`He was only interested in the Army ever since he was a child'

Bill Kedian was making himself a cup of tea early yesterday morning at home in Moneymore, about a mile-and-a-half outside Bally haunis, when a car pulled up outside the door. The local curate, with Anne-Marie Lenihan - one of Bill's two daughters - and an Army officer had come with the tragic news of the death of his youngest child and only son, Billy.

"Billy was a grand lad," Mr Kedian told reporters yesterday. His wife, Doris, was too upset to talk. Apart from Anne-Marie (23), the Kedians have another daughter, Mary (24), an employee in a factory in Galway. Billy would have been 22 in July.

"He lived and died for it. . .he was only interested in the Army ever since he was a child. . .he wasn't interested in football or anything else." He had already spent one tour of duty in the Lebanon. "Yes, we were always worried," Mr Kedian said.

"The fear was always there, but you could get killed crossing the road. The Army was his life and he had no fear."

"A lovely lad" was how friends in Ballyhaunis, and in Renmore Barracks in Co Galway, described him yesterday. Billy had attended Ballyhaunis Community School, and worked for a time in Halal, the United Meat Packers plant in Ballyhaunis which kept so many people in the Mayo area in employment at a time of high emigration - and which provided the town of some 3,000 with its own mosque.

His father, an Avonmore Meats employee, is also a skilled plasterer. Life has not been easy for him and his wife and family over the past few years.

"Lebanon is so far away," Mr Kedian said. "I just can't believe it. I just don't think it is real. I think it is a dream." Anne-Marie said she never thought it could happen to her only brother. "You'd wonder how God could take someone so young." Father James O'Grady, the young curate who had to break the news to the Kedians just after sunrise yesterday, was lost for words.

"The town is devastated. I hadn't met Billy personally myself as I have only been here for four years. But one of his teachers said that he had the Army on his mind from the day he went there.

"His room at home was filled with books on Army life. He was one of the quietest and nicest lads that ever went through the school." Ballyhaunis had already come to a halt once early yesterday for a local funeral.

As the sun beat down on the south Mayo landscape, and news of the young man's death filtered through, several green cars arrived in from the Claremorris road. Representatives from the Army at Renmore in Galway had arrived to meet the family.