After seeing Belfast, another striking experience in Northern Ireland was the visit in Derry (Londonderry), a relatively large town that saw bloody conflict from 1969 onwards: Several Catholic protesters from the quarter Bogside were shot by British soldiers on "Bloody Sunday", the 30th of January 1972 (still remembered in many murals, songs, stories etc.). An apology by the British government came only in 2010.
Again, armed conflict has had a long history here: King James II laid siege to the town in 1689, but had to break it off. The thick city walls and some cannons as well as this museum keep the memories alive.
Seeing actual weapons used in the conflicts was even more unsettling: The local museum keeps rifles, batons, helmets, gas cartridges, rubber bullets and gear along with clothes of victims (which still show the original bullet holes and bloodstains)!
Walking through the district, you could almost feel the tension and grief lingering in the streets and the houses painted dramatically with the victims' portraits and scenes of the conflict on the murals. Priests and unarmed boys as young as 17 years old were killed in the clashes.
Lastly, the story of resistance to colonial oppression seems to have inspired Che Guevara, as this mural shows. Later, U2 wrote the song "Sunday Bloody Sunday", and Phil Coulter composed the famous ballad "The Town I Loved So Well":
[Verse 3]
There was music there in the Derry air
like a language that we all could understand
I remember the day when I earned my first pay
And I played in a small pick-up band
There I spent my youth and to tell you the truth
I was sad to leave it all behind me
For I learned about life and I'd found a wife
in the town I loved so well
[Verse 4]
But when I returned how my eyes have burned
to see how a town could be brought to its knees
By the armoured cars and the bombed out bars
and the gas that hangs on to every tree
Now the army's installed by that old gasyard wall
and the damned barbed wire gets higher and higher
With their tanks and their guns, oh my God, what have they done
to the town I loved so well
[Verse 5]
Now the music's gone but they carry on
For their spirit's been bruised, never broken
They will not forget but their hearts are set
on tomorrow and peace once again
For what's done is done and what's won is won
and what's lost is lost and gone forever
I can only pray for a bright, brand new day
in the town I loved so well
(C) Luke Kelly on Genius.com
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