Memory Man

This programme contains some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

It was May 7th, 1981.

I'd seen the advertisements about this new video cassette recorder machine...

so I bought one.

The news came on, and I hits record.

It sort of dawned on me, "This is the first draft of history."

And I kept it.

And then the next night, doing the next night's news,

and then the next night's news.

There was something about me had to record all this violence

and explosions and bombs and killings and funerals...

..that just grew and grew and grew over the years.

It's the best private collection in Ireland.

If you were watching it 24 hours a day,

it would take you 83 days to watch it all.

Primarily, it's a history, and it's a history of

what the people of Northern Ireland suffered

since, in this case, 1981.

This is it, this is the individual families' suffering over 30 years.

A lot of the news reports would have maybe only been a minute long,

about a death,

or two or three deaths sometimes there was a bulletin on,

and that's how immune we had become here to that,

it was an everyday occurrence.

But for those families, that minute on the news was possibly

the destruction of that family, and the psychological

damage and trauma that was done to the survivors in that family.

To date, now, I think there'd be over 2,000 hours recorded.

One of the strange things about this,

out of all that collection, I don't have my own.

I have all them other people,

but I haven't got coverage of mine.

OK, then.

-OK.

-I found the tape.

Clifton Park Avenue.

OK.

"26-year-old man seriously wounded

"after being shot at through glass door of his living room.

"His father, visiting at the time,

"collapsed of a heart attack at the front doorstep and later died."

-"House with..."

-"G/V's house..."

-"..house, with army patrol passing by."

-Have a look at, yeah?

-Yeah.

Yes.

That's my house, there. Just where he's passing.

It's amazing, it looks very normal

yet our family was in devastation.

No sound with it?

Hmm.

I was expecting it to be maybe a longer bulletin, maybe have other...

-There seem to be not very many stories from that date.

-Yes.

-But...

-There's something there.

-There's something there?

-Something that we can get dubbed across.

Would you do that for me?

-We could put it onto... You could have it on a...

-DVD?

DVD, or if you had a pen I could put it on a digital file.

-Do it on a DVD and then...

-DVD.

-..I can copy that.

Strange to see it. It's funny.

When I get my own disc back home, and a look at it 100 times,

maybe I'll start to analyse every little detail of things,

whether the hedge was cut or whatever.

Thursday, September 27th, 1979.

I was playing with my youngest daughter, Louise,

and the doorbell rang.

My wife got up, walked to the door

and the next thing I heard was this almighty squeal,

"Gunmen, gunmen!"

As she came into the room, this man had her by the back of the hair,

he had a hood up and a gun in his right hand...

TWO GUNSHOTS

..and then the next thing I remember is going up in the air.

A second gunman in the hall had shot me through the door.

AMBULANCE SIREN

When the ambulance men came into that wee back room,

they couldn't get the trolley in,

so they put me in a body bag to carry me to the ambulance.

My father arrived at the door, seen me in the body bag

and his last words were, "Oh, my poor Peter."

He dropped dead of a heart attack at the scene.

To die as he did was just so shocking.

We don't give enough time in this great, new, Northern Ireland

to those that suffered the trauma, because that is in families,

that has gone to wives, that has gone to the parents,

that has gone down to children in some areas.

Part of recovering from it all, part of dealing with it in your mind,

is to actually look at an event.

People would contact me to say

could they have a copy of the news of a particular day?

I would imagine it's quite devastating for them to see that.

I will send it to them with a health warning in it,

that make sure you have somebody with you when you're watching this,

if you haven't seen this before.

4-4-0.

This is an incident requested by Brian Thompson.

It happened on the 29th July, 1993, on the M2 motorway.

Brian's friend, Joe McLarnon, was driving along the motorway

when he broke down, and Brian was asked to come and rescue him.

When he arrived at the spot,

gunmen from the Red Hand Commando came by and opened fire on them.

Brian wanted to see how it was recovered on the news.

I've known Peter for a while now,

and I was told that the name he got was Hawkeye, basically,

cos he apparently hokes out and watches every detail

of everything that's happening.

I particularly wanted to see the car I was in,

cos I got glimpses of it and I know there's a lot of big holes in it

where the bullets went through.

This is of the incident...

INAUDIBLE CONVERSATION

One night, Joe's wife came over to me

and asked me would I go out and help him,

he had broken down on the motorway.

I was sitting waiting in the car and Brian pulled up.

He put the rope on, started the car,

so I just turned round to the kids

and told them we should get the seat belts on.

As I walked away, this white Ford Orion pulled up

and the shooting started.

Joe was shot in the left arm and shot in the back.

I got him out of the car,

and there was this river of blood pouring out of his arm.

I told him, "Just put your thumb on that,"

and I didn't even stop for red lights,

I just got to the Mater Hospital as quickly as possible.

REPORTER: '...a car had broken down, and was being towed away when a

'silver Orion car drew alongside, and a gunman opened fire.

'The man lives in the mainly Protestant

'Graymount area in north Belfast.

'The loyalist paramilitary group, the Red Hand Commando,

'said it was responsible for the attack.'

That's the first time I've seen the car since 20, well, 19 years.

That's the first time I've seen that.

-That's what I wanted to see...

-That brought memories and all...

Yeah...

I never seen the bullet holes on it,

never seen anything like that until today.

Just let loose, so he did, with a machine gun.

How you only got hit twice, I don't know.

-Never leaves you, sure it doesn't?

-No.

-No.

-Never.

Nightmares about it.

If I hadn't have phoned him, his life would probably be sweet!

The thing, is, Joe, if you can't do a buddy a good turn,

you could only do them a bad turn.

I would probably have done the exact same.

You probably would have, yes.

-But don't ever phone me again!

-No!

The mental injury thing is a very difficult thing to handle,

because people look at you and they can't see anything wrong with you.

they look at me and they can see something wrong and they accept it

but sometimes people with trauma cases like that

are treated worse because everybody thinks they're swinging the lead,

but sometimes when you talk to these people you know they're

stuck in that wee part of their life that's been devastating.

You couldn't live with me.

I was grumpy, I was moody,

I was violent and my kids seen all that.

That's messed my kids up all my life.

After the shooting, my wife started drinking.

She ended up an alcoholic.

Her health is just...she's not...

Her whole body, everything's just away.

She just drank and drank and drank.

Her lungs, liver, everything.

Life from then on just completely changed.

I was a different me altogether, so I was.

Brian was a good laugh, very bubbly and all,

a good sense of humour.

But after the shooting he got really, really depressed.

I mean, he does my head in, like, sometimes, but...

Yeah, it's just... If I'd have seen him, my head would probably...

Brian is in a bad way, like...

yeah, big-time.

People will say to you, "Look, can you not forget about it,

"and just move on with your life?"

You can move on with your life OK,

but that's still in your head.

Always be in your head.

You're seeing... You go to bed at night,

when I go into bed at night, there there's war in my bedroom, every night.

MACHINE GUN FIRE

I was in hospital for 50 weeks.

When I got out, the world was so different.

It was just...it was just horrendous.

Every bit of me felt...not like a man.

You hate yourself...

hate the gunmen, hate everything,

you know, you go through this whole internal anger, frustration,

all those words, all of them in one big pile inside your soul, you know.

And the job is to get beyond that.

What pulled me around was the family support I got.

It was devastating for my wife, we were only married seven years,

I was no longer the man she'd married.

You know, to her eternal credit she stayed with me,

and I love her dearly for that.

It was my family,

my children that still climbed up and gave me a hug,

"Daddy, we love you."

All that just made you, "Right, that's it.

"I'm not going to gurn here any more."

'Video cassette recorders,

'machines capable of recording television sound and pictures

'in the domestic and the industrial environment...'

After I got the criminal injuries award,

I'd seen advertisements about this new video cassette recorder machine.

-PRESENTER:

-'This year we look like spending more...'

I thought, "Oh, that's fantastic.

"Look what that can do, you can actually record TV programmes."

I bought it. It was May 7th, 1981.

The news came on and I hits record.

And the news that night was the funeral of Bobby Sands.

Being a history teacher,

it sort of dawned on me, "This is the first draft of history."

And I just started doing that every night, recording the news.

It was just like a religious fervour to record history.

PIANO MUSIC

I'm a wee bit OCD about it.

It's given me a new lease of life, in many ways.

This is an incident from 21st October, 1991.

A taxi driver called Alex Bunting was picking up a fare on Sandy Row

and the IRA had left a booby-trap bomb under his car.

Alex's wife, Linda, and the family

wanted to see how this was covered on the news.

Let go, son.

Right, coming?

It was 21st October, 1991, that the incident happened.

I was 37 years of age.

I picked up a lady on the Ballysillan Road,

and we drove down into the town.

When I got as far as the brow of the Boyne Bridge,

there was this almighty flash coming out of the dash,

and it was like a rainbow of colours.

A split second later, the bang, and the next thing my leg shot off.

I was blew out the door.

-MAN:

-'There's a body lying on the street behind me here.

'A young chap, seems to have definitely lost a leg.'

-REPORTER:

-'The injured driver is a Protestant in his 40s, from

'the Westland area of North Belfast, and is married with two children.

'It's believed his car was left...'

Alec was out working from six o'clock in the morning

to six at night, taxiing, and we were saving well,

and we were planning to, you know, a wee deposit for a house...

They were the good days.

..and we went on holiday, our first holiday together,

and we were only back from holiday three weeks when Alec was blew up.

Just that day completely changed our whole lives.

As I was travelling to school that morning, I seen the car.

I was only ten at the time.

I can remember the bus being rerouted

and at the bottom where that bar is there on the Sandy Row...

Hope Street.

..Hope Street, and my daddy's car was just sitting in pieces...

..complete pieces.

The next day after the explosion happened,

I went in with my mum, and he was sort of semi-conscious.

I asked my mum, you know... He was quite aware, one or two...

His legs, he knew he'd lost and he didn't know.

And I suppose that's...

I was looking forward to him coming home,

and then when he got home it was just... Whoa!

I wasn't a very nice person to live with, I was very grumpy,

I was very argumental, nothing was good enough and all this.

It was just, at the time,

I was just angry, an angry man.

If you'd have made him a dinner...

And he got to a stage,

he didn't want the dinner and he was swiping it off the table,

and I sort of way got to the stage,

I said, "We're not going to be together if this is going to go on."

He would get fixated on things, you know...

if his TV broke, right,

or he phoned me one night and he says to me,

"You'd better get down here, my Sky's not working."

I lived 14 miles away.

So, I got in my car, because I knew he was torturing my mum that much

about the Sky not working, I had to drive down to Bangor from Belfast.

I got down, and the batteries in the remote control needed changed,

but he tortured her that much, that she...

I mean it was unbelievable. She was ready to walk out the door.

You lift the bag, and walk out the door and walk round the corner...

I got on the train, do you remember the day we got on the train?

Me and Colin, we got to the train station, I got on the train to

go to Belfast, and I'd never been on the train in I don't know how long,

and I don't even know where I got off -

I think it was Botanic Gardens or somewhere like that -

and me and him just stood in the train station crying. Here's me,

"I don't even know where we are, Colin." I couldn't think!

The thing that got me most was that I couldn't provide for my family,

and I couldn't be the person that I was, you know what I mean?

And I thought that life was over for me, basically.

I heard this noise in the kitchen and I ran down the stairs to see,

I thought Alec had fallen,

and when I walked into the kitchen he had taken an overdose.

And...

I phoned the ambulance for him, for it to come,

and I was so angry that...for what he had come through,

I just was mad at him, I was shouting at him,

"After all them doctors have done for you,

"and you're going to take the easy way out."

As much as he had his struggles, we had ours.

You know, the man that went out the door at five to eight in the morning never came back

and we had to get used to this other man that did come back,

but we also had to deal with the physical

and psychological impact of what happened.

And I think, then, I had a mum who was clinging on with her

fingernails to try and keep everything together.

I was actually having nightmares

and seeing my daddy's leg being blown over his head...

Just was a horrible, horrible feeling.

Colin just didn't cope.

He took epilepsy, and the bad depression he took was terrible.

We went through a stage, like, I thought I was going insane,

cos he was texting me, "Where are you?" "How long will you be?"

People don't realise that you've to

go on the rest of your life like this.

In terms of my brother, I mean, if I say what I truly feel,

what I truly feel is that my mother has enabled him

to be where he's at, in some ways,

and that's maybe hard for them both to hear, but...

giving into him,

enabling him not to have to work,

supporting him financially,

all that type of stuff.

I don't think it's done him any favours.

My aim from day one - I would not let that destroy my family.

Sometimes you feel like walking away,

but you know you'll not be going, you know what I mean?

The love was too great there for anything like that to happen, you know?

I can only assume how people see what I give them is very sad,

but on the other hand, it's like a closing.

Maybe actually seeing it helps in some way.

As Northern Ireland does get better,

we're in danger of forgetting that this new Northern Ireland was built

on so much suffering and pain and loss, and we should never do that.

Losing Anne for me was worse than losing the use of my legs.

One of the sad things was that, mentally,

she worse affected than me by my shooting and that.

She never complained to me, she never moaned to me.

But obviously, it all built up on her.

It was about, I suppose five years after the event, the first time,

when she overdosed and was taken into the City Hospital

and her psychiatrist said to me,

"Peter, she just has lost the ability to cope."

From that moment on, she would have started to drink too much.

Anne never forgave herself for opening the door that night.

"I should never have opened the door.

"I should never have opened the door."

But, I mean, what can you say?

They'd have kicked the door in, they'd have got in.

Somebody would have opened it some way, but she never forgave herself.

It was her - she opened the door,

he grabbed her by the hair and pushed her up the hall,

the first gunman that came in, and she squealed -

that's a sign of bravery.

This guy's standing with a gun to her head,

she was able to squeal a warning to me.

But I couldn't emphasise to her how brave she was, you know,

in shouting a warning, in defying him, in trying to wriggle free,

you know, it just never got through.

That was so, so sad, you know, really.

She was worse affected than me

yet her and people like her are not really recognised,

not considered a statistic of the Troubles.

All we want is a simple recognition that in this community, so many

of us suffered, and some of us still live with our wounds every day.

When I hear people say, "Oh, we'll just draw a line under it

"and we'll all get on with the future."

"That's OK," I says,

"well, will I get up the marra and walk about, then?

"Will I get my daddy back? Will them people get their relatives back?"

I'm all for the future and a shared future

but I don't think you should ever forget the past.

What was it? The Queen put it very well -

"Remember the past, but don't be bound by it."

-INTERVIEWER:

-Do you think you're bound by it?

What do you think?

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure, either. That makes two of us.

It's basically a labour of love for me.

It is like a job, it feels like a job.

Five, six hours a day...

Part of the work is transferring the VHS to DVD.

I itemise each day, go through each news report,

I put it in a separate little icon,

and then write the note for that day,

the station, the time, what the story was.

So, that takes probably four to five hours to do two hours.

It's never ending.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media