Loughinisland survivor becomes a powerful voice for victims of Troubles

Loughinisland survivor becomes a powerful voice for victims of Troubles

11 June 2014

AS the 20th anniversary of the Loughinisland massacre approaches one of those who survived the UVF hail of bullets has spoken for the first time.

Colm Smyth has produced an e-book called The Loughinisland Massacre — A Survivor’s Diary to tie in with the anniversary. It is by turns a fascinating and harrowing read.

With six men killed at The Heights Bar, and their grieving families still battling for justice, the spotlight has perhaps not shone as it should on the other victims — the ones whom the bullets hit but didn’t kill, and who continue to carry with them the unimaginable horrors of that night.

Colm Smyth is just one of thousands affected by terrorist atrocities across Northern Ireland. Take away the Troubles and his book could be a compelling insight into dealing with trauma. But his account is also a timely one as society in Northern Ireland debates how to recognise what people like Colm went through, and how to give them a voice to be heard.

Speaking to the Down Recorder, Colm explains why he decided it was time for him to speak out.

THE guilt has largely left him but sometimes the memories play repeatedly, inviting him to change the past, evade the horror and find an alternate ending.

Except no matter how hard Colm Smyth tries no-one is saved. No-one comes back to life.

“The dead die again and I must watch them die,” he says. “It is my own private horror movie, repeated continually in the little cinema in the back of my brain.”

He was just 23 at the time, taking his best friend’s dad out for a pint for father’s day. Then loyalist gunmen opened fire.

In a split second his life was changed forever — a life saved by the older man he bought a pint for, who instinctively threw himself over his son’s young friend.

Colm is now 43. A marketing manager, he lives in Cork with his wife and two sons. He has been away from his Drumaness home for some years now and largely detached himself from the furore that has surrounded the Loughinisland massacre and its controversial police investigation in recent years.

But as the 20th anniversary of the atrocity approached something changed — a need to not be just a statistic, to give a voice to the thousands like him and tell his story. The result is a short e-book: The Loughinisland Massacre — A Survivor’s Diary.

Colm’s story is tied up with that of Malcolm Jenkinson, a 52-year-old building contractor from Loughinisland who was one of six men murdered at The Heights bar on June 18, 1994. Malcolm’s son Paul was Colm’s best friend, and to earn a bit of extra cash in the summer, following his first year away in business college, Colm did a few odd jobs for Malcolm.

“Paul was working in England at the time and on the Saturday Malcolm was doing a bit of painting and asked me if I wanted a bit of work,” Colm explains. “I said that was grand, I had nothing else to do.

“With Paul being away and Father’s Day being on the Sunday, Paul also asked if I would I take him out for a drink. Malcolm was not really big into sport, he was not a big pub goer so he took a bit of convincing.”

Despite the horror that would follow Colm has fond memories of the builder, a man he had got to know well over his last summer.

“Malcolm was a very kind and generous man,” he says. “He was a quiet unassuming guy. He enjoyed his work. At the weekend him and his wife would go out to one of the local dance halls.”

It was a good atmosphere in the small village bar on the Saturday night of June 18, as Ireland played the mighty Italy in the World Cup. Fifteen men were there, and Colm remembers them joking with father of two Adrian Rogan, known as ‘Frosty’, who had just come back from holiday with fireworks for Halloween.

All in the bar agreed it was a bit early, and when the first flashes of light were reflected in the mirror of the bar Colm thought it was Frosty letting off a few fireworks as a joke. Then he saw the boiler suits and the balaclavas.

“When you turn round to see guys in balaclavas you know exactly what is going on, you have grown up here and heard about it happen,” he recalls. “I knew the bar was being hit.

“Malcolm turned his back to the door and pushed me off the stool. We both fell backwards.

“He absolutely saved my life. I never got the chance to speak to him or find out why he did that. That was just the type of man he was.

“As a father I can understand why. Your immediate reaction would be to protect the young ones around you.”

Unaware he himself had been shot four times, all Colm could do was pray for his friend’s dad as he lay dying.

Police begin to arrive on the scene and after a bandage was put on his leg he is left alone. He feels no pain and someone hands him a cigarette.

“I was sitting there as this thing was happening around me,” he says. “It was like watching my own movie, my own horror movie. It is surreal. You are there, you know this is real but it does not seem possible.”

Carried over the bodies in a chair by ambulance crew to the Downe Hospital, he paints a harrowing picture of the chaos as medical staff dealt frantically with the survivors.

“There is a real feeling of isolation and loneliness at that point,” he says. “The doctors and nurses were doing their best for everybody; they did not have time to hold your hand.

“Even though my rational self said I was on the trolley so my life was not in danger...you are physically shaking.”

There was an empty space where his thigh muscle used to be but miraculously the bullets — one of which fell out of his leg during an initial police interview —had missed his bones and his arteries.

Theatre would follow and Colm was clearly unfit to be going anywhere, but he signed himself out of hospital to go to Malcolm’s funeral. But with the world’s media having descended on the tiny village it turned out to be a distressing experience.

Apart from being in a wheelchair for a couple of weeks, and a concave shape left on his right leg, Colm was remarkably unaffected physically. He would never play gaelic or soccer again but he would return to Limerick’s Mid West Business Institute in October and appear largely the same person who left just a couple of months previously.

Inside, however, was a different matter. Colm was plagued with survivor’s guilt but desperately trying to put a brave face on it.

“I was trying to get on with my life — don’t talk about it, just get on with it,” he says. “It was not too much later when I realised that is not how emotions work. You can only ignore them for so long.

“I was not the guy I was, I was a different person after October. People did not know what to say to me. People would be reluctant to talk about it. Because I was not talking about it it just went untalked about. For the first few weeks I went out partying, forcing myself to get out there. A few weeks later you realise partying or going out does not actually solve the problem.”

It would be several years later at a wedding and during a conversation with his friend Paul that the guilt of Malcolm dying and him surviving finally started to lift.

“You always think the worst of yourself: ‘If it wasn’t for me he wouldn’t have been there’. Paul told me: ‘We don’t see you to blame at all. He could have been there alone and died alone’. The fact I was able to pray for him gave them comfort.”

Another crucial part of Colm’s recovery was meeting his wife to be four months after the murders. She encouraged him to keep a diary of his memories, and it is this which largely forms his book.

The cathartic process helped, he says, but life would be difficult in the years that followed.

“I was not too bad for a couple of years, with college to concentrate on I had to keep my mind busy,” he recalls. “1996 I suppose was a year I really struggled. The next 12 months I found really difficult, the guilt had never left me.”

Apart from an offer of counselling in the immediate aftermath Colm points out there was no help on offer.

“There has never been any support,” he explains. “If you are lucky enough you have a strong family, if you did not I am sure many people found themselves in emotional dire straights.

“There are a lot of survivors out there.”

He is not politically motivated he says, but he supports recent campaigns for greater help to be made available to Troubles survivors.

The question of what forum there should be for the victims of Troubles atrocities, who keep seeking their justice, has also been much in the headlines of late. With regards to the controversial Loughinisland murders, Colm says it is “common knowledge” police informants were involved, pointing to the amount of evidence destroyed. He says he knows nothing more than what he has read on the subject but he believes the “truth will come out”.

“The families have done a fantastic job, they deserve a huge amount of credit for getting the truth out there,” he adds.

Colm is referring to a controversial Police Ombudsman’s report, which in 2011 found serious errors in the original RUC investigation but stopped short of finding collusion — to the dismay of the victims’ families. Following their efforts the report was subsequently quashed in Belfast’s High Court and a new investigation is underway.

In the very latest development legal action is being taken against Chief Constable Matt Baggott by new Ombudsman, Dr. Michael Maguire. Dr. Maguire is claiming police have stalled his investigations into a number of murders, including Loughinisland. Police in turn have said they are concerned with protecting life and resolving “complicated and sometimes competing legal issues”.

For Colm, his priority is a mechanism for the tens of thousands of survivors like him who don’t want to be just a “statistic”.

“People need somewhere to talk about their experiences,” he says.

“I think as part of a healthy society people need to come together, open the book and share their experiences.

“The actual physical writing this down has been very powerful in terms of helping me to deal with it.

“For my grandchildren I don’t want it just to be ‘when granda was 23 he was shot in the Loughinisland massacre’ — a figure in thousands.

“Show them these experiences are really there and must be listened to. Sometimes being heard is all you need.”

And as the 20th anniversary of Loughinisland approached Colm knew he needed to definitively deal with his own feelings on the subject, hence the e-book.

“I knew on a personal level it would be a bigger deal for me, as for all the families, when a big year comes round, it heightens the emotions,” he says.

“Writing it down gives a little bit of self insight. I thought maybe it could help me raise awareness of what it was like for people in Loughinisland and for the thousands and thousands like me across Northern Ireland.”

Colm knows, however, that whatever happens in the Loughinisland investigation, whatever help is set up for survivors of The Troubles, the bad days will never totally disappear. For strength he chooses to turn to a power greater than himself.

“I am a Roman Catholic and faith is important to me,” he says. “Definitely on dark days it does give a certain amount of solace.

“I always feel that Malcolm has been there, and is keeping an eye on his own family and on me.”

• Colm's book can be purchased on Amazon and the full story can be read on the digital edition of the Down Recorder.