The lost children: heartbreaking stories of those killed in Troubles
‘You think back on the wee things... it has left a void’
COLIN NICHOLL (17 MONTHS) BELFAST
DIED DECEMBER 11, 1971
Summer, 1971. Neil Diamond’s song Sweet Caroline was on the radio, but the Nicholls had their own version.
“I used to hold him and I would sing, ‘Sweet Colin mine’,” says his father, Jackie.
That summer, Colin’s parents had taken him on holiday to Portrush. “We had the greatest week,” remembers Jackie. “We were staying in a boarding house and there were other kids there and they just lapped him up.
“They loved playing with him and, of course, he loved it.”
The Nicholls had adopted Colin the year before.
Initially, Jackie had been uncertain, but as soon as he saw the baby, “everything in my life changed. I couldn’t let him go. And then they said we had to wait a week to adopt him and it nearly broke my heart waiting.
“He was fantastic, a beautiful child.
“He probably would have grown up saying, ‘Thank God I’d a different dad to you for looks’.”
Colin had just begun talking — “mostly ‘mum’, none of the ‘dad’,” says Jackie — and was his granny Nicholl’s pride and joy.
“My mum loved minding him. It was like a new lease of life for her.”
With Colin’s mother, Ann, away — her nephew had been knocked down and killed in England — his granny had been looking forward to babysitting that Saturday.
Instead, her neighbour, Helen Munn, offered to take the children for a walk. Colin and Tracey Munn (2), Helen’s daughter, were killed when the IRA bomb exploded outside the Balmoral Furniture Company on Belfast’s Shankill Road.
In England, Ann saw Colin being carried out of the wreckage, wrapped in a blanket; she had no idea it was her son.
The Nicholls went on to adopt two more boys; every time Jackie hears Sweet Caroline, he thinks of Colin. “You think of wee things, like whenever I was working and I came home, his wee head would have lifted, even though I know it was probably my own imagination telling me he knows I’m home.
“He’d have been almost 50 now. There’s a void — he should have been here to look after us.”
Jackie still keeps Colin’s favourite toy — a wooden rattle given to him by his neighbour.
“Margaret next door gave it to him and it was with him all the time. You can see his wee teeth marks on it.
“I have it by my bedside and it’s going to go into my coffin.”