Carol Nice and Simon Ware danced to INXS’s Never Tear Us Apart at their wedding in April 1991. Carol recalls a bright spring day in London. She was in love with Simon’s smile, deep brown eyes and his honesty. The couple were in their early 20s and at the start of their professional and personal lives. Nice was a recently qualified nurse; Ware a lance corporal in the British army. Two days after the wedding he was deployed to Northern Ireland. “It was all so fast, like in the blink of an eye,” Nice recalls.
Over the following weeks she busied herself buying furniture to make their quarters in London comfortable and stylish. When Simon was on leave they socialised with friends and spent time at home with a takeaway and a bottle of wine. Those moments of normality ended when Simon, back on duty in Northern Ireland, was killed in an explosion while he was on manoeuvres in Co Armagh. The couple had been married for barely four months.
Carol’s request that the inscription “Killed by the IRA” be put on Simon’s headstone was denied. The words “Killed in Action” were used instead. “I have no issue with the people of Ireland, but I was still angry with the IRA,” she tells author Martin Dillon.
The women whose stories are included in the book come from all sides in the Northern Ireland conflict. A powerful sense of loss, grief and anger is evident. Too often, however, the reader is left wanting to know more about these women and their lives.
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Similarly, the book’s “revelations” about the Enniskillen bombing and the murder of Jean McConville deserved much greater exploration.
Many of the women’s stories are used to spotlight the inadequacies of police investigations and the murky role of the British intelligence services in the conflict. Dillon, who has written previously on this topic, makes a convincing case for open access to police, intelligence and other relevant files as part of a truth commission process. Despite its weaknesses, what this book highlights is that as well as seeking justice, these women – like many others whose lives have been scarred by the conflict – also want a forum to tell their stories.
Kevin Rafter is professor of political communication at DCU and the author of the forthcoming Dillon Rediscovered
