Wednesday, 20 May 2020


The Provisional IRA shot dead a British soldier in County Tyrone.  Armed with a rifle and a sub-machine gun, two terrorists had positioned themselves in a field overlooking a country road three miles outside Dungannon.  At 09:20 hrs an army Land Rover passed along the road and they opened fire on the vehicle.  Lance-Corporal Henry Gillespie was fatally injured and one of his colleagues was also struck.

One of the soldiers told the inquest how he heard five shots in total.  One of the bullets passed through the shoulder of one soldier and struck L/Cpl Gillespie in the chest.  The driver rushed his stricken comrades straight to South Tyrone Hospital where L/Cpl Gillespie was later pronounced dead.

L/Cpl Henry William Gillespie was 32.  He was a single man from Ballygawley and had joined the Ulster Defence Regiment a year earlier.  He had previously served for six years in the Irish Guards.

L/Cpl Gillespie