Up to the last 3 chapters...

Today I took APoS up to Bloody Sunday. This is going to be a rough one to write because it's not so much the actions involved but the fact that Brendan is witnessing death, first hand. That's going to change him, massively. Send him careening into decisions that will have disastrous effects. Not of his making, but which include him, despite his best intentions.

The backstory is: on January 30, 1972 a peaceful demonstration against the British policy of internment -- arresting men and women and holding them without trial under the Special Powers Act -- was attacked by British Paratroopers. They claimed they were only returning fire against those who'd tried to shoot them, but there was no evidence they had been fired upon and the men and boys they killed were either running away or trying to help others who'd been shot.

13 died, right then. Another died later, from his wounds. Not one paratrooper was wounded by gunfire. The British government put out a whitewashed report that exonerated the Army, completely, but even the most ardent supporter of British involvement in NI had to admit that all the army had achieved was increase support and recruitment for the IRA and PIRA. And the region collapsed into what was, effectively, a civil war.

No one would call it that, but it was. Catholics now saw the British as occupiers, not saviors or protectors. And the world stood by and tut-tutted as the violence exploded. Before the peace accords, in 1998, over 3000 civilians and soldiers were dead and Northern Ireland was close to ruins.

3000 dead may not sound like a lot over 30 years, but to put it in perspective...that would be the equivalent of around 600,000 dead from civil warfare in the US, going by today's population, and most of it happening within the first 10 years.

I've found one of the books I have dealing with The Troubles in NI is from a very British viewpoint. It glosses over the atrocity with the usual casual prose. But that's how it was, for too long. I have plenty of other books that delve into The Troubles with much more honesty and clarity.

This part...this is going to be gut-wrenching.