50th anniversary of first Troubles soldier to die in terrorist attack

Gunner Robert Curtis was shot dead by the IRA while on foot patrol in the New Lodge area of Belfast on February 6, 1971.

The 20-year-old was serving with the Royal Artillery and had been posted to the city only a few weeks earlier.

He was married just over a year before his death and his wife was expecting their first child.

Gunner Curtis was buried in his home city of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.

On the night he was killed, troops had been deployed in response to reports of nationalist rioters on the peaceline with the loyalist Tigers Bay area.

There had been sustained, serious disorder in north Belfast following a number of police and military operations searching for weapons.

Reports from at the time said the soldiers had moved into position carrying riot shields when a nail bomb was thrown.

This was the signal for the crowd to split in two, allowing an IRA gunman to open fire with a sub-machine gun.

Gunner Curtis was struck on his unprotected shoulder and the bullet ricocheted into his heart killing him almost instantly. A number of other patrol members were injured, one critically.

According to the book Lost Lives, the young soldier’s wife gave birth to a baby girl six months after his death.

The entry said she wore her father’s wedding ring on the day of her own wedding, and that when she had a son of her own she named him Robert after the grandfather he never knew.

Although not the first military casualty of the Troubles, Gunner Curtis is listed as the first to die as the direct result of a terrorist attack.

By the end of the decades-long Operation Banner, more than 700 members of the UK military had been killed as a result of terrorist activity. A similar number were killed in other circumstances.

Figures compiled by the various military veterans associations show that the regular army lost 860 personnel, with almost 500 murdered by terrorists.

More than 40 members of the Royal Marines and Royal Navy also died during the campaign of which 24 died from direct terrorist action. The RAF also had seven members killed in terror attacks, with a further 27 who were killed while serving.

A total of 264 members of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), including more than 60 who had left the regiment, were murdered by terrorists. A further 307 were killed in other circumstances.

The Royal Artillery suffered heavily during the Troubles.

Between the murder of Gunner Curtis in 1971 and the termination of Op Banner in 2007, the RA had lost 54 soldiers in terror attacks and 21 from other causes.

READ: Operation Banner all causes Roll of Honour

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