ULSTER MARKS ANOTHER BLOODY ANNIVERSARY
ULSTER MARKS ANOTHER BLOODY ANNIVERSARY
LAST week also marked the 10th anniversary of the Ballygawley bus massacre, in which eight boy soldiers were murdered.
Their unmarked coach was just nine miles from their base in Omagh when it was blasted off the road by a 200lb IRA landmine.
The eight soldiers, who belonged to the 1st Battalion, the Light Infantry, were all single men, aged between 18 and 21.
A further 27 soldiers were injured in the August 20 blast.
The explosion blew an enormous crater in the road, 12ft wide by 6ft deep. Parts of the coach were found hundreds of yards away.
Fermanagh-South Tyrone MP, Ken Maginnis - one of the first on the scene - found a young private lying dying in a cowshed nearby.
"Like any other young soldier, he used his training to crawl undercover into hiding after the blast, but he lay there dying in front of us," Mr Maginnis recalled later. Another victim's body lay beside a road sign -an album of family snapshots scattered nearby.
Among the first eyewitnesses were members of local bands who had been travelling behind the coach. They stripped off coats, jumpers, shirts -anything to cover the victims' bodies. The injured were ferried to the Tyrone County Hospital, where the survivors of the Omagh bombing are still being treated. Dr Dominic Pinto was the senior consultant surgeon on duty that day - as he was last Saturday.
He said: "I prayed that Ballygawley was the worst we'd ever see. But Saturday's bomb was the worst. "I hope I will never have to see anything like that again."
Roll call of the dead
THE soldiers killed a Ballygawley were:
Private Jayson Burfitt, 21, from Bath
Pte Mark Anthony Norsworthy, 18, Plymouth
Pte Richard Greener, 21,Whitley Bay
Pte Stephen James Wilkinson, 18, Durham
Pte Jason Spencer Winter, 20, Taunton
Pte Blair Edgar Bishop, 19, Hereford
Pte Alexander Stephen Lewis, 18, Salisbury
Pte Peter Lloyd Bullock, 21, Bristol
LAST week also marked the 10th anniversary of the Ballygawley bus massacre, in which eight boy soldiers were murdered.
Their unmarked coach was just nine miles from their base in Omagh when it was blasted off the road by a 200lb IRA landmine.
The eight soldiers, who belonged to the 1st Battalion, the Light Infantry, were all single men, aged between 18 and 21.
A further 27 soldiers were injured in the August 20 blast.
The explosion blew an enormous crater in the road, 12ft wide by 6ft deep. Parts of the coach were found hundreds of yards away.
Fermanagh-South Tyrone MP, Ken Maginnis - one of the first on the scene - found a young private lying dying in a cowshed nearby.
"Like any other young soldier, he used his training to crawl undercover into hiding after the blast, but he lay there dying in front of us," Mr Maginnis recalled later. Another victim's body lay beside a road sign -an album of family snapshots scattered nearby.
Among the first eyewitnesses were members of local bands who had been travelling behind the coach. They stripped off coats, jumpers, shirts -anything to cover the victims' bodies. The injured were ferried to the Tyrone County Hospital, where the survivors of the Omagh bombing are still being treated. Dr Dominic Pinto was the senior consultant surgeon on duty that day - as he was last Saturday.
He said: "I prayed that Ballygawley was the worst we'd ever see. But Saturday's bomb was the worst. "I hope I will never have to see anything like that again."
Roll call of the dead
THE soldiers killed a Ballygawley were:
Private Jayson Burfitt, 21, from Bath
Pte Mark Anthony Norsworthy, 18, Plymouth
Pte Richard Greener, 21,Whitley Bay
Pte Stephen James Wilkinson, 18, Durham
Pte Jason Spencer Winter, 20, Taunton
Pte Blair Edgar Bishop, 19, Hereford
Pte Alexander Stephen Lewis, 18, Salisbury
Pte Peter Lloyd Bullock, 21, Bristol
Further Information
Publisher: SUNDAY LIFE
Ref: SL/052
Published Date: 23-Aug-98
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