conjunctivitis so that’s the end of the nurses’ disco for us.
IRA were hard at it today – 16 explosions – Belfast, Newry, Newtownabbey and Castlewellan, where a man was killed planting a bomb.
Thurs, Jan 27
Bitterly cold day – arrived in school, hair blown all over the place and a drip on my nose! We aren’t getting half day tomorrow as I had expected. Very disappointed. I still haven’t any revision done for tests and I don’t care!
Two policemen were killed today in Derry. 16 explosions during the night. Tonight, there were five huge explosions one after the other – loudest ever, our very house shook.
I couldn’t do my Maths tonight and I sat and cried, feeling sorry for myself. But I feel terrible, fed up, in depths of misery. Went to bed at 9.45, I’m so miserable.
Tomorrow’s Friday, thank God. Maybe I’ll go down to Bank Buildings on Saturday and beg for a job. Keep fingers crossed.
Fri, Jan 28
Went into school hoping for a half-day, due to the feast of Saint Thomas Aquinas. When Sister Virgilius asked for a better way of celebrating than one day off, we suggested 2!
Went over to the Co-op with Mammy after school, came home and watched the news – a policeman was shot dead while fixing his car on the Oldpark Road.
Lots of soldiers around tonight – more soldiers arriving and security being tightened for Derry march on Sunday.
Sat, Jan 29
We were up early. Mammy, Daddy and the boys went to Dunmurry and bought me a new waistcoat. I was really pleased.
I rang the Bank Buildings in nerves and asked about a job. Swiftly told by some snotty creature to write first and I might be considered for an interview.
Decided again to do some studying but Suzette arrived up, naturally, got none done.
Went to bed late. Snowing.
NICRA protest in Dungannon today went off considerably peacefully – turnout of 600. A few CS gas canisters, petrol bombs and rubber bullets fired – but that’s normal here!
‘... that’s normal here!‘ The rumble of a distant explosion, rattles of gunfire, street riots and a steady succession of funerals – that was our life in West Belfast through the winter of 1971 and the early weeks of 1972. But as the snow that I yearned for finally began to fall, in the last weekend of the longest January I could remember, everything was about to change.
From 30 January onwards, thousands of ordinary nationalists, like my family and me, suddenly became afraid that we were all in the line of fire. Events would leave me scared to go to bed that night, and ashamed of myself for writing, just six days earlier, that I wished ‘something big would hurry up and happen soon’.
CHAPTER 2
‘Sure there will be serious trouble.’
I only ever saw my father cry once. A few months after internment was introduced, my aunt in Sligo asked him to send her a letter describing life in Belfast at that time. Kathleen, like the rest of my mother’s family, watched in horror from a safe distance in the Republic as the violence in the North escalated.
My father took up his usual position at the round, teak table in the corner of the living room where he liked to write when the younger ones had gone to bed. He wrote all evening, stopping only occasionally to relight his pipe or stretch his legs. When he finished, he pulled his armchair up in front of the fire, topped up his tobacco and began reading the letter aloud to my mother and me.
He read with passion, recounting in detail the destruction, disruption and unrest which were starting to envelop our lives. As he recalled how a defenceless teenager was snatched by soldiers just yards from our home on Internment Day, beaten severely around the head with batons, and then flung into the back of a Saracen armoured car, my father broke down, unable to read any more. He was mortified. I was shocked. At sixteen, I had no idea how to deal with such raw adult emotion.
A few weeks later, on the bleak, last Sunday in January 1972, I tried to come to terms with seeing many adults cry as the violence of Bloody Sunday was visited upon the people of Derry.
Sun, Jan 30
Got up early because of everyone going to Cooley. I decided to stay at home with Jim and Aidan. Mammy and Daddy didn’t get going till late – there was a bomb on the M1 and it was closed. Stopped and searched four times.
I spent afternoon supposed to be studying but couldn’t settle. Big NI Civil Rights Association demonstration and march planned for Derry – hoped it would go off ok.
However, in tears, we saw the 6 o’clock news. Paratroopers shot 28 people at it – 13 DEAD, including young boys. The army came on and told lie after lie, accused people of being bombers and gunmen.
Terrible pictures on TV – army bending down to take aim at men and boys fleeing from shooting, shooting them dead in the backs. Italian reporter called them murderers. Father and son fleeing, hands above head – both shot. Boy and girlfriend – shot girl, boy went to help her and they killed him.
I’ve never been so heartbroken and hopeless in my whole life before. Everyone full of hatred for army. Sure there will be serious trouble.
My mother and father entrusted me with the care of my 12- and 10-year-old brothers, Aidan and Jim, while they went to spend the afternoon with my grandparents across the border in Cooley. As the evening closed in around us, my brothers and I watched in frightened disbelief as the television news reported that the army had shot dead a number of people at an anti-internment march in Derry.
We watched marchers fleeing in terror, others tending to the dead and injured where they lay and the then Father Edward Daly waving a bloodied, white handkerchief as shots rang out in the background. By the time it was dark and the unofficial death toll reached thirteen, we were convinced that we would never see our parents again. We were terrified that the army might kill them too. All we could do was wait and peer anxiously through the darkness for their approaching headlights, praying for their safe and early return.
They refused to believe us at first when we ran out the front door as soon as the car pulled up and told them how many innocent people had been killed. ‘Calm down. Calm down. One at a time. Now, what’s happened?’ Reunited as a family, we gathered in front of the television and watched the harrowing scenes of bloodshed and grief.
Despite being only 75 miles away from Belfast, I had never been in Derry. My sense of it was of a poor, grey, grim-looking place where the Troubles had started. We had driven through it a few times en route to Donegal but had never stopped there: across Craigavon Bridge, over the River Foyle, out the Letterkenny Road, and minutes later, across the border into the Republic; ‘God’s Country’. By the end of Bloody Sunday, the Bogside was being spoken of around the world.
Within hours of the six o’clock news, I – a young, relatively un-politicised nationalist – and thousands like me all over Ireland were sharing the disbelief, sorrow and anger of the people living in those previously unfamiliar Derry places: Rossville Street, William Street, Glenfada Park and Westland Street.
Six of the boys who were killed were just a few months older than me. The march they walked in was similar to the one which my father and uncle had joined four Sundays earlier. The Paras (Parachute Regiment), whose members gunned down the innocent men in Derry, were on duty in Belfast at that time too. I realised that being young and innocent afforded no protection. My father