Any atrocity reported in isolation can be used to beat the other “side,” but together with stories from both communities, it is clear that no “side” has a monopoly on suffering or loss.

~Stephen Travers, July 30, 2018

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I remember reading a book about Northern Ireland and realizing I was probably a Child of The Troubles, even though I was always, by nothing other than luck, in the right place at the right time.  It was from a safe distance, that I learned to recognize the dull thunder-clap of a bomb, the tremble of our kitchen window in its wake, and the stench of days-old smoke from rubble that once was a hotel, a supermarket, a restaurant.

Physically untouched yet forever changed, I cannot escape a calendar marked with anniversaries of atrocities in the country that shaped me and scared me –  Bloody Sunday, the bombings of Omagh and Enniskillen, La Mon, Kingsmill, The Wayside Halt, Loughinisland, Greysteel, Warrenpoint – and so many, too many more.  Rewinding my mental tapes, I also recall black and white news reports from the mainland – of Aldershot, of cars packed tightly with explosives that blew up outside The Old Bailey and in Whitehall; The M62; bars in Guildford, then Birmingham; and, Warrington, Canary Wharf, and Brighton. And, I remember, following one of these atrocities, hearing someone on the radio remarking that it “would give the Brits a taste of The Troubles.”  Someone really said that. 

As Stephen Travers reminds us today,  “no community has a monopoly on suffering and loss.”

On this day in 1972, the year of Bloody Sunday and Bloody Friday, three car bombs exploded without warning in Claudy, a sleepy little village in County Derry. With the chilling choreography that was unacceptably commonplace, the first bomb exploded at 10.15am. The other two followed in rapid succession, injuring thirty people and killing nine – five Roman Catholics and four Protestants, the assault memorialized by poet, James Simmons:

An explosion too loud for your eardrums to bear,
Young children squealing like pigs in the square
All faces chalk-white or streaked with bright red
And the glass, and the dust, and the terrible dead.

One of the dead was Kathryn, a little girl on a step-ladder cleaning her mother’s shop window. She was just eight years old – a year younger than me. Innocent, hopeful, unguarded. Gone.

I am thinking of Kathryn today. In my mind’s eye, I see her tiny body on the ground, the devastation around her. And, all these years later, haunted and helpless, I also see the platform boot among the wreckage on the side of the road at Buskill, County Down.

On this day, 43 years ago, five members of The Miami Showband, were traveling home from a gig at the Castle Ballroom in Banbridge. The sixth member, drummer, Ray Millar, had gone home to Antrim instead to stay with family. On a narrow country road outside Newry, they were flagged down by a group of uniformed men at what appeared to be a routine UDR (Ulster Defense Regiment) army checkpoint. Like the rest of us at the time, I imagine they were only mildly inconvenienced by it. They probably expected it, until they were ordered to get out of their van and stand by the roadside with their hands on their heads. Facing a ditch with their backs to the vehicle, The Miami Showband waited while the men in uniform checked inside the van.

I don’t know when it was that The Miami Showband realized this was not a routine army checkpoint, that they were instead the unwitting victims of a vicious ambush. As they waited, two of the UVF men – later revealed as members of the Ulster Defense Regiment – were hiding a bomb under the driver’s seat, while the others rummaged in the back of the band’s van. The plan had been to send the innocent musicians on their way, with a bomb timed to explode ten minutes later, killing all of them and consigning them to history as terrorists transporting explosives. But, the bomb exploded prematurely, blowing both men to bits, and in the chaos that followed, the remaining UVF members opened fire, killing three of the band members.

There were reports that the handsome young lead singer, Fran O’Toole, was shot 22 times in the face. Lying on his back on the ground, he was utterly vulnerable to men who showed no mercy as he begged for his life. Trumpet player, Brian McCoy, shot nine times, was the first to die at the scene.  Lead guitarist, Tony Geraghty, was shot in the back – five times – and in the back of the head twice. Des McAlea and Stephen Travers survived the blast from the explosion that  flung both of them into the night air. Des McAlea suffered minor injuries and somehow escaped into the night; Stephen was seriously wounded and survived only because he pretended to be dead. Face down in the grass and motionless, he would later recall that one of the gunmen kicked the body of his friend, Brian, just feet away, to ensure he was dead.

Sitting here at my computer, over forty years later, the shock and revulsion returns, the sorrow and fear we felt as details of the massacre unfolded in our newspapers and on the radio later that morning. I remember my mother, standing at the ironing board, shaking her head and muttering in utter disbelief. It was unimaginable – these young men, Catholics and Protestants, darlings of the show band scene, in their prime and adored by thousands of fans north and south of the border, slaughtered in the muck on a country road. Why?

Perhaps we had been in a kind of denial that musicians were somehow immune, perhaps because we saw in the Miami Showband what could be, its members and its audiences crossing all social, religious, and political boundaries. But what happened to The Miami Showband left no doubt that musicians were just as much of a target as anyone else. “No community has a monopoly on suffering and loss.”

May we never forget them and their families on the path to truth, reconciliation, and peace.

 

 

 

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