Northern Ireland

Ballygawley bus bombing – 30 years after 'walking into hell’, survivors still bear scars

IT WAS a scene of "absolute carnage" on a Co Tyrone country road in the early hours of August 20 1988 after a bus carrying British soldiers was blown up by the IRA. Thirty years on, Bimpe Archer finds that the aftershocks are still blighting lives.

Eight soldiers were murdered by the IRA in the Ballygawley bus bombing. Picture by Pacemaker
Eight soldiers were murdered by the IRA in the Ballygawley bus bombing. Picture by Pacemaker Eight soldiers were murdered by the IRA in the Ballygawley bus bombing. Picture by Pacemaker

THE official death toll of the Ballygawley bus bombing stands at eight. Eight young men – six still in their teens – slaughtered on the road to Omagh as they returned from a short period of leave with their families in England.

It was the British army’s worst loss of life after the Narrow Water massacre and the response 10 days later was a carefully planned ambush of a local IRA unit by the SAS at Drumnakilly, killing Gerard Harte, his brother Martin and Brian Mullin.

However, the real number of lives lost by the Light Infantry regiment to the Co Tyrone attack likely stands in double figures. All 36 who were travelling off duty on the bus remain haunted by what happened that night. Many carry life-long injuries, twinges, aches and painful spasms that serve as a constant and visceral reminder of their lost “brothers”, of things seen that can never be unseen.

As some of those on the bus return to Northern Ireland this weekend to mark the anniversary, missing from their number are not only those who find such memorials too traumatic but those unable to make the reunion because they are no longer here.

As many as five of the former soldiers are believed to have taken their own lives, following years struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

That number could have been higher. James Leatherbarrow, known affectionately to fellow squaddies as ‘Scouse’, attempted suicide at his lowest point.

Just 21 years old, he had survived the blast and made an almost Hollywood-style miraculous recovery to walk down the aisle just eight weeks later.

“I was really bad but getting married gave me something to focus on,” he said, speaking over the phone during a brief break in his day as a long-distance lorry driver.

“I didn’t want to be pushed down the aisle in a wheelchair or on crutches.”

He could not, however, get the wedding ring on his finger, the wounded hand still raw with stitches, and instead wore it on a gold chain around his neck.

Mr Leatherbarrow was trapped in the bus after the blast. Much of what happened is a blur but for decades he carried a clear recollection of the tenderness shown to him by one of the first people who arrived on the scene.

“I remember laying in this girl’s lap on the roadside, saying ‘Please don’t let me die. I’m getting married in eight weeks. Please keep me alive’,” he said.

Five years ago that girl was traced via a radio appeal. Her name was Grace Curry and she had been travelling in another bus with her pipe band back from a parade in Portadown, when it was flagged down.

“The bus driver and my late husband saw a flash, no noise that we could hear. Then [a man], we now know he was a soldier, waved us down, got onto the bus and asked would we help his mates,” she said.

“My late husband and two other mates went up the road and came back down and said ‘We need everybody off the bus’. The wee soldier sat on the bus with [my friend] Anne. She kept him on the bus and comforted him.”

Mrs Curry said as they ran to the stricken bus they heard a sound “like children crying”.

“I knew something major had happened here,” she said.

Grace Curry had been travelling in another bus with her pipe band back from a parade in Portadown, when it was flagged down to help the soldiers
Grace Curry had been travelling in another bus with her pipe band back from a parade in Portadown, when it was flagged down to help the soldiers Grace Curry had been travelling in another bus with her pipe band back from a parade in Portadown, when it was flagged down to help the soldiers

“I had no medical training. I just did what anyone would do,” she said.

“James was trapped on the bus so when the men got James out I sat with him until the ambulance came.

“He was so young. He had a leather jacket, it was very, very trussed up but I wouldn’t let him take the zip down because I didn’t know what was underneath.

“I just comforted him and talked about family and his break away.”

Here, Mrs Curry’s frank reflections of the evening come to an abrupt halt.

“I’ve never really told anybody what it looked like. I’ve never explained to anybody what it was like. It wasn’t a pretty sight,” she said.

She will not be drawn further.

HOWARD Thornton was duty inspector at Omagh RUC station that night. It was a scene he will never forget.

He “grabbed a young constable” and raced from the station after multiple calls came in about an explosion “in the Altamuskin area” involving soldiers.

A call to his army counterpart drew a blank as no personnel were due to be in the area.

The bus’s route should have been along the Cookstown road but Mr Leatherbarrow remembers diversion signs, probably placed there by the IRA unit, leading them into the bombers’ path.

When they had left Aldergrove airport, he remembers passing a man standing watching them who made a sinister slashing motion across his throat and a thumbs-down sign.

“It was a death threat but we got them every day. We didn’t think anything of it,” Mr Leatherbarrow said.

“We thought that we had a massive accident at first.”

Trapped under the back axle of the bus, he was unable to see the “absolute carnage” that greeted Mr Thornton and his young colleague.

“It was in the middle of the countryside, no street lighting, after midnight. All we could see was by the headlights of the vehicles trying to face into what was the bomb scene, Mr Thornton said.

“My whole memory of the scene was the absolute carnage. It was like driving into hell.

“There were young bandsmen trying to help young males on the road. There was no way to get an overview of the whole scene, other than by torchlight.

“I had been to many scenes before and that one has just stayed with me so clearly.

“There were quite a few injured and some dead, some dying. 

“There were people there that lived around. All the emergency services. I had the firemen form a line and search for a secondary device which may have been planted.

“I had to set up diversions and a temporary mortuary. We were all working together, just trying to keep people alive.

“A local GP, Dr [Clifford] McCord, was on the scene, trying to prioritise who needed the most urgent treatment.

“Dr McCord was a significant factor in people surviving.”

While Mr Leatherbarrow not only survived but made it to his wedding, none of his friends were well enough to attend. And for the severely injured teenager, it would prove to be a single bright spot in a lost decade, blighted by alcoholism, violence, homelessness and two suicide attempts.

“Things started to turn bad after that,” he said.

“Drinking, fighting. I was verbally abusive and mentally abusive to my ex-wife. I lost a lot of friends.

“I was only 21. Life had just begun really. I had been in the army four years but in 1993 I got invalided out. I had the drink really bad and ended up taking a nervous breakdown. I ended up on the streets for six months.

“I got caught shoplifting and the police recognised me as a missing person. They asked me if that was me and I said ‘I don’t know – I don’t know who I am any more’.”

Mr Leatherbarrow was diagnosed with PTSD, although the condition was not understood the way it is today.

“My ex-wife knew me before the bombing, during and after the bombing. She noticed things. She said ‘You’re different – I think you need to talk to somebody’,” he said.

He was having flashbacks, waking screaming from nightmares. If a car slowed down he would run away. He could not bear to travel by bus.

Mr Leatherbarrow had a diagnosis but no treatment.  He said “there was hardly any help”. Much of that time remains “a big haze”.

The couple split up and he returned to Liverpool where he began to heal, meeting the woman who would become his second wife in May 1999.

He got his job as a lorry driver and the couple went on to have three children, a boy and twin girls.

His scars remain, turning “black” during cold weather, with pieces of shrapnel pushing up against his skin.

“My son is 15, not much younger than we were then. We were just kids,” he said.

MR LEATHERBARROW is “enjoying life now” but for the woman who came to his aid, time has not proved a healer.

“Just recently I’ve been having trouble,” she said.

“Kenny Donaldson and the South East Fermanagh Foundation got me counselling. I had the first four sessions but we didn’t really talk anything about the bomb. I was ill there and have to go back for the rest,” she said.

“I feel I have to resume it.”

Her memories of that night have never left her.

“It was lovely to see James after all that time. Words can’t describe how I felt. We just knew each other immediately,” she said.

They will meet again on Saturday night at an anniversary reception at Silver Birch Hotel in Omagh, attended by survivors, relatives of some of those killed, band members, medics, police and fire personnel who assisted on the night, and people who came to their aid.

On Sunday there will be a service at the site. Wreaths and poppy crosses will be laid beside a replacement memorial to Jason Burfitt, Richard Greener, Mark Anthony Norsworthy, Stephen James Wilkinson, Jason Spencer Winter, Blair Edgar Morris Bishop, Alexander Stephen Lewis and Peter Lloyd Bullock.

Afterwards those in attendance will gather for 11.30am prayer service in Newtownsaville Church of Ireland.

Mr Donaldson said his group was “honoured” to once again coordinate the events which will host “well over 50 members of the 1st Light Infantry Regimental family”.

“Eight innocents perished at the hands of Provisional IRA terrorism with 28 others sustaining physical and psychological injury and with a number of these individuals subsequently taking their own life,” he said.

“It is important that the events of that fateful night are remembered as well as the heroism of those who assisted in the immediate aftermath; the band members, local residents, physicians and members of the security forces.”

Mr Leatherbarrow will be accompanied by his wife Emma and their children.

James Leatherbarrow and his wife Emma who will accompany him to the commemoration
James Leatherbarrow and his wife Emma who will accompany him to the commemoration James Leatherbarrow and his wife Emma who will accompany him to the commemoration

“What a country. It’s a beautiful place, even with all that stuff that was happening. My kids panicked [about] coming over,” he said. 

“I said: ‘Don’t worry, the people are lovely there. There are just a few rotten apples. Don’t you dare worry about anybody over there’. 

“Even while we were in uniform there were some lovely, lovely people.”