‘It’s getting harder to live with as time goes by. I have flashbacks’
Former solicitor’s clerk Grace Curry (now 59), who was a member of marching band Star of the Valley, helped save the life of one of the soldiers. James Leatherbarrow suffered a broken back, perforated ear drums and scores of lesions, but said he would have died had it not been for the care given by Grace, then 29, who sat with him and gently cared for him that night. Grace met Mr Leatherbarrow for a second time in 2015 after he appealed to meet the women who saved him. She said she feels “very anxious” as the 30th anniversary approaches because “it’s so hard to look at the families of the young soldiers and know that you didn’t save them”.
“EVERYBODY was jolly on the bus, singing and laughing about how well we had done at our first parade.
“We saw a flash in the sky but we didn’t think anything of it because there was no noise.
“Suddenly there was a man in the road waving the bus to stop. He got on board and he was bleeding and saying: ‘Could you help my mates?’.
“Everyone, apart from the kids and the woman who was attending to the injured soldier who’d stopped us, got off.
“I thought I could hear children crying. The moaning was awful. And then the sights that we saw... it was the darkest and loneliest road I’ve ever been on in my life. It was never-ending.
“It was so dark, so eerie, so cold. You couldn’t see light. I could make out injured people. Everyone who was there was helping someone. The farmer from up the road came down with blankets. People took off their coats and shirts to stop the bleeding and to try and make the injured comfortable.
“James was trapped on the bus. He couldn’t get off it himself. My husband helped free him. Some men from the Omagh Boys’ bus also came to help.
“One thing I remember is we had to go to Lisanally barracks to give a statement about that night afterwards. There was a big hole in the ground and a bus shelter; I didn’t see either that night. When we saw photographs, I remember them asking how I couldn’t see them?
“I was concentrating on helping James. I remember talking to him. He kept asking about his legs; I told him they were there.
“He was cold. He’d on a leather jacket which looked very bulky; I wouldn’t let him pull down the zip because I was so worried it was the leather jacket that was actually holding him together. I stayed with him until the paramedics and ambulance came.
“I remember asking him about his family and telling him about mine — just passing time, not letting him sleep.
“Then the military arrived with lights so we went round and picked up their belongings — their photographs, letters, wee bits and pieces — and handed them in.
“My husband and I never discussed what happened that night. I never wanted to go to the roadside where the atrocity happened; I said I’d never, ever go there, but when James got in touch with me five years ago I went there with him.
“It was lovely seeing James — happily married with three children — and lovely to know that his life had gone on after what he’d been through.
“Before Christmas I started seeing a counsellor about that night, seeing people who’d passed away; not knowing who was alive and who wasn’t.
“I have flashbacks. It’s getting more difficult to live with as time goes on. It’s like a Pandora’s Box. You keep it sealed for so long and then all of a sudden it opens. You put it to the back of your mind but it’s always there. It never goes away.
“Meeting James and a few of the other soldiers’ families reminded me how real it was. It reminded me that it was all true.”