OPINION: Annie's Bar atrocity: Dignity and grace of families contrasts sharply with callous killings

In terms of public knowledge and awareness of victims who died in mass tragedies during the Troubles, who people were and what they meant to others often gets lost as the killings became grouped under macabre monikers. 1972, widely held as the most deadly year of the Troubles, had no shortage of such events: Bloody Sunday, Bloody Monday (Claudy bombing) or in this case Bloody Wednesday, were among the many terrible events to be visited on Derry alone that year.

Indeed, many younger generations locally may never even have heard about what happened at Annie’s Bar on December 20, 1972. Not for nothing was it dubbed ‘the forgotten tragedy’.

Sharing their memories, their stories for the new booklet compiled by the Pat Finucane Centre in Derry and with the media once more has ensured many more people now know and understand not just the impact suffered by the relatives and families of those killed, but who those men were and how they enriched so many lives. They know their names. They know a bit about their personalities. They know they were loved and cherished; good, kind, funny and thoughtful men.

You cannot but be struck by the dignity, the grace of their families, nor the stark contrast with the brutal actions of those responsible for the deaths, as those relatives ensured that their loved ones will be remembered for the people they were. Michael McGinley, Charles McCafferty, Charles Moore, Bernard Kelly and Frank McCarron, we remember you.