The 20th anniversary of the Enniskillen bombing will bring conflicting emotions to victims' families, writes Susan McKay
On Thursday, it will be 20 years since the IRA bombed the cenotaph in Enniskillen. The bomb exploded on the morning of Remembrance Sunday, while people were gathering to commemorate local people who died in the first and second World Wars.
On November 8th 1987, eleven people were killed, crushed under rubble. The 12th victim lived on in a coma until 2000. The day after the bomb, the UDA murdered Tyrone student Adam Lambert in revenge, with, Sir John Stephens found, security force collusion.
Enniskillen is approaching the anniversary with the quiet dignity which characterises this town of many well-attended churches. "This was never a bitter town," says Stella Robinson, whose parents, Bertha and Wesley Armstrong, were killed. "I miss my parents, but we all have to get on with life. I've been at a lot of weddings lately, and most of them are mixed. The younger generation don't have the old religious prejudices." Her uncle, a retired Methodist minister, called for there to be no retaliation, and, in 1998, urged a "Yes" vote in the referendum on the Good Friday Agreement.
Aileen Quinton was crocheting a tablecloth for her mother, Alberta, and watching television at her flat in London, when the news flash came on about the bomb. "I thought, 'Mum will be so upset'," she says. "I rang home and couldn't get through. I was worried, but part of me was kind of looking forward to feeling guilty about being relieved it was someone else." She was not to have that luxury. Alberta Quinton (72) was one of the dead.
Remembrance Sunday was important to Alberta Quinton. It was the day she wore her medals and remembered the men and women she had known who were killed in action during the second World War. She had told Aileen that during the war there was no time to remember. Alberta had served as a nurse in the Women's Royal Air Force. She had worked in North Africa and Italy, and had run a field hospital in the former Yugoslavia. She had to take her British uniform off when she came home to Donegal on leave.
AS A CHILD, Aileen would go with her parents to the Remembrance Sunday ceremony. Her father had also been in the RAF. "The first World War veterans used to lead the parade and Mum always said, 'Bless them, there's fewer of them every year'. Joan Wilson's father was one of them. He had lost a leg in the war."
Joan Wilson lost her daughter in the Enniskillen bomb. Marie Wilson, who was 20, was also a nurse. "I miss Marie as much today as the day we lost her," says her mother. Joan Wilson has since lost her son, Peter, who was killed in a car crash in 1994, and her husband, Gordon, who died in 1995. "So there are a lot of anniversaries," she says. "All of their birthdays, all of the days they died."
The Enniskillen bomb is remembered as one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles, but it is also remembered for the words spoken by Gordon Wilson in the immediate aftermath. Speaking to a BBC reporter, he described holding Marie's hand under the rubble, and how her last words to him were, "Daddy, I love you very much". Then he said, "I have lost my daughter and we shall miss her. But I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge. Dirty sort of talk is not going to bring her back to life. She was a great wee lassie . . . God is good. And we shall meet again."
David Bolton, who was at the time a manager in the local social services, believes that these words saved lives. "It was a very dangerous moment in our history," he says. "God knows where we'd have ended up without his intervention. There was something redeeming about it." Bolton points out that others, too, had urged calm. "There was a lot of quiet work behind the scenes."
Gordon Wilson became a celebrated figure. He was in demand as a speaker all over the world, and was given a place in the Seanad. "He loved Dublin, and he loved being in the senate," says Joan Wilson. He met the IRA in 1993 and begged it to stop the killings. His wife concentrated on keeping their home going. A teacher of music, she found the company of children comforting, as well as the classical music she loves - especially, she says, Elgar's Nimrod.
IT WAS LATER that winter when, walking in the grounds of Castlecoole and coming upon a bank of the first snowdrops, that her own grief seized her. "I had one big, long cry and it seemed to really cleanse me. It was a sort of healing," she says. These days, she concentrates on her grandchildren, one of whom is named after Marie, and still plays the organ in the Methodist church.
Joan Wilson will take flowers to Marie's grave on Thursday, and she will go to the church service, but she won't go to the ceremony at the cenotaph. "It is just too difficult," she says. Aileen Quinton will also go to church, and will also stay away from the cenotaph. However, her reasons are more complicated. The memorial to those who died in the bomb is controversial. It consists of 11 bronze doves placed around the pillar which is the base of the original war memorial, a bronze soldier in an attitude of prayer. Aileen Quinton dislikes it so much that she looks away as she passes where it stands on Belmore Street.
"My mother would have disapproved. She didn't fall in a war. She was murdered. The plaque says she was killed. It used to be such a dignified memorial. Now it is like a still out of Hitchcock's The Birds." One of the doves was sawn off one night and taken away by someone else who felt the same. "I like to think that was Mum escaping," she says.
Trevor Armstrong, Stella Robinson's brother, agrees. "They didn't want to know what the likes of me thought," he says. "It was all Gordon Wilson and forgiveness. My parents were good, Christian people who never harmed anyone. I don't forgive the IRA. I don't forgive the DUP for going into government with them either."
He is also angry about the recent removal of a photograph commemorating the bomb victims from the local fire station, following an objection to it by a member of the fire service.
AILEEN QUINTON LAUGHINGLY describes herself as the "bad-ass victim" to Gordon Wilson's more acceptable "brave and inspiring" one. However, the person who is best known as the antithesis of Wilson is undoubtedly Jim Dixon, who survived the bomb with horrific injuries.
"My skull was shattered," he says. "The pain is sometimes unbearable. Like petrol on my eyes. The doctors can do nothing for me. They say it is a miracle I survived." His wife, Anna, was beside him when the bomb exploded. "I was screaming out to God in heaven and I couldn't find God," she says.
"I felt surrounded by evil and darkness. A wee woman came and prayed with me and that lifted it." A nun who came to try and comfort Anna Dixon was rebuffed. The Dixons believe the IRA is the military wing of the Catholic Church.
They believe, though it was denied, that, before the ceremony that day, the Catholic Church refused to let the security forces search the grounds of St Michael's Reading Rooms where the bomb had been planted.
The Dixons believe that to forgive the IRA would be to go against God. "God never forgave an evil man," says Jim Dixon. "Only a repentant one."
Ian Paisley was wrong to share power with Sinn Féin. "God is not mocked. He will take down this government."
Social services in 1987 were caught unprepared for coping with a traumatised community, according to David Bolton, who now runs a major centre for the counselling of victims of the Troubles. "There had been this gripping silence about the conflict," he says. "We might as well have been in Surrey."
However, the bomb forced valuable discussion, and much was learned, especially from the families. "We were able to use that learning in the terrible days after the Omagh bomb in 1998," he says.
Denzil McDaniel is the editor of the Impartial Reporter, and author of a fine book about the bomb. "Enniskillen went through dark days, and the families still suffer," he says. "But there has been a great coming together of the two communities since then," he says. "It is a vibrant town, now."
On Thursday, Enniskillen will remember, and wreathes of red poppies will be left at the cenotaph. For the families of those who were killed, though, remembrance is something constant.