaveigh Landmine Attack

Altnaveigh Landmine Attack: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nzeemin, CC BY-SA 3.0. They were nineteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-five, and twenty-seven years old. Paul Bulman, Andrew Gavin, John King, Michael Bagshaw, and Grenville Winstone were riding in the second vehicle of a British Army convoy through the rural country of south Armagh on 19 May 1981 when a thousand-pound landmine, hidden in the road and detonated by radio remote control, lifted their vehicle apart. The blast threw the engine over the nearby Belfast-Dublin railway line and left a crater large enough to swallow a car. All five soldiers died instantly. Two days later, in the Maze Prison, hunger striker Raymond McCreesh - whose home village of Camlough lay a few miles from Altnaveigh - died on his sixty-first day without food. The attack and the death were not coincidences. The IRA's South Armagh Brigade said the bombing was timed to mark McCreesh's strike. The two events have stayed linked in memory ever since.

Image: Nzeemin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Altnaveigh Landmine Attack: South Armagh in 1981

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nzeemin, CC BY-SA 3.0. The land around Altnaveigh - rolling green country outside Newry, looking south toward the border - was by 1981 one of the most heavily contested places in Western Europe. The IRA's South Armagh Brigade had been waging a roadside-bomb campaign against British Army and RUC patrols...

Image: Nzeemin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Altnaveigh Landmine Attack: The Road and the Wire

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nzeemin, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sometime before the convoy passed, an IRA team had dug the landmine into the road and laid a radio command wire to a hidden firing position. They watched the first vehicle go by. When the second came over the spot, they pressed the button. The blast was vast - the explosive yield...

Image: Nzeemin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Altnaveigh Landmine Attack: The Hunger Strike and the Statement

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nzeemin, CC BY-SA 3.0. The IRA's South Armagh Brigade claimed responsibility almost immediately with a statement that was both political and brutal: 'British soldiers should realize that the English public and the English politicians do not give a damn about their lives. You are fighting a war which yo...

Image: Nzeemin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Altnaveigh Landmine Attack: Five Names

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nzeemin, CC BY-SA 3.0. What gets lost in the operational arithmetic - the explosive yield, the radio detonation, the statement after - is what the soldiers' families lost. Paul Bulman, the driver, was nineteen. Andrew Gavin was also nineteen. John King was twenty. Michael Bagshaw was twenty-five. Grenv...

Image: Nzeemin | CC BY-SA 3.0