Our Patriot Dead 50th Anniversary Commemoration of Republican Struggle 1972-2022 Ballymacarrett/Short Strand

This year, 2022, many communities and indeed many families throughout Belfast and the north will be remembering and commemorating the loss of fathers, husbands, mothers, sons, and daughters as we approach the 50th anniversary of a year often described as the worst of the recent conflict, 1972.

It began with the killing of the innocent as an anti-internment march in Derry was attacked by troops of the Parachute Regiment who, within a twenty minute period, killed 13 civilians and wounded 13 more, one of whom proved fatal, in what we know now as ‘Bloody Sunday’.

This began a sequence of bloody and tragic events that by the end of the year, resulted in the death of 479 people with a further 4,876 injured. One statistic states there were 12,000 shooting and bombing incidents. One hundred and six soldiers died; 23 UDR personnel and 17 RUC members. The IRA lost 60 volunteers, killed, with several hundred interned or imprisoned.

Of the sixty IRA fatalities, 27 died as a result of accidental explosions, eight of those were volunteers from the Short Strand district.

In all conflict, it is all too easy to simply count lives as statistics which fail to convey the emotional heartbreak of loss, or the grieving that for some families never ends, passing down to the next generation.

In communities like the Short Strand where very few families, if any, escaped the conflict, the death of any of its parishioners was felt through the whole community and the pain of loss envelops into the history of struggle that moulded a resilience that brought the parish through a century of conflict.

It suffered and fought for its Nationality and in doing so cemented a solid entity of Nationalism and Republicanism east of the Lagan.

This book commemorates and pays tribute to the Ballymacarrett/Short Strand district and to the volunteers who tragically lost their lives in 1972. It is a fitting tribute to those who gave their lives not only for their country but for their community.