The no-warning car bombings of a small Co Derry village 30 years ago still haunt the memories of local people, writes George Jackson
Two days ago Billy and Meryl Eakin quietly marked their 47th wedding anniversary. Yesterday they quietly marked the 30th anniversary of the death of their nine-year-old daughter, Kathyrn, one of the nine people killed when three car bombs exploded in the Co Derry village of Claudy on July 31st, 1972.
Bloody Monday took place in Claudy on the day of Operation Motorman, which saw the biggest British army operation since the 1956 Suez Crisis, when thousands of soldiers moved into and took over the "no go" areas in Derry's Bogside and Creggan estates.
Several years after Bloody Monday, Billy Eakin was in Derry Court to receive compensation for his murdered daughter. He was awarded £58. Along with relatives of the other Claudy bombing victims, the Eakins yesterday attended a commemoration service at a memorial statue in Claudy to mark the 30th anniversary of the atrocity.
"We were down in our holiday home in Castlerock to celebrate our wedding anniversary on Sunday July the 30th and we had to come home to Claudy to open up the grocery shop for the Monday morning. One hour after I opened the shop, Kathyrn was killed," Mr Eakin recalled.
Minutes before she died, Kathyrn was baking in the kitchen, preparing to go on two weeks' holiday. "She got out all the stuff to do her baking and I haven't baked since that day, I just can't," Mrs Eakin said.
"She wanted to make money for her holiday so she got out the steps and started to clean the shop's front window and that's the last I saw of her.
"She skipped out of the door and started cleaning the window and that's the last I saw of her. The next thing I heard the explosion. I ran out because I knew Billy and Kathyrn and my son Mark were out there and I saw her lying on the road. Someone shouted she had a broken arm and I thought she would be all right," she said.
Billy Eakin carried his fatally wounded daughter down to the local medical clinic in his arms. "I started to get a bit wobbly and another man took Kathyrn from me and I walked behind them. Just then the second bomb went off right behind me. I was blown to the ground.
"A local factory van took Kathyrn to hospital and I met my father at the hospital and he just said to me 'It's all over'. Our daughter was dead, our home was blown up, we had nowhere to bury our daughter from and we had no clothes to wear at her funeral.
"I later spoke to the surgeon who was looking after Kathyrn. I asked him if he could tell me something and he said that shrapnel went into her brain and she was dead on arrival at hospital," he said.
Mrs Eakin, from Clones, Co Monaghan, said that years after the death of her daughter, she couldn't accompany her husband to the court compensation hearing.
"I went back to Clones. I didn't want to be there and Billy didn't want me there. When he phoned me and told me that the £58 was for Kathyrn's funeral expenses, I had to ask him to repeat it, I couldn't believe it.
"He was told that because we wouldn't have to educate Kathyrn, that was the figure the court put on her life.
"Billy took the cheque down to the bank manager who told him to frame it because no one would believe it. We thought about sending it back in disgust but we decided to put £2 to it and we bought a portable television for our son Mark who was still deeply traumatised at the death of his sister and because he was so lonely without Kathyrn," she said.
Mr Eakin said he didn't believe the bombers' statement that the three car bombs were not designed to harm civilians.
"The bomb outside our shop was filled with shrapnel and with all sorts of bits of metal. I kept them for many years. If you want to blow up a building you don't need shrapnel. I find it very difficult to even begin to forgive them.
"They knew what they were going to do. One thing in particular, when Kathyrn was cleaning the front windows, she was up on the steps and promiment looking. The bomber parked the van containing the second bomb right across the road from Kathyrn.
"He saw Kathyrn and if he had any Christianity in him, he would have said something to make Kathyrn run away, but he walked away," he said.
Mrs Eakin said every day she thinks about her daughter, particularly when her granddaughter, Samantha Kathyrn, Mark's daughter, visits them.
"She is so like Kathyrn in her looks, in her mannerisms, and everybody can see it. It's just like God has sent us another wee angel," she said.