FORMER British soldier Bob Stewart has recalled how he held a young woman in his arms as she die - one of 16 fatalities of the Droppin Well disco bombing 40 years ago today.
Now an MP, former Colonel Stewart still today feels “utter and complete sorrow” for those killed in the attack at Ballykelly, Co Derry, and for those injured and left behind.
“And it was utterly and completely unnecessary,” Mr Stewart said, adding that many of the victims of the INLA bombing were Catholics.
This, he believes, included the young woman who died in his arms.
It is “my most profound memory” of the aftermath of the Ballykelly bombing that killed 11 soldiers and six civilians and injured 66 others.
Mr Stewart, on the scene almost immediately and incident commander that Monday night, remembers she had lost both her legs.
She was still alive, conscious and even talked to him. Her last words were “will you hold me”, Mr Stewart said. Then she died.
It was an outrage that prompted an angry response from Pope John Paul II.
In a message issued by the Vatican, the Pope called for a stop to “evil acts of fratricide” as he expressed “his profound sorrow at the loss of human life and at the immense suffering”.
A memorial service was held on Sunday at the Tamlaghtfinlagan Parish Church to “remember all those who lost their lives that night and those whose lives were forever changed as a result”.
Tributes were laid in the adjoining Garden of Remembrance to the soldiers who died and the five civilians, Alan Kelly, Valerie McIntyre. Carol Watts, Ruth Dixon, Angela Hoole and Patricia Cooke.
While the IRA was blamed by some in the immediate aftermath, military intelligence concluded early on the organisation at that point in the early 80s would not have exploded a no warning bomb where there was a risk of multiple civilian casualties.
The INLA very soon claimed responsibility and the republican splinter group was unrepentant, stating in a coded statement to the Irish News: “The INLA is not prepared to tolerate them or to let them live in this land in any form or way”.
Court hearings would later hear testimony the INLA gang that carried out the bombing had scoped out the disco to calculate whether there were enough British soldiers attending to justify in their minds the certain civilian casualties.
Four people, included two women, were sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to 17 counts of murder, with a fifth to ten years for a lesser offence.
Justice Robert Carswell in Belfast Crown Court said, ″The perpetrators were callously prepared to let anyone there be murdered or maimed for them to accomplish their objective of attacking the soldiers.″
One of those who pleaded guilty was Anna Moore from Derry. She claimed in a later interview to have renounced her paramilitary affiliation within weeks of beginning her sentence and expressed deep remorse for what happened. She later married loyalist Bobby Corry, behind bars although it was short lived.
Her sister was also convicted of murder while daughter Jacqueline, pregnant when first jailed, pleaded guilty to the lesser offence.
Mr Stewart, a member of the Commons NI Affairs Committee, said he hopes young people will listen to their parents and grandparents and hear what happened in recent history.
"Please, please, please young people do not even think about repeating what was done in the past. Ask (elders) what it was like so that there can never be any return to violence and it will only be sorted by people talking," he said.
