There was one image, towering above all others, which we should take from Omagh - an image that might console us in the midst of this darkness: and it was the image of so many people in the immediate aftermath of the explosion, even the injured, kneeling and helping the more severely injured. They did not know and could not know whether another bomb was there to despatch them as it had visibly despatched so many around them - yet these plain people of Omagh and Tyrone toiled at the pressure points, applied tourniquets to ruptured arteries, and soothed the hysterical, the demented, the griefstricken in that sea of smoking bodies. It might not be much to console us, yet it is there. This is what plain people of Ireland did when called upon to do it.
One of the men who rushed to the injured of Omagh was a part-time member of and paramedic with the Coastguard at Portrush, Sean McCarry; and after over eight hours in that abattoir he briefly went to bed. Next morning he joined the all-Irish crew of rescue-service members in their first practice for a planned attempt on the round-Ireland speed record by boat, and never said a word about his experiences of the day before. We do not know of our Sean McCarrys, and we do not speak of them. Briefly they appear anonymously in some rescue or other, and are gone from our ken until we need them again. And so it goes.
Cave rescue
Last October Michael Heffernan, a member of the Grainne Uaile diving and rescue team of Ballina and a father of a young family, went to the assistance of a family trapped in a flooded cave. He died in this attempt. Three members of the Garda Sub Aqua Rescue Team - Garda David Mulhall, Garda John O'Connell, Garda Ciaran Doyle - followed him into those waters; and those who saw those seas were sure that none who entered them could return from them.
Those three gardai did; and last month, amid a list of courageous men and one woman, Yvonne Burke, they were deservedly awarded the Scott Medal for bravery. They are part of a broader community, those men, of whom we are little aware, and it is that same community to which Sean McCarry belongs and Michael Heffernan belonged: the community of rescuers.
The forthcoming roundisland trip is in one sense a discreet celebration of that existence of that community, which embraces sub-aqua clubs, cliff-rescue units, the Irish Marine Emergency Services, the Air Corps, the Coastguard in the North, and the RAF. In one sense they belong to their respective nations; but in another, they constitute a nation of their own, with their own ethics, their own codes, and their own understated views on duty and courage.
I mention one member of that community now, mostly because I have seen no mention made of him in the national press. He is winchman Allan Clapp, who serves with IMES after many years with the RAF. Allan has completed 500 emergency missions, over 10,000 flying hours, during which he has saved hundreds of lives, including the winching to safety of 10 fishermen in one incident.
Atlantic gales
There are no words to describe such courage, so I will not attempt to describe it, beyond saying that to have such a man among the men and women of our rescue services should give heart to them and us. One night heading out into the vile Atlantic gales with high seas below and black skies above would cure me of all notions about being a rescuer. Others are made of sterner stuff (including Dara Fitzpatrick, the first woman pilot with IMES, with whom I had the pleasure of flying - on a summer's day, be it noted - four years ago).
The IMES crews out of Shannon and Dublin will be doing fly-pasts over the round-Ireland inflatable as it passes through their waters, as will the Air Corps helicopters based in Donegal and Waterford, and wherever this vessel and its crew of six come anywhere near an RNLI station, the lifeboat will be there to greet them, even as rescue radio stations greet them over the airwaves.
The boat will leave Portrush early in the morning and should make it to Kinsale by early afternoon, where the crew will, of course, pause for lunch - I trust with my friends Brian and Anne Cronin at the Blue Haven Hotel - before departing on the rest of their journey, with the last leg through the unforgiving Atlantic night, guided by the secret stars of satellite navigation. The crew consists of two RNLI men, one Greencastle Cliff Rescue member, one Coastguard and two from Shannon IMES.
The record these six men hope to break is 33 hours and 34 minutes, with all funds raised going to the Michael Heffernan Trust Fund, the Irish Council for Brain Research and the Irish Council for the Blind. It was never the intention of those who arranged this trip that injuries to the brain, to the eyes, might be topical; but it is so this week, this truly appalling week.
Ignoring the best
Is there a broad lesson we can learn from these people who will circle the island, and whom we will then forget until that time when we need them again, and call them up from their homes, their beds, their work benches to send them out in the worst night winter can throw? Perhaps not. Perhaps it is in our nature to ignore the best of us, and to lament the worst, to confer celebrity upon those who lead terror gangs and who butcher at random yet be utterly unaware of the names of those whose frozen hands will take us from the grasp of the sea.
And they would probably not have it otherwise. But there are times when we should remind ourselves of that little army of men and women who dot our shores and who wait by the radio lest we call. In this island, they might be Irish or they might be British; they might be both, or neither.
It does not matter. By this time we should have drunk our fill of identity, of tribe and flag and nation. There are greater things, and those greater things are represented by Michael Heffernan, RIP, by the six men who will be circle Ireland, and by the men and women who will greet them as they pass.