Violence erupted in nationalist areas around Northern Ireland within hours of the Derry shootings, making me afraid to go to bed. My father refused to have any lights on upstairs because there were soldiers everywhere – in the gardens and on the street – and they’d be jittery, he warned us, after the day’s events.
I lay in my bedroom in the eerie darkness, listening to the gunfire outside, some of it in the distance but much of it very near. Ambulances and fire engines wailed through the night and an army helicopter droned on and on and on. Unable to sleep, I peeped out the side of the bedroom curtains and saw the orange glow of at least half a dozen huge fires lighting up the sky.
There were reports of protests and demonstrations in parts of England, New York, Norway and Australia. I was scared. However, I also knew that I was witnessing something tragic but momentous.
Mon, Jan 31
In a very tense atmosphere, went out to school. Normal till 11 a.m., then rumours of bombs etc. began and parents from Andersonstown came down to collect their daughters – because of the rioting and no buses.
School was in sheer chaos – almost everyone went home. Finally, at 1.45, Sr. Virgilius called Assembly and we were all sent home because fear of what was to come was so strong. At the hospital, hijacked lorry was in flames, so was Falls Road Co-op, and the Broadway cinema.
Not a sign of a soldier – all too scared. When we reached the barracks, we were greeted with jeers from the military of ‘Why did you have to walk girls? Ha, ha, ha!’ It took me all my time to restrain myself from saying something to those British bullies and thugs.
Hijacked lorries in Fruithill, barricades set up. We went over to see remains of Co-op, Lipton’s supermarket etc. Still smouldering – a terrible sight.
Tues, Feb 1
I was very doubtful as to whether or not I should venture into school. Finally, at a quarter to 10 I decided to go, after the four boys had been sent home and their schools closed, because of shooting.
Got a lift down – no buses – only to find hardly anyone at all in. In my 3c class, 18 people were absent.
Buses came back on but two were hijacked and so, at 3.35, we set out walking. Frankie and Eleanor got lifts, Lizzie and I had to walk – and what a walk!
As we passed Beechmount, a hundred or so boys waited for the army, armed with bottles, stones, petrol bombs etc. and let fly as we passed because a Saracen had arrived. Soldiers jumped out and we fled up the road – Liz and I in front, followed by the rioters, then the soldiers!
At Donegall Road, lorry set on fire as we passed and then more Saracens. Dived for cover. At Whiterock, everyone got free ice-cream from hijacked lorry, then we got a lift home. Shooting all night. Army up and down trying to dismantle barricades. One soldier killed.
Wed, Feb 2
NO SCHOOL – TAOISEACH DECLARES DAY OF NATIONAL MOURNING FOR 13 DEAD.
Really was mourning. Went to 10.00 Mass, the church was packed. Requiem Masses all over province.
Listened to the funerals of the 13 dead on the radio and I just couldn’t restrain myself from weeping continuously as the 13 names were read out, giving ages – as young as 16, as old as 41, a father of seven children.
The weather suited the atmosphere – torrential rain all day, dark and stormy. On the radio even the reporter, who was also in tears, commented on how the sun broke through the clouds as the coffins were placed in the earth.
However, Andersonstown’s hooligans were soon at work. By 2 o’clock, army had been attacked several times, and Christie’s wallpaper shop had been burnt down. Caroline Records shop was burnt down last night. Man shot dead by the army in Ballymurphy, cars hijacked for barricades. Liz’s birthday – went up to her house for a while.
Dignified, respectful mourning turned to violent rage. Protesters in Dublin vented their fury by burning down the British Embassy. In Andersonstown and on the Falls, hordes of youths went on the rampage, attacking the army with anything they could lay their hands on, hijacking vehicles and laying waste to local businesses.
Soldiers stood on every street corner along a tense Falls Road as we made our way to school. Public transport was of course withdrawn. The roadway was strewn with riot debris and with the charred remains of makeshift barricades and burnt-out cars. An acrid smell hung in the air as shops, which had been set alight by petrol bombers a couple of days earlier, still smouldered along our route.
Within a mile of our home, rioters petrol bombed shops, a cinema and supermarkets. ‘Caroline Records’, where my brother and I had bought our first music ‘singles’ two Saturdays earlier, after our parents purchased the family’s first record-player, was burnt to the ground. Being a young romantic, I had bought ‘Softly Whispering I Love You’ by Congregation, while John opted for America’s ‘A Horse with No Name’. It was our first and only opportunity to shop at the store.
Thurs, Feb 3
Once again, there are no buses on the road. Walked to school and arrive late. A lot absent. Reports came in of trouble up in Andersonstown again and shooting at Divis Street. Four gunmen were shot by the army, although apparently not dead.
Mammy and I walked round to the shops after school. Army Saracen pulled up beside us and in soldiers’ idea of a joke, poked their rifles at us through the slits in the side. Mammy nearly collapsed with fear.
Christie’s and Caroline Records both smould-ering ruins and all other shops on that side are closed (except Brian’s) because the electricity supply had been affected by burnings. Using candles.
Most shops were open again after yesterday when there wasn’t even one sweet shop open. All had closed – and black flags hung from all houses.
Within the space of a week, the world we knew had begun to collapse around us but our exam date was immovable, despite our pleas for mercy. Belfast may have been burning, but the Troubles stopped at the entrance to the school.
The rate at which events were deteriorating meant that none of us could predict how and where we might be when our A-levels actually came around in a year’s time. We no longer had any interest in our ‘mocks’ and we resented our principal Sister Virgilius’ insistence on ‘business as normal’. It seemed that the Dominican sisters, cloistered behind the solid red-brick walls of our nineteenth-century convent school, simply ‘refused to recognise’ the Troubles.
Every morning, we passed in single file through a narrow, black, wrought-iron gate in the six-foot-high stone wall which separated the school from the chaos on the Falls Road. A row of ancient, towering, horse chestnut, beech and sycamore trees shielded six hundred teenage girls, in maroon-coloured uniforms, from the mayhem outside. The wall enclosed our five-storey, red-brick school, its lawns and cherry-blossom trees, its tennis courts and hockey and camogie pitches. At lunchtime and after class, solitary nuns, in their cream Dominican habits, passed silently and serenely along the leafy corridor formed by the trees, fingering their rosary beads, and rapt in prayer.
When we managed to arrive in time for morning assembly, the nuns appeared to show no interest in whether we might have had to walk a couple of miles to get to school that day. They didn’t openly acknowledge that we had possibly run a gauntlet of rioters and burning vehicles on the way home the previous evening. They seemingly made no allowances for the impact that a night-time backdrop of shooting, bin-lid banging, sirens and army helicopters might have had on our studying, nor did they blink when dozens of girls were recorded as absent