AN IRISHMAN'S DIARY
An Irishman's Diary
THERE was one image, towering above all others, which we should take from Omagh - an image that might console us in the midst of this darkness: and it was the image of so many people in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, even the injured, kneeling and helping the more severely injured. They did not know and could not know whether another bomb was there to despatch them as it had visibly despatched so many around them - yet these plain people of Omagh and Tyrone toiled at the pressure points, applied tourniquets to ruptured arteries, and soothed the hysterical, the demented, the grief-stricken in that sea of smoking bodies. It might not be much to console us, yet it is there. This is what plain people of Ireland did when called upon to do it.
One of the men who rushed to the injured of Omagh was a part-time member of and paramedic with the Coastguard at Portrush, Sean McCarry; and after over eight hours in that abattoir he briefly went to bed. Next morning he joined the all-Irish crew of rescue-service members in their first practice for a planned attempt on the round-Ireland speed record by boat, and never said a word about his experiences of the day before. We do not know of our Sean McCarrys, and we do not speak of them. Briefly they appear anonymously in some rescue or other, and are gone from our ken until we need them again. And so it goes.
THERE was one image, towering above all others, which we should take from Omagh - an image that might console us in the midst of this darkness: and it was the image of so many people in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, even the injured, kneeling and helping the more severely injured. They did not know and could not know whether another bomb was there to despatch them as it had visibly despatched so many around them - yet these plain people of Omagh and Tyrone toiled at the pressure points, applied tourniquets to ruptured arteries, and soothed the hysterical, the demented, the grief-stricken in that sea of smoking bodies. It might not be much to console us, yet it is there. This is what plain people of Ireland did when called upon to do it.
One of the men who rushed to the injured of Omagh was a part-time member of and paramedic with the Coastguard at Portrush, Sean McCarry; and after over eight hours in that abattoir he briefly went to bed. Next morning he joined the all-Irish crew of rescue-service members in their first practice for a planned attempt on the round-Ireland speed record by boat, and never said a word about his experiences of the day before. We do not know of our Sean McCarrys, and we do not speak of them. Briefly they appear anonymously in some rescue or other, and are gone from our ken until we need them again. And so it goes.
Further Information
Publisher: THE IRISH TIMES
Ref: IT/158
Published Date: 21-Aug-98
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