Where are the people who really died in Northern Ireland conflict ?
Brendy went to Mass every Sunday . Apart from saying his prayers he was also a member of the church choir . People often thought he was going to go on be a priest . He was an altar boy and like a fixture of the parish for a number of years . Innocence was alive and well before the troubles came .
It was about 1968 when real unrest was seen in the village .
Gun battles and rioting were a daily nightmare . Strangers came out from the shadows and things changed all over Northern Ireland for everybody .
Assassinations and tit for tat killings were a regular thing .
Brendy was 32 years old when his Dad was shot in front of him after locking up the church one evening .
Something happened to Brendy that night . It was almost as if he stopped living and stopped caring for anything and anybody .
He stopped going to church each Sunday .
He wasn’t seen at the choir rehearsals .
He found an organization where his hatred was fuelled by men who encouraged him to take up the gun .
An incident that was about to happen could never have been conjured up by anyone who had ever known Brendy before the troubles .
One evening Brendy walked into a pub with a submachine gun and killed thirty two people . One for each year of his life .
Somehow that gave him a reason to live with himself .
Somehow it was a deeper image of hell that had portrayed its way into Brendy’s life . A good man had gone bad .
As a catholic Brendy was told not to kill ., but he pushed away hi consience and replaced it with an excuse .
Brendy was wanted for the murder of 32 men and was on the run .
As a member of an army he was told he had to kill the enemy .
His best friend was a gun . He slept with it , ate with it and kept it close
To him every day .
He lived in different places that were all dangerous but safe for a while .
Brendy was unable to break away from the hatred that kept him a prisoner of self . He was his own jailer and his own judge .
He had built up the barriers of sectarianism around him and the walls were too high to get over .
A religious divide taught him to stay away .
One evening by chance he bumped into a stranger .
The stranger was an old friend of Brendys who had left the village many years before the trouble began .
When Brendy saw his old school friend he faced up to the person he had become .
Anyway Francis was politely told never to visit Brendy again .
Brendy was far too dangerous to know .
One day the British forces had surrounded a house where Brendy had been given shelter . Brendy had been betrayed by one of his own .
His movements had been made known by an informer and someone
was going to pay .
it was never going to be an easy arrest by the security forces .
Brendy had no back up or other support but kept sixteen soldiers at bay for an hour .
Brendy was a hero to some of the people in the district .
Eventually Brendy was captured after his bullets ran out .
He had fought off six soldiers with his fists before they eventually put the cuffs on him .
There was no trial for Brendy . He immediately put away in an internment camp for a period of time . Anything up to 25 years they said .
During the first three years Brendy had escaped twice and recaptured .
The third escape was a beauty .
He had walked out in the clothes of a Catholic priest who had come to administer the sacraments to some of the prisoners .
They never recaptured him after that .
Sadly he was never heard off again .
It was rumoured that Brendy had been seen in a monastry .
Some think he found God or maybe it was the other way about .
Only God knows , but I must admit I often think to myself ,
Where have all the altar boys gone ?
The troubles came as time of trials for many .
A personal attack on our way of life .
Our innocence was the child that got bashed in the face .
There was no healing for many .
I know many like Brendy who either killed or got killed .
There were few who resisted the other alternatives .
Yet the few who joined their hands in prayer made a change for the better .
To search for an answer with religion was a better alternative than building barriers . One by one people began to join hands again .
Now in 2007 after the homes have been burned and looted .
After the murders it is now time to look at the difficult things that can’t be
Ignored anymore .
Where are the altar boys and the innocent victims ?
What have happened to their remains ?
Answers have to come .
The questions are not to be taken lightly .
If the killers refuse to help them real peace cannot come .
There is a lot to answer for .
Some of the decent people that have turned out bad where once altar boys who joined the IRA and took up the gun .
Answers have yet to come .
Where are the bodies of those missing people ?
Why did the riots have to come ?
Why does the taunting between us still remain ?
Protestant and Catholics continued to drive home nails into one another .
Hatred still exists .
Gangs are still there waiting in the shadows .
Conflict is gone but between you and there are many people like Brendy
Still out there who need to talk about what they have done .
There needs to be some kind of communication between killers and victims . People who got mixed up for what ever the reason need to confess their
desire for forgiveness . Revenge was never an answer and God knows there are other ways to even up the score .
Soldiers are hard men inside but at times they are really like castles of sand about to collapse at any moment .
Soldiers are part of a war . They get caught up in the fight .
The troubles affected every family life and every community in Northern Ireland . One way or another every one got involved .
