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"There is a woman in Eire who gives me shelter from the storm and my fill of drink"
That is how Connor greeted me on the phone just now. Jeesh, I haven't thought about "Mná na hÉireann" for a long time, and yet I recognized the words, even though they were spoken in English and not in Gaelic.
Connor is returning home. Perhaps for the last time ... Duggan, sweet, red haired Duggan who twitched my pig tails in his dashing new dress uniform all those years ago, he is dead. Bombed to pieces. What the IRA couldn't do all these years where he had been stationed with the Guards in Ulster, some Iraqi terrorists now accomplished it.
Con is devastated, and I can't think of a time where he and Duggan didn't come up with mischief together. I'm so sad for Mrs D. Last year her husband and now Duggan.
He joined the Guards when he was barely old enough, Con led and Duggan followed. I still remember that day when both came up from training and the boys I had known had returned as men, soldiers tall and proud in their uniforms. Duggan with his unruly mop of red curls, all cropped close to his skull, almost elegant and definitely foreign - strange. And yet when we roamed the cliffs above the bay, just a stone throws away from the ruins, we made up the same old games we had before he had joined the army.
It was a wonderous time, a magic time, a time that is gone, lost forever.
Sleep well, Duggan.
That is how Connor greeted me on the phone just now. Jeesh, I haven't thought about "Mná na hÉireann" for a long time, and yet I recognized the words, even though they were spoken in English and not in Gaelic.
Connor is returning home. Perhaps for the last time ... Duggan, sweet, red haired Duggan who twitched my pig tails in his dashing new dress uniform all those years ago, he is dead. Bombed to pieces. What the IRA couldn't do all these years where he had been stationed with the Guards in Ulster, some Iraqi terrorists now accomplished it.
Con is devastated, and I can't think of a time where he and Duggan didn't come up with mischief together. I'm so sad for Mrs D. Last year her husband and now Duggan.
He joined the Guards when he was barely old enough, Con led and Duggan followed. I still remember that day when both came up from training and the boys I had known had returned as men, soldiers tall and proud in their uniforms. Duggan with his unruly mop of red curls, all cropped close to his skull, almost elegant and definitely foreign - strange. And yet when we roamed the cliffs above the bay, just a stone throws away from the ruins, we made up the same old games we had before he had joined the army.
It was a wonderous time, a magic time, a time that is gone, lost forever.
Sleep well, Duggan.
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