Para Bloody Sunday

Northern Ireland and "the troubles" continues to simmer and occasionally boil over. Today a fellow veteran of the troubles, a 66 year old former Para, was arrested for alleged offences in the bloody sunday affair. I can make no serious comment about that sad day but I can remember oh to vividly my first tour of the province back in 1974.

The troubles were at their height with car bombs blowing the public and soldiers to bits daily, snipers a constant danger and parts of the province became near no go areas. I landed one very wet and foggy morning at Aldergrove, got off the Hercules transport and as I walked across the tarmac to the airport terminal there was a dull boom across the loch. "welcome to Ireland" I thought. I will not bore the reader with more than a snap shot of those years in Ireland. Suffice it to say, the Bogside was cold and clammy, Derry a bloody mess and Armagh really was bandit country. I cannot convey the fear in the pit of ones stomach that one gets when one thinks a sniper has you in his sights and the tingling in the spine one gets  when one is approaching and first spots a bag that could hold the bomb that could tear you apart. Its very sobering!

The constant feeling of unreality of Northern Ireland locked in its own strange sectarian battle was beyond me at the time and was a battle only they understood. We tried to keep them apart and in so doing became the enemy.. Bitter, ironic and deadly dangerous one never really knew who was the enemy, they all looked alike. Above all else however, was the constant gut wrenching stress of the place. You just never knew what the mad sods would do next and of course the victims could change to the threat at the flick of a switch. We had a kind of joke that said if you were a boyo or player (terrorist) you could be shot at ten and the tea shirt and song would be out by eleven.

That is not to say we ever thought of them as second rate. They, in the main, believed in their cause, were committed and very dangerous foes that it was better to respect. They could also be incredibly cruel. I well remember a crowd catching two army lads and stoning them to death. The hate was that bad in places you could feel it.

On our side I think the girls of the Womens Royal Army Corps never got the recognition they deserved. We would go out tooled up with rifle and they would simply be in a skirt and soft hat. They were young, as we all were, and when you see an 20 year old girl soldier dash out in her skirt and grab a child off the street in a gun battle you understand the meaning of courage. God bless em all!

Yes Northern Ireland.. I grew up there. I still cannot stand the sound of a helicopter or the smell of jet fuel without being transported back to a 20 year old lad dashing across and diving in the door of a puma helicopter rifle in hand and wondering what the hell was going to happen next. Skimming across the countryside of Armagh with the door open at 100 miles an hour and low enough to scatter the sheep.

Diving out of the window when a bomb is discovered under the bar table only to find out its some idiots gym kit. The utter waste of it all when you see a beautiful girl of 18 with two legs blown off at the knees. For what a unified Ireland. All these things were common enough back then and it cost 4000 lives to come to some sort of rational status quo.

What do I really think of a Para being arrested today for what happened on that Bloody Sunday.. Let him go. He has had over forty years now to worry about what he did and had done to him. Surely thats quits. Enough now.. let it go.