Talking about the 30-year war that I grew up in, isn't something I do, and never saw the need to tell aspects of that part of my life to people but recovering a notepad I'd packed away in an old holdall, transporting me back to a time that has affected me deeply, and recalling why it was put there. I went through it bit by bit, analysing the chronicle of emotions, the memories, and history. A story I began writing in 2010, the pain and truth concealed within the pages. The trauma in the words of what was witnessed. We were just kids when that war came, bringing its bombs, bullets and badness. Creating deaths, sadness, producing witnesses, and more, much more, and what follows is but one of those things witnessed that changed me. On October 22nd, 1974, in the company of a friend. Making our way home to Divis Flats via King Street, stopping outside the main entrance to Eastwoods Bookmakers, counting what money we had and having enough to place a bet on the horses, went in, it was a Tuesday. My mate, (we'll call him 'B),' spotted the radio first, nudging me as I looked down the race-card. 'Someone's left a radio,' he whispered, There it was, just sitting there, waiting to be picked up, by us. Well, we were on the dole, skint, and the chance of a few quid from Joseph Kavanagh's before us, and his famous slogan quickly coming to my mind, 'We Buy Anything,' and a radio was sure to fetch a few quid. The plan formulated fast and made our way to the writing counter it sat on. I pulled down the zip of my bomber jacket down, and 'B' lifted the radio, dropping it as a man came behind us shouting madly, and throwing punches at us, and ducking, weaved our way past him. Making for the back end of the shop and out into the tight, narrow, Marquis Street. I can still to this day, see that red slimline van sitting to the left of the doorway. A lad, not much older than us, I thought; sitting in the front passenger seat reading a newspaper, and my mind was already storing information. 'B' was about thirty feet ahead of me as the man came screaming down the linkway behind me, and promptly ran in the same direction after my mate - towards Castle Street, and feeling the same surge that seen him take off into the air. One second running, the next flying and headfirst into a cast iron drainpipe, to be flat out on the ground, stunned, (a dent in my head to this day, and the recipient of two hearing aids years later, deaf). It was 'B' who helped me to my feet, his lips were moving, but unable to hear what he was saying, because my ears still ringing, hissing, and unsteady on my feet, and hugging me 'B' began chuckling, and noticed that there was a man lying on the ground outside the rear of the bookmakers, the coat seemingly familiar. The fella in the van was being helped out by a priest, his face was lacerated, and bloody, and looked like he'd no left arm. The priest wrapping the white sheet around him and it was turning red with blood. The windscreen of the van no longer there because it had blown in on him; and that moment, when you realise it was a bomb explosion. My mind pulling the jigsawed photographed moments of us entering the bookies, the radio, the man who'd thrown punches at us. Dominic Donnelly was 48 years old. He'd taken that radio and carried it down the backway of the bookies shop into Marquis Street, and no more than 10 feet from that van when he decided to check that the radio was working, and switching it on, died, but he saved our lives that day. We didn't hang around and got out of the town fast. You see, two teenagers from Divis Flats, and Catholics, would have been enough for that bomb to be blamed on us. B's fingerprints were left on that radio after all, and cops back then weren't to be trusted. Deciding that day never to mention it to anyone, and never did. There were other moments growing up, and each of them deserving to be told their including a cop who saved my life. Stories, for another time, but my proof that Angel Guardians exist, and honestly saved too many times to disregard all those Heavenly interventions, miracles, and years later knowing that God had/has a purpose for me. I'm older now and tend to think more, taking time to reflect on those things, and know I want to fight for family traditions, for my Church, to restore religious traditionalism. To fight against these groups who are turning, not only the world but Ireland into a cesspool of filth and immorals. A world were right is now wrong, and wrong is now right, and honestly feel I'm being pushed towards the defence of Heaven on this hell, and somehow in finding my way here today is another push towards something, but maybe the answer lays here.
