Act of true selflessness will never be forgotten
WHAT if he hadn’t been there? What if Davitt Walsh and his girlfriend Stephanie Knox had picked another route for their Sunday afternoon outing, that day in March of last year?
What if they’d thought about heading for Buncrana, but thought again and went somewhere else? Like the rest of us, he’d have heard the evening news of a tragedy on the pier, he’d have seen the smiling faces of the victims in the next day’s papers. Except, if Davitt Walsh hadn’t gone to Buncrana that day, he’d have been looking at six victims, instead of five. A tragedy unparalleled in its awfulness would, if he had not gone to that pier on that day, have been even worse.
At the inquest into the deaths of the five victims of the Buncrana drownings, this week, Mr Walsh gave us some insight into the memories that have stayed with him since that day. Like the passers-by who alerted him to the car that had slid down the pier and into the sea, he spoke of the screams and cries he heard coming from the sinking vehicle, of the awful realisation that there were adults and children inside.
He told how he stripped to his underwear on a cold March day and plunged into the freezing waters of Lough Swilly without hesitation. He described how he saw, as he approached the car, its driver striking his elbow against the window to try to smash it open.
As the window broke, the man handed out a baby and asked him to save her. Just then, a ‘wee boy’, as he put it, tried to follow his sister out of the flooding car. Mr Walsh caught the little boy’s hand and attempted to pull him free. The children’s father, Seán McGrotty, sat on the window ledge, perhaps hoping to pass the rest of the passengers to safety, but instead the weight of his body caused the car to tip.
As the water gushed in, Mr Walsh tugged at the little boy but the child’s foot caught on something inside the car, and he had to let go or he knew they would all be lost. The baby, he said, was crying as he held her on his chest and swam a backstroke to the pier some 25 metres away. Even from his understated evidence, you could tell he knew he had come close to death himself as he gasped for breath on the pier. And, though he didn’t say it, you could tell he will hear that baby’s cries, and feel that wee boy’s hand slipping from his grasp, for as long as he lives.
We don’t have a public honours system in this country, apart from meaningless and arbitrary tributes such as freedom of the city or honorary doctorates, and most of the time we don’t really need one. But when it comes to acknowledging the courage and selflessness of someone like Davitt Walsh, we really could use an equivalent of the British George’s Cross, the honour awarded for acts of bravery by citizens.
We could use an official means of declaring to the nation the truth of what Davitt Walsh’s friends and family, not to mention the grieving relatives of the Buncrana victims, have been telling him since that day: that he made a monumental difference to many lives by one act of outstanding valour.
THAT we understand how terrifying that scenario must have been, a sinking car with children’s screams ringing from it, a dangerous mission that could well have proved futile and even cost him his own life, and how singular a man he was to take it on without a second thought. That, in doing so, he salvaged for a devastated mother a glimmer of hope from an otherwise desolate future.
If we had an honours system that rewarded acts of particular bravery, Davitt Walsh would deserve a place on its roll more than anyone in recent memory. In its absence, his reward is the eternal gratitude of Louise James, who still has her daughter RionaghacAnn thanks to the courage of a total stranger. His reward is knowing that a little girl is alive and well and bringing immeasurable joy to a heartbroken home because he was brave enough to risk his life to save her. As honours go, it’s not a shiny one we can pin on his chest, but it’s one he should carry with pride for the rest of his days.