He held the rank of Training Officer when he and two other volunteers, Frank Fitzsimons and Joey Surgenor, were killed when a bomb they were planting exploded prematurely at Belfast gasworks in October 1976.

Paul Marlowe was born in Ardoyne, in north Belfast, an Irish nationalist enclave surrounded by Loyalist areas in 1945.

Marlowe grew up in Duneden Park, and was te youngest of three children, having an elder brother, Con, and sister Margaret.

[6] A fellow volunteer, John O'Carroll, has described the circumstances of Marlowe's leaving the SAS: He came out of the jungle mucked to the eyeballs and tried to get into the officers’ mess.

[7] England and joined the Irish Republican Army in 1969[5] sometime after the 1969 Northern Ireland riots in which Ardoyne was heavily attacked and two Catholic civilians (Samuel McLarnon, 27, and Michael Lynch, 28) were killed by machine-gun fire.

[3] He instructed colleagues on basic rural fieldcraft:[6] tactics, ambushes, sniping and counterintelligence,[10] as well as map reading, compass navigation and abseiling.

The operation involved planting a bomb, made of sodium chlorate and nitrobenzene,[7] at British Army post next to the Belfast gasworks on the Ormeau Road.

[3] Although their are contradictory accounts of their deaths,[3] it is likely that the bomb exploded prematurely, ignited the gasometer—and setting off four other explosions as a result[7]—creating a huge fireball which engulfed and killed the men instantly.