Jimmy Gilmore, who lived across the road from us, built Sunderland flying boats during WW2, and spent 48 hours on a raft after the Princess Victoria went down in January 1953.
My mum opened the curtains one morning to find a soldier lying prone on the front lawn, with his rifle aimed at the house next door to Jimmy's. She opened the window and received a hissed mouthful of abuse and some angry gestures, whereupon she noticed a couple more soldiers on next door's lawn and a few more scattered here & there. After a while a squad rushed up the drive opposite and burst the door in: nobody home. They started carrying crate after crate out, and armfuls of assorted weaponry. "But," said my mum later, "they were such a nice young couple - they always put out a good clean line of washing".
My uncle was kidnapped by the IRA, who were very courteous about it. "We just need your car for a couple of hours, then you'll get it back, no problem." They took him blindfold to a house somewhere - probably up the Shankhill - and left him with a single guard, a pleasant chap who served tea and biscuits and didn't mind having a chat. Chap turned out to have a family; uncle asked if he wasn't worried about getting killed doing what he did. "Not at all," was the reply. "I'm insured." Later, uncle was taken back to where he had been lifted. His car was waiting, minus his address book. "You know what for. Keep quiet." He went straight to the police, and later my mum received death threats on the phone. Nothing else happened though.
A chap called Ronnie Bunting was a friend of a friend. We often all went round together. His father, a retired Major, was Paisley's right-hand man and a right strait-laced bastard. He got Ronnie so pissed off that he joined the INLA and was later assassinated by a hit squad.