Shankill Butchers

You haven’t lived ‘til you’ve lost a limb. At least, that’s what I tell them feckin’ eejits who stare at me left arm with practiced pity…a worthless emotion if you ask me. If only they knew what happened, they wouldn’t have use for pity. They’d grab me by da shoulder and offer me da next shout; a hero’s welcome they’d call it. But aye, ‘tis been a long while since these lips have graced the craythur on another’s pocket.
Instead, I pity them for livin’ like cowards, carryin’ about their days hopin’ for change but not willin’ to do anythin’ for it. Most people will never understand life until their eyes witness a piece of their own flesh…dead. “A sacrifice,” I call it, making da sign of the cross on me chest with da only arm I have left.
“Freedom.”
Aye, but we wouldn’t have freedom would we? Not yet at least. Not the type of freedom we hoped for…prayed for. That was 25 years ago and still, the old steel walls that loom between us Taigs and them Proddies casts long dark shadows over Falls Road, a reminder of exclusion, as if our Catholicism is somehow contagious and deadly.
I grew up just off of Falls Road in a small apartment with me two brothers and me mother. We were raised on the ol’ heroic Fenian stories of Finn Mac Cool and of Cù Chulainn. Me Da’ was killed by da feckin’ UVF when I was a wee lad of seven but da stories remained. I was haunted by those stories.
Ten years later I joined the Provo’s with my grade school friends, eager to add my name among the ranks of IRA folklore. It was only a day after da Bloody Sunday incident in Derry where British Paramilitary’s opened fire on a civil rights march. Thousands of lads like meself signed up afta day.
We didn’t hate the prods for their religion like da way they hated us. We hated them for da oppression, for da fact that they control everything: da police, da government, where we live, where we work, where we don’t work. We hated them most for keeping us from being a part of da Republic. Ireland was never meant to be cut in two.
For ten years I fought da Shankill Road prods only a few blocks from Falls Road. We hijacked buses and taxis and drove ‘em past da great steel gates to use as roadblocks for shootouts. It became our obsession, our sport. We fought ‘em because they fought us, both sides claiming the side of good.
I lost me arm in ’81, a bloody horrible week to be Irish. ‘Twas a week after Bobby Sands died in da H-block prison of a hunger strike. Emotions were runnin’ high. The Shankill Butchers, a notorious gang of feckin’ UVF members who became famous for butcherin’ people like cattle, kidnapped and killed my brothers. Hung ‘em by their heels, slit their throats, let ‘em bleed out. I planted a bomb in their local on Shankill road, succeeded in killin’ two of ‘em in the blast. Lost me arm in da process. The rest were either killed or arrested shortly after.
I don’t remember much from that day. I don’t even remember how I got away but I did. I just know that after that day, it was a bit safer for da men and women of Falls Road to sleep at night.
So pity…pity is a worthless emotion.