'We used to raid this place': How it feels to return to Northern Ireland after 40 years
Perry Bruce wins our weekly Just Back travel writing competition - and ￡250 - for his tale of an epic trip back to Londonderry where he once patrolled as a young soldier.
On a quiet Sunday morning in June I entered Londonderry for the first time in 38 years, and 20 years since the Good Friday Agreement.
What a feeling, excitement and curiosity combined. I park my car in the Diamond, the main square in the city centre. It hasn’t changed much. There it is, Bishop Street Within. I start walking up it, many memories cross my mind, mostly of going on patrol with my unit, the Third Fusiliers, in 1979. I never thought in a million years I would ever walk these streets again.
Our camp, called Masonic, was opposite the courthouse, which is still there. My suspicions are confirmed. It’s a car park, which is what it was before the Army took it over. The defences, along with the huts, are gone and there is not the slightest trace we were ever there. I reminisce. The cookhouse was there, accommodation over there.
It feels very odd. I take a few snaps and head for Bishops Gate, one of the four original gates of the city. At the top, the sangar (fortified observation post) has gone. We would do four-hour shifts in this. The view now reminds me of the boredom and cold nights, longing for my watch to end. I ask a passer-by to take a photo, she obliges and we start a conversation. She’s a local lady and I risk telling her my past.
She seems surprised and finishes by saying: “You were probably just a boy then.” How right she was, a boy of 18. I walk around the wall. The public were not allowed to during the Troubles for security reasons. The view from the wall looks down on to the Catholic Bogside, our area of responsibility along with the city centre.
I can see the Bogside Inn, the Free Derry Wall and in the distance the Lone Moor Road, where one of our corporals was shot.
I feel confident and decide to take a familiar walk. It feels surreal being in the Bogside again, a place that was so full of tension and danger now seems like anywhere else.
Various murals to Bloody Sunday and hunger strikers in Long Kesh have since been put up.
The streets and houses are just as I remember, but I’m not on patrol this time so I relax. I head on towards the Bogside Inn. We used to raid this place, checking out who was around. It could get rough.
A lady waiting in a car nearby kindly agrees to take some photos of me. I thank her and ask if she’s local. She is. We talk about the Troubles. She says things are a lot better now but the British were wrong in what they did.
I don’t let on about my past this time.
I leave Londonderry for Donegal, my next stop, thinking this will be the last time. But then again, I thought that the last time.
How to enter
Email your entry, in 500 words (with the text in the body of the email), to [email protected] by midnight on Tuesday Aug 28. For terms and conditions, see telegraph.co.uk/tt-justback.
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