Another anniversary comes around - they come quicker each year. On the 20th January 1987 Vols Ta Power and John O Reilly were killed in Drogheda. Now both dead longer than they lived.
John was different. Younger than both Ta and myself, John was a "doer" rather than a theoretician. He was a whirlwind on the go day and night. I'm not doing a Boston Tapes here so there's not a lot I can tell. But when I think of John I think of a wee off street café in Dundalk where he was living. Three or four times a week we would meet up there for a full Irish breakfast. Not a chance of us doing an Ulster fry. It's over 35 years since those days but when I close my eyes and let my mind drift back I can almost smell the Free State sausages and the cracking bacon. We'd chew the fat, literally at times, and put the world to rights. As you can see from the state of it today we were as unsuccessful at that as at many other things.
Those were hard times but they were times filled with a sense of purpose and a sense of having the best people in the world around you. Many things we got wrong but our hopes and aspirations were never wrong.
I was in jail when they were killed. It was devastating but certainly much less for me than their families. Often I think of how life would have worked out for them ... families, grandchildren - John already had children.
I imagine Ta and I could still have the long rambling discussions and John and I - and my diabetes - could stuff our faces, maybe in a Belfast café minus the Free State sausages.
Still thought of, boys. Still missed. Up the Rebels.
Two great friends and comrades but very different people. I remember walking the yard of the Crum with Ta engaged in philosophical debate on Republicanism. Where it has come from. Where it should go to. And Ta laid out in detail where he thought it has gone wrong. He later put these thoughts on paper in a seminal document for the Movement he thought so much about.
But it wasn't all politics. We discussed families. His sister had left Belfast as my own had just a short time before. We agreed that it was good they got away if even for a short time. As clear as if it were yesterday I can still hear him say but this is our life as his eyes panned around the dismal grey walls of A Wing yard: this ... or the grave. My oul friend got both.
John was different. Younger than both Ta and myself, John was a "doer" rather than a theoretician. He was a whirlwind on the go day and night. I'm not doing a Boston Tapes here so there's not a lot I can tell. But when I think of John I think of a wee off street café in Dundalk where he was living. Three or four times a week we would meet up there for a full Irish breakfast. Not a chance of us doing an Ulster fry. It's over 35 years since those days but when I close my eyes and let my mind drift back I can almost smell the Free State sausages and the cracking bacon. We'd chew the fat, literally at times, and put the world to rights. As you can see from the state of it today we were as unsuccessful at that as at many other things.
Those were hard times but they were times filled with a sense of purpose and a sense of having the best people in the world around you. Many things we got wrong but our hopes and aspirations were never wrong.
I was in jail when they were killed. It was devastating but certainly much less for me than their families. Often I think of how life would have worked out for them ... families, grandchildren - John already had children.
I imagine Ta and I could still have the long rambling discussions and John and I - and my diabetes - could stuff our faces, maybe in a Belfast café minus the Free State sausages.
Still thought of, boys. Still missed. Up the Rebels.
⏩Davy Clinton is a former republican prisoner.
