page_title: Wesley Somerville
section_title: Miami Showband attack
hierarchical_section_title: Wesley Somerville / Ulster Volunteer Force / Miami Showband attack
caption_attribution_description: English: Site of the Miami Showband massacre, Buskhill
context_page_description: William Wesley Somerville was an Ulster loyalist militant, who held the rank of lieutenant in the illegal Ulster Volunteer Force's Mid-Ulster Brigade during the period of conflict known as "the Troubles". He also served as a member of the British state's legal Ulster Defence Regiment. Somerville was part of the UVF unit that ambushed the Irish cabaret band The Miami Showband at Buskhill, County Down, which resulted in the deaths of three of the bandmembers. Somerville killed himself, along with Harris Boyle, when the bomb they had loaded onto the band's minibus exploded prematurely. His brother, John James Somerville was one of the three convicted murderers of bandmembers Brian McCoy, Fran O'Toole and Tony Geraghty.
  He was allegedly a part of the UVF team that exploded a car bomb in Monaghan on 17 May 1974 which killed seven people.
context_section_description: Somerville was a member of the Mid-Ulster UVF unit which carried out the ambush of the popular Dublin-based cabaret band, The Miami Showband. In the early hours of 31 July 1975, UVF gunmen wearing British Army uniforms had set up a bogus military vehicle checkpoint on the main A1 road at the townland of Buskhill, seven miles north of Newry, County Down. According to journalist Martin Dillon, at least five of the gunmen were serving members of the UDR. The band was driving back to Dublin after a performance at the Castle Ballroom in Banbridge when its minibus (driven by trumpeter Brian McCoy) was flagged down by the armed men, who ordered the bandmembers to get out and line up beside a ditch facing a field. While a gunman took down their names and addresses, Somerville and Harris Boyle placed a ten-pound time bomb under the driver's seat of the minibus. Martin Dillon suggested in his book, The Dirty War, that this was meant to explode across the border in the Republic of Ireland with the aim of portraying the band as republican sympathisers smuggling bombs for the Provisional IRA. As the bomb tilted on one side, clumsy soldering on the clock used as a timer caused the device to detonate prematurely, blowing the minibus apart and instantly killing Somerville and Boyle, who were hurled in opposite directions. Having taken the full force of the blast, both men's heads were blown to pieces and their limbs torn off. Burnt beyond recognition, one torso was completely charred. Bassist Stephen Travers was later shown a photograph of the body of one of the dead bombers and he described it: "It didn't have any head, just a black torso, no head, legs or arms". What little that remained of Somerville was later found in a field one hundred yards away from the scene; the only identifiable body part was his severed arm bearing the tattoo "Portadown UVF".
  Following the explosion, the remaining UVF gunmen opened fire on the five bandmembers, who had been blown down into the field below the road's level. Three were shot dead: trumpeter Brian McCoy, lead singer Fran O'Toole and guitarist Tony Geraghty. Bassist Stephen Travers survived, but was gravely wounded by a dum dum bullet. Saxophone player Des McAlea had received only slight injuries and was able to alert the RUC in Newry about the attack.
caption: Site of the Miami Showband massacre at Buskhill, County Down, where Somerville was killed in a premature bomb explosion
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