Where Have The Altar Boys Gone ?

Brendy went to Mass every Sunday . Apart from saying his prayers he was also a member of the church choir . People often thought he was going to go on be a priest . He was an altar boy and like a fixture of the parish for a number of years . Innocence was alive and well before the troubles came .

It was about 1968 when real unrest was seen in the village .

Gun battles and rioting were a daily nightmare . Strangers came out from the shadows and things changed all over Northern Ireland for everybody .

Assassinations and tit for tat killings were a regular thing .

Brendy was 32 years old when his Dad was shot in front of him after locking up the church one evening .

Something happened to Brendy that night . It was almost as if he stopped living and stopped caring for anything and anybody .

He stopped going to church each Sunday .

He wasn't seen at the choir rehearsals .

He found an organization where his hatred was fuelled by men who encouraged him to take up the gun .

An incident that was about to happen could never have been conjured up by anyone who had ever known Brendy before the troubles .

One evening Brendy walked into a pub with a submachine gun and killed thirty two people . One for each year of his life .

Somehow that gave him a reason to live with himself .

Somehow it was a deeper image of hell that had portrayed its way into Brendy's life . A good man had gone bad .

As a catholic Brendy was told not to kill ., but he pushed away hi consience and replaced it with an excuse .

Brendy was wanted for the murder of 32 men and was on the run .

As a member of an army he was told he had to kill the enemy .

His best friend was a gun . He slept with it , ate with it and kept it close

To him every day .

He lived in different places that were all dangerous but safe for a while .

Brendy was unable to break away from the hatred that kept him a prisoner of self . He was his own jailer and his own judge .

He had built up the barriers of sectarianism around him and the walls were too high to get over .

A religious divide taught him to stay away .

One evening by chance he bumped into a stranger .

The stranger was an old friend of Brendys who had left the village many years before the trouble began .

When Brendy saw his old school friend he faced up to the person he had become .

Anyway Francis was politely told never to visit Brendy again .

Brendy was far too dangerous to know .

One day the British forces had surrounded a house where Brendy had been given shelter . Brendy had been betrayed by one of his own .

His movements had been made known by an informer and someone

was going to pay .

it was never going to be an easy arrest by the security forces .

Brendy had no back up or other support but kept sixteen soldiers at bay for an hour .

Brendy was a hero to some of the people in the district .

Eventually Brendy was captured after his bullets ran out .

He had fought off six soldiers with his fists before they eventually put the cuffs on him .

There was no trial for Brendy . He immediately put away in an internment camp for a period of time . Anything up to 25 years they said .

During the first three years Brendy had escaped twice and recaptured .

The third escape was a beauty .

He had walked out in the clothes of a Catholic priest who had come to administer the sacraments to some of the prisoners .

They never recaptured him after that .

Sadly he was never heard off again .

It was rumoured that Brendy had been seen in a monastry .

Some think he found God or maybe it was the other way about .

Only God knows , but I must admit I often think to myself ,

Where have all the altar boys gone ?

The troubles came as time of trials for many .

A personal attack on our way of life .

Our innocence was the child that got bashed in the face .

There was no healing for many .

I know many like Brendy who either killed or got killed .

There were few who resisted the other alternatives .

Yet the few who joined their hands in prayer made a change for the better .

To search for an answer with religion was a better alternative than building barriers . One by one people began to join hands again .

Now in 2007 after the homes have been burned and looted .

After the murders it is now time to look at the difficult things that can't be

Ignored anymore .

Where are the altar boys and the innocent victims ?

What have happened to their remains ?

Answers have to come .

The questions are not to be taken lightly .

If the killers refuse to help them real peace cannot come .

There is a lot to answer for .

Some of the decent people that have turned out bad where once altar boys who joined the IRA and took up the gun .

Answers have yet to come .

Where are the bodies of those missing people ?

Why did the riots have to come ?

Why does the taunting between us still remain ?
Protestant and Catholics continued to drive home nails into one another .

Hatred still exists .

Gangs are still there waiting in the shadows .

Conflict is gone but between you and there are many people like Brendy

Still out there who need to talk about what they have done .

There needs to be some kind of communication between killers and victims . People who got mixed up for what ever the reason need to confess their

desire for forgiveness . Revenge was never an answer and God knows there are other ways to even up the score .

Soldiers are hard men inside but at times they are really like castles of sand about to collapse at any moment .

Soldiers are part of a war . They get caught up in the fight .

The troubles affected every family life and every community in Northern Ireland . One way or another every one got involved .

We stuck together through it all .

The End

By Paul McCann