HOPE IT IS THE LAST
Hope it is the last
DEAR SIR, -
"All in all it was a good town to grow up in . . . the people were friendly and fair, and as Ulster towns go, not at all given to bigotry".
So said the novelist, Benedict Kiely of his home town, and my home town Omagh.
I went there on Tuesday to see friends and family, and to make some sense of the enormous atrocity perpetrated in Omagh last week. The Saturday shoppers and strollers included two of my teenaged nieces and a nephew, all of whom thankfully managed to avoid serious physical injury despite being within a short distance of the epicentre.
I remember being shook to the ground by a nearby bomb as a child in the early 1970s and the last bomb in Omagh in 1978, which was detonated as we sat in the nearby college; the immediate area, thankfully was evacuated.
Yesterday as I walked towards the site of the current bomb to pay my respects and to see the scene of the devastation, I looked into the street of the last bomb and thought of Dessie McBride's pub torn to the ground and never re-opened. I stood outside my good friend Mickey Gallagher's pub and thought of Patricia still very ill at the Royal Victoria Hospital, caught up as she moved towards the bomb, evacuated from the relative safety of their public house. I went to their wedding maybe 15 years ago and the reception at the Carlton Hotel in Belleek, it had been bombed too.
I looked at the floral tributes outside Gallaghers and Wattersons and felt a terrible sadness. I left the scene and passed townspeople on the street not able to engage in any kind of conversation. I went to McElroys Pub and met a man having lunch there, who had a job to finish in two weeks time, but his heart wasn't in it.
I went to a wake house after summoning the courage to hear a man speak of his long wait to identify his wife, in the end by her wrist watch and wedding ring. He wasn't even aware of the bomb until 5.30 p.m. having been outside Omagh buying ornaments for their garden. He searched every bed in the Tyrone County Hospital in his despair.
After that I decided to return to London and booked myself on the 5.00 p.m. flight from Aldergrove, encountering a funeral cortege on my way out of town. I listened to a northern radio station, switching on to catch the final part of a very moving poem called 'I Wonder Why' -apparently penned by an Omagh man now living in Dungannon. I heard a magnificent contribution from a 13 year old Omagh girl reading her own prayer/poem on the Omagh bomb. With her granny she had stopped to look into the window of Kells Drapery Store, which took the full brunt of the bomb, before moving to the comparative some
The drive towards Belfast gave much time for content-plating many of the thoughts outlined above. I determined to write something, to somehow get rid of the anger and sadness felt over the devastation of Omagh and its people. Benedict Kiely's words are so true of Omagh and will hopefully remain so in the future. But it is words of another local man to which I attach the most hope - ' 'that will be the last bomb in Ireland." I pray to God he is right.
CHRISTOPHER J. McGALE
DEAR SIR, -
"All in all it was a good town to grow up in . . . the people were friendly and fair, and as Ulster towns go, not at all given to bigotry".
So said the novelist, Benedict Kiely of his home town, and my home town Omagh.
I went there on Tuesday to see friends and family, and to make some sense of the enormous atrocity perpetrated in Omagh last week. The Saturday shoppers and strollers included two of my teenaged nieces and a nephew, all of whom thankfully managed to avoid serious physical injury despite being within a short distance of the epicentre.
I remember being shook to the ground by a nearby bomb as a child in the early 1970s and the last bomb in Omagh in 1978, which was detonated as we sat in the nearby college; the immediate area, thankfully was evacuated.
Yesterday as I walked towards the site of the current bomb to pay my respects and to see the scene of the devastation, I looked into the street of the last bomb and thought of Dessie McBride's pub torn to the ground and never re-opened. I stood outside my good friend Mickey Gallagher's pub and thought of Patricia still very ill at the Royal Victoria Hospital, caught up as she moved towards the bomb, evacuated from the relative safety of their public house. I went to their wedding maybe 15 years ago and the reception at the Carlton Hotel in Belleek, it had been bombed too.
I looked at the floral tributes outside Gallaghers and Wattersons and felt a terrible sadness. I left the scene and passed townspeople on the street not able to engage in any kind of conversation. I went to McElroys Pub and met a man having lunch there, who had a job to finish in two weeks time, but his heart wasn't in it.
I went to a wake house after summoning the courage to hear a man speak of his long wait to identify his wife, in the end by her wrist watch and wedding ring. He wasn't even aware of the bomb until 5.30 p.m. having been outside Omagh buying ornaments for their garden. He searched every bed in the Tyrone County Hospital in his despair.
After that I decided to return to London and booked myself on the 5.00 p.m. flight from Aldergrove, encountering a funeral cortege on my way out of town. I listened to a northern radio station, switching on to catch the final part of a very moving poem called 'I Wonder Why' -apparently penned by an Omagh man now living in Dungannon. I heard a magnificent contribution from a 13 year old Omagh girl reading her own prayer/poem on the Omagh bomb. With her granny she had stopped to look into the window of Kells Drapery Store, which took the full brunt of the bomb, before moving to the comparative some
The drive towards Belfast gave much time for content-plating many of the thoughts outlined above. I determined to write something, to somehow get rid of the anger and sadness felt over the devastation of Omagh and its people. Benedict Kiely's words are so true of Omagh and will hopefully remain so in the future. But it is words of another local man to which I attach the most hope - ' 'that will be the last bomb in Ireland." I pray to God he is right.
CHRISTOPHER J. McGALE
Further Information
Publisher: ULSTER HERALD
Ref: UH/0337
Published Date: 03-Sep-98
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