To save the lives of his fellow soldiers, on a dark night in 1971, Cliff Burrage shot and killed an IRA terrorist. Now 35 years on, in a remarkable encounter, he's come face to face with the dead man's sister. Jim McTaggart reports.

AS Lieutenant Cliff Burrage led five soldiers on a night patrol in a dangerous terrorist stronghold in Belfast, he spotted a gunman lurking in the shadows - and fatally wounded him with one perfectly-aimed rifle bullet.

The decisive action of the young Green Howards officer in shooting Michael McLarnon, who died soon afterwards in hospital, probably saved the lives of his own troops that grim night in October 1971, at the height of the IRA hate campaign. Other gunmen were crouching in a gateway nearby, ready to ambush the men of his Two Two Charlie patrol as they passed through a gap between houses, but when the shot rang out they broke cover and fled.

The Harrogate-born man who pulled the trigger was naturally reviled at the time by all Republican supporters, and especially by the family of 22-year-old McLarnon, who lived not far away in the west of the city.

But now, 34 years later, Cliff has returned to Belfast from his home in Barnard Castle, County Durham, for a dramatic face-to-face meeting with the dead man's sister, Mary.

As he waited to speak to her he had no idea how she would react to him: the unwelcome stranger who fired the shot that ended her beloved brother's life and plunged her close-knit family into grief. But back on that black night in 1971, he fully understood the perils he and his patrol faced as they moved warily through the mean streets of the Ardoyne, a notorious terrorist enclave in the divided, battle-torn capital.

Within the previous few weeks, two other men in the lieutenant's Two Two Platoon had been shot dead by IRA snipers. That meant a total of five members of the Green Howards, North Yorkshire's own regiment, had been murdered during a four-month tour of duty. He was only too aware that the gunmen showed no mercy when they got a British soldier in their sights.

Now a gentle-mannered, softly-spoken 57-year-old father of four, Cliff looks far from being a killer as he sits at home beside his wife Kathy and recalls the moment he looked through the sights of his FN self-loading rifle, fitted with an image intensifier to help him see in the dark, and spotted McLarnon 30 metres away.

He says: "I could see him clearly. He was holding a semi-automatic pistol and motioning to gunmen who were hiding on either side of a road. I had no choice but to fire at him, and saw the others running away immediately.

"If I had not fired my rifle it is highly likely that some of my men would have been killed. They would not have got all of us, but it is probable that at least two would have been shot dead. It was my duty to protect them."

Cliff was awarded the Military Cross for his courage and leadership during his three tours of duty in Northern Ireland. He received the medal from the Queen at Buckingham Palace in 1972, and she spoke to him about conditions in the Province. He left the Army after six years service.

He worked in a factory, then as a civil servant and later an ambulance driver before becoming an outdoor pursuits organiser in Teesdale. He has become well respected in the dale, but has never been known to talk about Northern Ireland or his medal. Yet when the BBC asked him to go back to meet Mary McLarnon, and to be filmed talking to her in the presence of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, he jumped at the chance.

Cliff explains: "After I killed Michael I would have loved to meet his parents, to sit down and have a coffee with them and say why I had to do it. I could understand the terrible grief they and the rest of the family must have been suffering. In fact, I did write to them some years later but I was never able to speak to them and they have since died. So I welcomed the chance to talk about it to his sister.

"She turned out to be a really nice woman, part of an extremely pleasant family. She was naturally a bit edgy when we first met, but she was not hostile to me. I felt she was really brave to do it. We went through the process of what happened. She wanted to clear her brother's name, but I explained what had happened. I feel it did both of us some good."

The programme, Facing the Truth, will be shown on BBC2 tomorrow at 7.50pm. Two other programmes showing meetings between other former opponents will be shown on the same channel on the following two nights.

Cliff was later filmed walking round the streets and meeting a former enemy, Martin Meehan, a terrorist he arrested after a violent struggle, and who later served 15 years in jail. They had an extremely cheerful get-together and Meehan, now a respected figure, presented him with a leather belt he had made for himself while detained in the much publicised prison H Block.

This will be included in another programme, Facing the Past, which will be screened on BBC1 in Northern Ireland next Tuesday. English viewers will be able to pick it up some digital channels or the Internet. "I really enjoyed meeting him again and we became good friends," says Cliff.

BBC executive producer Jeremy Adams says that at the end of filming Mary McLarnon, Cliff Burrage and the other participants said it had been a worthwhile and even helpful experience. He adds: "We were waiting for the first person to say they wished they had never done it, but that didn't happen. Some were astonished that, while painful, it had helped them move forward... I hope our encounters will lead to a wider debate here about victims, justice and truth."

Cliff's wife Kathy, a bereavement counsellor volunteer, says she is sure the meeting helped to bring about peace and reconciliation with the dead man's sister. Archbishop Tutu, who sat in on all the discussions, says that, at times, it seemed something divine was going on.

The two soldiers of Two Two Charlie platoon, both from the North-East, who had been killed shortly before the shooting of Michael McLarnon, were Private George Crozier, 23, who was shot dead by a sniper on August 23, 1971, and Private Peter Sharp, 22, who was shot dead on October 1, 1971.

Cliff Burrage says: "These two men were in my platoon, so I knew them well and was deeply affected when they were killed, as were the other troops. I was not with the pair when they died, but had seen them a short time earlier.

"Five Green Howards were killed during this tour in Northern Ireland, and each death of this kind affects everyone in the regiment. But there is no question about revenge in the way I shot Michael McLarnon. It was simply a question of me being on patrol at the time and having to do my duty."

* Facing The Truth, BBC2, tomorrow 7.50p