Ten years on, their loved ones think about them every day

Julian Armstrong did not want to go to the Remembrance Day service but his mother persuaded him. It would keep his father happy and it wouldn't take long. Julian (16) was devoted to his parents. They were plain, country people who lived just outside the market town of Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh.

His mother, Bertha, kept a few cows and ducks and sold eggs. She had pet names for her hens and she was always baking. Despite his age, Julian's father, Wesley (62), played football with his son and often outperformed him.

Julian remembers walking to the Cenotaph in Belmore Street. His mother was wearing her good blue coat. His father carried an umbrella. Julian stood between his parents. It was Sunday November 8th, 1987, a bitterly cold day.

Hundreds of people had gathered for the 11 a.m. service, war veterans with their medals pinned proudly on their chest. Children from the Boys' Brigade and Girl Guides. They chatted as they waited for the ceremony to begin.

And then, in a split second, everything changed. An IRA bomb placed in a building opposite the Cenotaph rocked Enniskillen. The wall of the building came crashing down on part of the crowd. Human beings were split open like china dolls.

For a few moments, there was a deathly silence as the town reeled in horror. And then it started, the screaming and howling as people tore frantically at the rubble with their bare hands, searching for their loved ones.

"I felt the rubble tumbling down on me," says Julian. "I said to God, `If you are there, get me out.' Somehow, I got the strength to pull myself up. I looked around. It was like a horror movie.

"I searched for my parents. Mum was covered in bricks. I threw them off but she was dead. Her face was totally squashed. There was a huge slab of concrete on Dad's face. I couldn't shift it. He started shaking. It was the life going out of him."

Stephen Ross (15) was holding the hand of his young sister when the bomb went off. "I was buried in the rubble. I tried to open my eyes but couldn't. I could just hear the noise, the crying, the panic, and the dying.

"I put my hand to my mouth. Most of my front teeth were gone. I tasted only blood and dust. I couldn't feel my left leg below the knee. The doctors thought they would have to amputate it."

As bodies were pulled from the rubble, local men took off their coats to cover the dead. Those with relatives missing would look under the covers. The IRA later said that the bombing was a "mistake" and had been aimed at UDR soldiers. But even their apologists had to admit that they had showed a wanton disregard for civilian life.

Eleven people were killed and 63 injured. The press dubbed Stephen Ross "the boy who came back from the dead". Two teams of surgeons spent 5 1/2 hours operating on him. One worked on his leg, the other on his head. Every bone in his face was smashed. His nose was broken. The roof of his mouth was split from front to back.

"They rebuilt my face from the inside out," he says. "They bolted a steel cage into my jaw by boring holes in the bone. They wired together what teeth I had left." Stephen was in hospital for five weeks, in plaster up to his waist and able to take only liquids. He lost four stone.

Today, looking at the handsome, smiling young man, it is impossible to imagine his gruesome injuries. But they have left their legacy. One leg is slightly longer than the other and sometimes, when he is eating or yawning, he hears his jaw crack. He insists that it is "no big deal".

Stephen was off school for five months but returned to pass his O-Levels. He has since completed a business degree and works for British Gas in Hampshire. He stresses that he went to England not to escape from the Troubles but in search of better career opportunities.

Now 25, he has no obvious mental scars: "I never felt sorry for myself or thought, `Why me?' I was determined not to go through life with a chip on my shoulder. Some people have done that in Northern Ireland for 25 years and what good has it done? I have no problem forgiving the bombers."

He hopes that the Stormont talks succeed.ein's involvement: "Dialogue is the only way forward. I hope some good comes of it."

Not everyone feels that way. Jim Dixon (60) says he never will forgive the bombers. He believes that republican leaders are "evil men" and that the IRA should be "exterminated". Jim had attended the Remembrance Day service with his wife.

"We were standing very near where the bomb was left. A second before it went off, I heard a click. It must have been the timer." The force of the blast threw his wife across the street, blowing the buttons off her coat and the shoes off her feet. Miraculously, she received only minor injuries.

It was a different story for Jim: "I was in surgery nine hours. My eye sockets were blown out. Some of the bones in my head disintegrated. I had brain damage and my tongue was paralysed. Part of my jaw is still missing."

Jim is in pain 24 hours a day. He has steel plates in his head and no tear ducts. He regularly dabs ointment in his eyes to keep them moist. He has a constant headache. His eyes won't shut naturally so he tapes them closed at night.

"I am up an hour in the morning and the pain is so bad, I want to go back to bed. I feel like taking a mallet and beating my head until the pain stops. They say morphine would help but it's the road to nowhere. Your body gets used to it, you need bigger doses and it eventually kills you."

He detests outsiders preaching that victims must forgive: "I was attacked at a Bible class for not forgiving. I went up to a woman who was giving me a hard time and kicked her in the shin. She shrieked and cursed me. I asked, `Well, do you forgive me?' I'd like to have seen her reaction if the IRA had blown half her face away."

Jim's spirit is remarkable. Before the explosion, he performed at gospel music nights. Despite his injuries, he still plays the organ and electric accordion. "My hands aren't what they were but I'm still good for a tune," he says, picking up the accordion. "Would you like to hear Danny Boy?"

Every day, Margaret Veitch looks out at the spot where her parents were killed. From the window of her fashion store, she can see the Cenotaph. "I think of Mummy and Daddy standing there one minute and then blown to Kingdom Come the next. They didn't deserve to end their lives like that," she says.

Margaret was on safari in Kenya when she read about the bomb in a newspaper. She phoned home to be told that her parents, Nessie (73) and Billy (74) Mullan, were dead. "I couldn't believe I'd never see them, never touch them again. I felt robbed."

The journey home was a nightmare. "It took nine hours to reach London, I cried all the way. Everyone on the plane wondered what was wrong. When I boarded the shuttle in London for Belfast, there were dozens of journalists on their way over and I thought, `Mummy and Daddy are at the centre of all this'."

Today Margaret carries a photograph of her parents in her handbag which she takes out for media interviews, "to show journalists that Mummy and Daddy were real people, not just names".

After 10 years, her grief remains raw and powerful. "Running a shop, you must smile and be pleasant. But often when somebody is buying an outfit, I think of my parents. Selling clothes seems so frivolous after all that has happened."

Ronnie Hill may still be alive but he is really the 12th victim of the bombing. The former headmaster of Enniskillen High School, he has been in a coma since two days after the explosion. His wife, Noreen, had been ill before the bombing, having just completed a chemotherapy course for cancer in November 1987.

"I was in the kitchen doing some advance Christmas baking because I knew it would take me longer, not being well. When I heard the bomb, I started to cry. It was a sixth sense. I knew Ronnie was injured."

Noreen used the compensation money to buy a big Victorian house in Holywood, Co Down, which she has transformed into a place for residential care. "It was the only way I could afford to have round-the-clock care for him," she says.

Ronnie is fed via a drip. Noreen reads to him and calls him sweetheart. Occasionally, he blinks, yawns or swallows. She thinks this means he is listening to her but the doctors aren't convinced.

Noreen says that her husband is still an integral part of the family. When his grandchildren visit, she leaves a chocolate bar under his pillow so they receive a gift from him.

She admits she would find it "difficult to talk to Sinn Fein people" but prays for Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. "They need it."

When the IRA announced its ceasefire, she wondered "why they couldn't have called it in 1987 and spared us this agony".

Julian Armstrong, whose parents were killed, is now 26. He says that he "had to grow up fast". He did not find that counselling for post-traumatic stress helped: "It was a bit false. The best therapy was talking with friends and relatives. I was very confused at first.

"It's scary standing between two people who are killed and escaping relatively unhurt yourself. I try not to think of my parents lying there dead. I want to remember them as they were before the bomb."

He doesn't hate the bombers: "If I met them, I'd just ask them why they did it."

Tomorrow, Julian Armstrong, Noreen Hill, Margaret Veitch, Jim Dixon and all the other bereaved and injured will gather once again for the annual service at the Cenotaph. Eleven bronze doves have been added to the War Memorial, representing each of the victims.

It will be a solemn, emotional ceremony. Julian understands why there is massive public interest in the 10th anniversary of Enniskillen but says: "The thoughts of the world might focus on the bomb victims on Remembrance Sunday but we, their loved ones, think about them every day."