"My stomach is churning," said one woman yesterday morning as the distant strains of an accordion band heralded the approach of the Orange march at the top of the Garvaghy Road. "I call this place Ho-Chi-Min city," said Anne, a local resident. "The people here are under physical and mental siege."
It was just before 11 a.m. and a couple of hundred residents had gathered a few yards away from the fencing and razor wire erected by the RUC along the road where the parade passed St John's Church. As the marchers appeared, a cheer went up from the few dozen of their supporters who lined the street. The Star of David band was playing Nearer My God To Thee when the catcalling between the two factions began.
"You dirty Fenian bastards," shouted one woman in the march. "You'll never walk the road," a local resident retorted. A voice urged on the marchers, "Keep smiling boys, it's Drumcree Sunday". "You would want to learn how to riot boys", jeered a man from the Garvaghy Road side.
A few stragglers at the end of the procession, which took just under 20 minutes to pass the church, brought loyalist paramilitary flags. "You came all the way up from the lower end to get offended," one man shouted at the Catholic onlookers.
Afterwards, Mr Breandan Mac Cionnaith, spokesman for the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition, said the march had been a "serene and dignified PR exercise", but he expected what he termed the true face of the Orange Order would be seen in violent protests over the next few days. Sinn Fein Assembly member for Mid-Ulster Mr Francie Molloy said the local community was fearful, more so since allegations in yesterday's newspapers that the UFF was planning to kill a Catholic every day until the parade was allowed through. Standing on the Garvaghy Road, Ms Brid Rodgers of the SDLP said she hoped the Orange Order would realise dialogue with local residents was the only solution.
Mr Danny Burke, from west Cork, said he had travelled from his home in England to support the residents for the last four years. He wore a T-shirt bearing the words Connolly Association Garvaghy Road 2000. He said the parade was "boring and the music was terrible . . . you would see a bigger turn-out for a dog's funeral".
International observers mingled with the residents outside the church. One of them was US Congressman Donald Payne. "Anytime you seem close to getting a solution, extreme elements come out; that is what is happening here. There are people who don't want a solution. They just want to see the Good Friday agreement broken," he said.
He said the presence of observers presented a clearer picture to those abroad. "Some people on the loyalist side say `why are you meddling in our affairs?' but I think the US meddles in everyone's affairs, it's just what we do."
Mr Michael Maguire, a high school physics teacher from Boston, was on a cycling tour of Ireland and had timed his visit to coincide with the Drumcree standoff. There was great interest among Irish-Americans in the issue, he said, parking his bicycle and pointing his disposable camera at the razor wire and fencing. The church service commemorating the battle of the Somme was well under way at Drumcree Church by the time the noon mass at the church on Garvaghy Road began. The sermon observed that in Northern Ireland and particularly in Portadown, political opinions were not always Christian.
"When these opinions are taken to the extreme they lead us to reject God and dismantle our love for one another," the congregation was told. "We must always be aware of slipping towards extremes in our opinions and actions, lest we find ourselves devoted to another God".