Memories of the Troubles

Johnny Foreigner · 19-12-2011 03:18AM #1

Do any of you have memories of the Troubles?
I can remember as a child in the early 1980's passing through a British Army check point on the border of Leitrim and Fermanagh. I was terrified by the soldiers with there machine guns pointing at my parents car.
I think its much better now that when you cross the border the only visible changes, are the road signs and road markings.

mark5 · 19-12-2011 03:27AM

tom oliver missing for a week and then found on the side of a road in armagh

John Doe1 · 19-12-2011 03:28AM

I live on the donegal/tyrone border. I remember loads of stories as a kid of bombs in strabane 5 mins away which was scary. I was in Omagh the day before the omagh bombing again very scary.

SoulTrader · 19-12-2011 03:49AM

Used to pass over the border from Donegal to Derry a lot with my Mum when I was a kid. The British Army soldiers were always really polite, honestly never had a problem with them. Looking back, I guess it was strange that there were armed checkpoints, but I was only young and that was the norm to me.

flanum · 19-12-2011 03:57AM

me dad lending pat o'neil his car for the weekend after pat doing 15 years with the maguires, anyways yeah the car gettin stripped to the bone and the brit lads lettin pat ring the garda in cavan to ring me dad to go up and put the car back together with english army lads pointin guns at them..... subsequently it turns out pat didnt make bombs for the maguires in birmingham and there all innocent.. still waitin for an apology from the brum squaddie lol!! actually it wasnt birmingham, it was guildford, but the whole lot ties up... yeah ****ty memories of the troubles op!

Chuck Stone · 19-12-2011 03:59AM

Yep. I remember when an anti-Catholic murder gang blew up the Catholic Church in our town.

The Catholic church building was badly damaged in a Loyalist bomb attack at 11.45pm on Sunday 11 October 1981. The church had just been built and was nearing completion at the time of the attack. The church reopened following the expolsion on Sunday 21 November 1982. The attack on the church prompted the Rev. David Armstrong, who was then Presbyterian minster, to offer his sympathy to the local Catholic priest and his congregation. This contact led to hostility towards Armstrong from within his own Protestant community and eventually to his being forced to leave his church and Northern Ireland in April 1985.

Kanoe · 19-12-2011 04:00AM

remember a bomb scare in the shopping centre across from our estate and everyone was evacuated :pac:
Scared the crap out of me though, I thought we were all going to die :pac: (i was only little)
They carried out a controlled explosion and turned out it was just a hoax.

krudler · 19-12-2011 04:06AM

not really, the further south you go the less it mattered. even watching stuff on the news happening a few hundred miles away felt like it was another country altogether.

KeithAFC · 19-12-2011 04:11AM

The bombing of my town by the IRA.

PseudoFamous · 19-12-2011 04:16AM

KeithAFC wrote: »

The bombing of my town by the IRA.

That narrows it down. We'll just look for the house with the union jack on it then, and we'll find you.

myflipflops · 19-12-2011 04:50AM

My main issue with the North from back then was the few times a year when Match of the Day came on and it was Larne versus f*cking Distillery or something of the like in the IFA Cup instead of the Premier League.

amacachi · 19-12-2011 04:53AM

Dundalk motherfcukers, I win so far.

DEFTLEFTHAND · 19-12-2011 05:31AM

I remember as a child been terrified of N.I and its people. My Dad went up to Belfast on business one time and I cried all night thinking he was going to get shot.:o

Cavehill Red · 19-12-2011 05:44AM

I grew up on a murder mile.

I saw our milkman shot dead in front of me walking to school one morning.

I have permanent damage to one kidney from having the butt of a Para's rifle slammed into it as a child for identifying myself to him as Michael Mouse.

My father and I worked on Friday evenings for a charity, work which involved collating collections of money and cheques and sorting the paperwork. We were robbed by some 'off-duty' moonlighting Provos who taped up the mouths of some kids who were present, tied everyone up and threatened to pistol-whip me if I didn't identify for them the envelope with the cheques inside. Despite them wearing masks, I knew them from their voices. When word got out that I had told the cops, I was 'visited' by Sinn Fein and warned not to testify against them, even though they had robbed a charity for themselves and not the 'movement'. I testified anyway, and still have to keep a low profile in parts of the neighbourhood.

Another time, on the charity run, we were stopped at a red light near Ormeau bridge only for a car to blow up about 30 yards in front of us. Had we not stopped at the light, it would have blown us to bits.

I have on two occasions been chased through town late at night by gangs of feral Loyalists simply for being suspected of being Catholic. On one occasion, had an out of service Belfast citybus driver not pulled over, I could well have been beaten to death, as they'd just caught me.

I dated a Protestant girl when I was 15. I could not visit her home for fear that I wouldn't get back out of the estate. On a number of occasions, she was physically attacked for 'riding a fenian.'

I have friends from all sides of the divide. Both my siblings are in what we call 'mixed marriages'. Everyone of us faced repeated threats, abuse and intimidation for fraternising with 'the enemy'.

Quite a few of my class ended up in jail. About a dozen I grew up with are now dead, all but two (a car crash, a junkie) as a result of the Troubles, either terrorism or suicide.

So yes, like I suppose many people, I have many memories of the Troubles. All bad. Thank God we managed to get beyond those dark days of my childhood. It's an infinitely improved place today, for all its existing problems.

Oranage2 · 19-12-2011 05:45AM

It was the mid nineties in Belfast, maybe 93. I was 6 years old and we parked outside a fast food restaurant. We went inside and it was like nothing I've ever witnessed before, the place was called kfc.

batistuta9 · 19-12-2011 07:30AM

Oranage2 wrote: »

It was the mid nineties in Belfast, maybe 93. I was 6 years old and we parked outside a fast food restaurant. We went inside and it was like nothing I've ever witnessed before, the place was called kfc.

Ahh Kentucky Fried Catholics

The Scientician · 19-12-2011 09:22AM

The checkpoint at Aughnacloy and elsewhere, the barriers up in most towns in the north, British Army patrols, Chinooks etc. But the main thing I remember was my brother or sister telling me not to point my finger out the window of the van or the British Army might think it was a gun and shoot me.

later12 · 19-12-2011 09:29AM

My only memory of the troubles is that I associated it with bedtime.

Nine o'clock news was bedtime in our house.

I'm not being glib by the way, I'm very thankful that this is the extent of my memory of such an awful time in British & Irish history.

pragmatic1 · 19-12-2011 09:56AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NswpCTliqxo

pragmatic1 · 19-12-2011 09:59AM

I remember checkpoints, bomb scares and people getting killed or maimed basically every day on the news.

Zebra3 · 19-12-2011 10:13AM

I remember as a kid being brought up to Newry once and seeing the RUC barracks with all the fencing around them. Even though 'd seen it on the news it was quite a shock.

Then I started going up to Derry to watch the Reds play and walking around the Brandywell and the Bog looking at all the murals in the early 90s with the Brits whizzing past crapping themselves.

Big Nasty · 19-12-2011 10:39AM

Sunday drives to Wicklow down by Glen Of The Downs there was a mural on a wall the top of a hill that read 'Free Nicky Kelly'.

Meow_Meow · 19-12-2011 10:40AM

My dad is originally from the north, so we used to go up pretty frequently to visit relatives. I remember going through a checkpoint and a soldier with the head of his gun literally pointing into the car asked what our surname was. We have a Scottish sounding surname, so he assumed we were Protestant (which we are not) and said "oh, sorry- drive on good sir!" and laughed. My dad has some pretty depressing stories but I get a feeling that he doesn't tell us half of it. The ones he has told of us have been just blatant discrimination regarding work.

bicardi19 · 19-12-2011 10:45AM

Our school used to constantly get bomb scares and we would all have to be evacuated to the local hotel.

My parents also had a pub which had many a bomb scare.

When you grow up with it though it doesn't seem to big a deal.

I thought at the time to be a child in the playground and ask a soldier could you look through his gun was normal.

gcgirl · 19-12-2011 11:04AM

MCMLXXV wrote: »

Sunday drives to Wicklow down by Glen Of The Downs there was a mural on a wall the top of a hill that read 'Free Nicky Kelly'.

In every packet of cornflakes

)

starbelgrade · 19-12-2011 11:05AM

On a trip to Belfast, an off duty British soldier was shot in the head & killed by the IRA in a pub I was having a drink in.

The pub was full of Saturday shoppers, mostly couples and families with kids. It was the most brutal, horrific & cowardly things I have ever witnessed in my entire life.

Belfast is a hugely different place these days - full of nice bars, restaurants, shops & there's a much more relaxed, friendly atmosphere. Such a change from the times of the Troubles.

And yet you still get fuckwit extremists from both sides wanting to rock the peace boat which is baffling.

Cavehill Red · 19-12-2011 11:14AM

starbelgrade wrote: »

Belfast is a hugely different place these days - full of nice bars, restaurants, shops & there's a much more relaxed, friendly atmosphere. Such a change from the times of the Troubles.

Very good point. It's unrecognisable to what it once was. It literally didn't have a city centre when I was young. You'd get on the bus, the cops would walk up and down checking it for bombs, there were big gates surrounding the central area which were closed at night. So all that nightlife now literally didn't exist then and that's why there are still so few bars in the very centre of town.

You got frisked walking into shops. Stopped by armed soldiers and made to open your schoolbag and identify yourself. And it all seemed normal, just as similar scenarios no doubt seem normal to young Israelis and Palestinians today. But you knew it wasn't like anywhere else, because on TV, programmes from England or America or the Republic showed that no one else had to live in that horror.

It's unimaginably different now. There was a time I literally dreaded returning, even after the ceasefires. Now I look forward to visiting. I never thought I'd be saying that.

stovelid · 19-12-2011 11:15AM

I quite clearly remember the era (70s) of the bombings and dirty protests when I was a kid in England. My parents were Irish/Republicans and there were always pictures/leaflets and newspapers around and other pub collection stuff. I also remember the police searching our house as they did to a lot of English-based Republicans in those times.

Big Nasty · 19-12-2011 11:27AM

gcgirl wrote: »

In every packet of cornflakes )

Huh?

stovelid · 19-12-2011 11:31AM

MCMLXXV wrote: »

Huh?

It was a big joke at the time:

Free Nicky Kelly ...(with every packet of [insert name of product])

seamus · 19-12-2011 11:39AM

Thankfully I don't really have many. Never visited the North as a child. First time was on a bus en route to the Donegal Gaeltacht in 1995, there was a ceasefire on, so there were no checkpoints. I can still recall seeing the heavily fortified and barbed-wired buildings at the border though. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before.

My only other memories are of hearing the news of another bombing or killing every other day.

Memories of the Troubles

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