Robert Nairac

Captain Robert Laurence Nairac (31 August 1948 – 15 May 1977) was a British Army officer in the Grenadier Guards who was abducted from a pub in Dromintee, south County Armagh, during an undercover operation and killed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) on his fourth tour of duty in Northern Ireland as a Military Intelligence Liaison Officer.

Several men have been imprisoned for his death.

His body has never been found.

Nairac was born in Mauritius, then a British Crown colony, to an English mother and a father of French Mauritian origin.

His mother, Barbara (née Dykes) was Anglican and his father, Maurice, a Catholic who worked as an eye surgeon.

At the age of one, Nairac's family relocated to Sunderland, Tyne and Wear, England, where his father worked at Sunderland Eye Infirmary.

Nairac was the youngest of four children; he had two sisters and a brother.

His brother David died of myocarditis in 1962, aged 24.

He attended preparatory school at Gilling Castle, a feeder school for Ampleforth College, a Catholic public school, which he attended a year later.

Whilst at Ampleforth he academically excelled, was head of his house and played rugby for the school.

He became friends with the sons of Lord Killanin and went to stay with the family in Dublin and in Spiddal in Connemara, County Galway.

Nairac read medieval and military history at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he excelled in sport; he played for the Oxford University Rugby 2nd XV and revived the Oxford University boxing club, with which he won four blues in bouts with Cambridge.

He was also a falconer, keeping in his rooms a bird that was used in the film Kes.

He left Oxford in 1971 and entered the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst under the sponsorship of the Grenadier Guards, into which he was commissioned on graduation.

After Sandhurst, he undertook postgraduate studies at Trinity College Dublin, before joining the regiment.

Nairac's first tour of duty in Northern Ireland was with No.1 Company, the Second Battalion of the Grenadier Guards.

The Battalion was stationed in Belfast from 5 July 1973 to 31 October 1973.

The Grenadiers were given responsibility first for the Protestant Shankill Road area and the predominantly Catholic Ardoyne area.

This was a time of high tension and regular contact with paramilitaries.

Ostensibly, the battalion's main objectives were to search for weapons and to find paramilitaries.

Nairac was frequently involved in such activity on the streets of Belfast and was a community relations activist at the Ardoyne sports club.

The battalion's tour was adjudged a success with 58 weapons, 9,000 rounds of ammunition and 693 lbs of explosives taken and 104 men jailed.

The battalion had no casualties and did not shoot anyone.

After his tour had ended he stayed on as liaison officer for the replacement battalion, the 1st Battalion of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

On their first patrol, Nairac narrowly avoided the impact of the explosion of a car bomb on the Crumlin Road.

Rather than returning to his battalion, which was being transferred to Hong Kong, Nairac volunteered for military intelligence duties in Northern Ireland.

Following the completion of several training courses, he returned to Northern Ireland in 1974, attached to 4 Field Survey Troop, Royal Engineers, one of the three subunits of a Special Duties unit known as 14 Intelligence Company (14 Int).

Posted to South County Armagh, 4 Field Survey Troop was given the task of performing surveillance duties.

Nairac was the liaison officer for the unit, the local British Army brigade and the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC).

He assumed duties outside his official jurisdiction as a liaison officer, including undercover operations.

He apparently claimed to have visited pubs in Irish republican strongholds, sung Irish rebel songs and acquired the nickname "Danny Boy".

He was driven to pubs by the future Conservative MP Patrick Mercer, who was then an army officer.

Former Special Air Service (SAS) Warrant Officer Ken Connor, who was involved in the creation of 14 Int, wrote of him in his book, Ghost Force, p. 263:

"Had he been an SAS member, he would not have been allowed to operate in the way he did. Before his death, we had been very concerned at the lack of checks on his activities. No one seemed to know who his boss was, and he appeared to have been allowed to get out of control, deciding himself what tasks he would do."

The real McErlaine, on the run since 1974, was ultimately killed by the Provisional IRA in June 1978 after stealing arms from the organisation.

Nairac finished his tour with 14th Int in mid-1975 and returned to his regiment in London, having been promoted to Captain on 4 September 1975.

Following a rise in violence culminating in the Kingsmill massacre, the British Army increased their presence in Northern Ireland, and Nairac accepted a post as a liaison officer.

On his fourth tour, Nairac was a liaison officer in Bessbrook Mill.

On the evening of 14 May 1977, Nairac drove alone to The Three Steps pub in Dromintee, a village in south County Armagh.

He is said to have told regulars of the pub that he was Danny McErlaine, a motor mechanic and member of the Official IRA from the Irish Republican Ardoyne area in North Belfast.