delanceyplace.com 3/25/08 - soldiers searching homes

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In today's excerpt - in Northern Ireland in 1974, Loyalist police who believed Northern Ireland should remain part of Britain search and harass Republicans those who believed Northern Ireland should become independent of Britain. In this excerpt, the victims were four-year-old Marty McGartland and his mother Kate, who were harboring neither weapons nor soldiers for this independence:

"My mother, Kate McGartland, was well known in the area -- a striking, slim, young woman with shoulder-length fair hair, green eyes and a strong personality, who was never frightened to speak her mind. She had been brought up in a strong republican tradition and, as a teenager, took part in civil rights demonstrations during the 1960s. ... Loyalist women [would] call out, taunting her ... 'You Finian bitch' [and] 'Papist whore.' ...

"On a number of occasions from 1974 to 1978, we had unwelcome visitors disturbing our sleep and wrecking our home. The British Army ... would descend in force and select a number of houses to search, looking for arms and explosives. I would often wake to a loud knocking at the front door and my mother shouting, 'I'm coming, I'm coming! Wait a moment; wait a moment.' Sometimes, the soldiers wouldn't wait, though, and I would hear the terrifying banging, then the smashing and splintering of wood, as they broke down the front door, forcing their way into the hall. I would lie in bed, hiding under the blankets, too frightened to move, and the soldiers with their guns and helmets would crash open my bedroom door and snatch away the bedclothes. ...

"Occasionally, they would remain in the house for three or four hours, not letting anyone go back to bed, forbidding us to leave the one room where they had ordered us to remain until they had cleared the entire street. ... As I grew a little older and began to understand more, I also became angry with the soldiers waking us at 4:30am, ordering us about, and treating us like dirt. ... My mother tried to ease my anger, telling me that it would be OK and that we had nothing to hide from the British soldiers. ...

"During one of the last searches of our house, when I was about eight years old, I picked up a large pot of paint ...[and] poured it into two milk bottles and waited for the Army to drive away in their Land Rovers and ... threw the milk bottles at the dark green army jeeps, splattering paint over one of them. When I went to school later that day, I felt ten feet tall, telling all my pals what I had done to the British Army. For a while, I became a hero. It felt good."