‘I lay in pool of blood after being shot at point blank range while undercover in Northern Ireland’

A former member of one of the British Army’s most secret surveillance units has, for the first time, told the dramatic story of his role in an undercover operation which ended with him being shot through the stomach, his partner mortally wounded, and a wanted IRA gunman fleeing injured into the night.

The veteran, known only as Blue*, recounted how events unfolded in episode five of SAS: The Shadow War.

He was just 22 and serving with 14 Intelligence Company – the clandestine unit known simply as “the Det” – when he and another soldier set up a covert observation post beside a farm in South Derry on St Patrick’s Day, 17 March 1978.

“My gut was telling me something bad was going to go down,” Blue recalls. “The hairs on the back of my neck started to come up.”

Listen to the full fifth episode of SAS: The Shadow War here, or become an Independent Member for exclusive access to all eight episodes:

As they hid, two armed figures emerged through a hedge. Blue initially believed they were British soldiers. Moments later, both opened fire on him.

“It was just like a hail of gunfire at a range of 12ft,” he says. “I was shot three times.”

It’s the first time that Blue, now 70, has ever told his story publicly.

He had joined the Det from the Parachute Regiment as one of the undercover surveillance operators deployed throughout Northern Ireland to follow suspected Republican militants and build intelligence on their movements, contacts and weapons networks.

Their target that night was Francis “Frankie” Hughes, a 22-year-old IRA gunman already regarded by police as one of their most wanted men.

Blue says Hughes was exceptionally elusive. The surveillance team hoped that an associate living around the farm complex might lead them to him.

“We were basically tasked to track down this individual,” he recalls. “The aim was that if we watch this other individual, this individual might take us to the guy we really wanted.”

Blue and his partner established what the Det called a “night standing OP” — a temporary observation position relying principally on darkness rather than elaborate camouflage.

There were just two of them.

“You’re on your own, basically,” Blue says.

At about 8pm that night, the man they originally intended to follow appeared at the farm and subsequently drove away. A different surveillance element followed him so Blue and his partner stayed behind.

But a second man, the owner of the property, did not return indoors. Instead, he continued wandering around the yard.

That was when Blue began to feel something was wrong. “There’s no logical reason why this should be happening,” he recalls thinking.

Then he heard movement in the undergrowth to his left.

He saw a man emerge wearing what appeared to be military uniform: beret, combat jacket and weapon held ready. A second armed man followed in single file. They appeared to patrol like trained infantry.

Blue and his partner assumed they were fellow members of the security forces who had wandered into their covert operating area.

The area was supposed to have been declared out of bounds – but sometimes the regular army didn’t get that message. Covert operators had experienced a number of previous close calls with British patrols.

Now, the two soldiers appeared to be approaching them. Blue and his partner would soon be discovered – “compromised”.

Blue had a choice. They could silently withdraw and guarantee their own safety, but in doing so risked making enough noise for the farmer to realise someone had been hiding beside his property. It could destroy the wider surveillance operation. Blue decided to stay.

That decision would haunt him for fifty years.

He allowed the two approaching men to come within about 12 feet before whispering to them: “Stop. Security forces.”

Blue says the pair halted abruptly.

One said something in an Irish accent. For a fraction of a second that reassured him: he thought they might be members of the Ulster Defence Regiment. But then he heard weapons being cocked.

“A millisecond after that, they just opened up with everything they had.”

Both Det soldiers were hit.

One round passed through the grip and magazine of Blue’s pistol before striking him. Another tore through his sleeve. A third whipped through his abdomen, destroying his left kidney, damaging his colon and passing within about half an inch of his spine.

He was thrown onto his back.

His partner, Lance Corporal David Jones, was also shot through the abdomen. The round damaged his spleen. He was mortally wounded.

From the ground, Blue could see muzzle flashes receding as the two IRA men withdrew. They were acting like trained infantry, one firing while the other moved. Bullets passed so close to his head that he could feel their shock waves. At first he thought pieces of hedge were landing on him.

Then he realised the sensation was being caused by rounds passing inches away.

Blue hauled himself back onto his knees and fired an entire 32-round magazine towards the flashes.

“I just basically emptied the magazine,” he recalls. He later discovered he had hit both men.

Severely injured, Blue crawled towards the radio only to find that its handset cable had become disconnected. His hands were already weakening as blood loss sent him into shock.

“If you don’t connect, there’s no backup nearby,” he remembers. “You’re going to die.”

On what he told himself would be his final attempt, he managed to reconnect the radio. Blood was everywhere.

“It’s like having a shallow bath in blood,” he says. “You’re drenched in blood.”

Jones was screaming nearby. Blue forced himself to ignore the pain of his friend and to “bring down the shutters” mentally to shut out the agony and noise.

He transmitted a brief report. Then he crawled to Jones and attempted first aid. When reinforcements eventually arrived – a single Det operator – Blue refused treatment and ordered him to help Jones first.

Then he realised that he may have condemned himself to death.

“You’ve just signed your death warrant here,” he remembers thinking. “By the time he finishes working on my buddy… I’m going to have little or no blood left. So be it.”

Then there was the agonising 45-minute wait for an ambulance to arrive. It had got lost on its way to the scene. Finally at the hospital, Jones was taken into surgery first due to his injuries being considered more serious. Blue went in later.

When he woke, curtains had been drawn around his bed and he was told Jones had died.

“They said, ‘Your partner has died, and we didn’t want you to wake up and see him being pulled away,’” Blue recalls.

Jones was 23 and due to be married the following week.

The firefight had also achieved, by accident, what the surveillance operation had originally intended to do: one of the gunmen Blue had shot was Francis Hughes himself.

Hughes was found the following morning, around 500 yards from the location of the shootout, badly wounded. He was later jailed for the murder of Jones and the attempted murder of Blue, as well as other offences. He died in the Maze Prison in 1981 after 59 days on hunger strike.

The second gunman had escaped. Blue says investigators later followed two blood trails from the firefight to the home of a local nurse whom the wounded men apparently knew.

But there was nobody home – at the time, that same nurse was treating the two British soldiers whom the IRA had shot.

The coincidence was typical of the conflict. So were the decisions that determined life and death.

Blue said he and Jones could have withdrawn. Nobody, he says, would have criticised them for doing so. Instead, they remained in place.

“That little decision – or big decision – cost my buddy’s life.”

Listen to the first five instalments of SAS: The Shadow War now, or become an Independent Member for exclusive early access to the entire series. Available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify