"Ballykelly, Dropping Well disco bombing Massacre" - 26 years later 2008

The years may have flown by but the heartache remain and 26 years on tomorrow the memories will cascade bach and silent tears will be shed.

As the first newsman to have arrived on the horrific scene of the Droppin' Well atrocity I cannot forget the carnage of the dark night of December 6,1982 in Ballykelly. It was the biggest single north west massacre of the Troubles yet Bloody Sunday, in which 13 males were shot dead on the day, remains in the wider public perception as being the outstanding death toll during the violence of the latter part of the 20th century here. What has kept Bloody Sunday to the forefront of everyone - from victims to families to the lawyers who have become millionaires in the overly lingering aftermath of that day in Londonderry - has been Lord Saville's decade and counting long inquiry into the confusing events of January 30,1972. Two feature-length movies and whole rain forests of books, poetry and plays have also keep the legacy of Bloody Sunday alive. On the other hand, the Droppin' Well massacre, right in the heart of Ballykelly village alongside the main Limavady-Londonderry road, has been long since officially confined to the history books. It has been glaringly ignored as the challenging subject matter for films, poetry and plays.

The arts world, en masse, has, over the past quarter century plus, shunned the agony caused by the callous deaths of 17 people at a pre-Christmas disco in a quiet Ulster pub. An INLA gang ruthlessly murdered 11 off-duty soldiers, who'd been based at neighbouring Shackleton Barracks, and six civilians there in the biggest single loss of life the Co Londonderry area had seen in the blood-letting that was to stain Northern Ireland for decades. It was mass murder and with 150 pre-Christmas revellers in the Droppin' Well the death toll could have been much higher after tons of concrete had been brought crashing down on top of unsuspecting dancers and drinkers. Yet, while Bloody Sunday has moved authors, poets, artists, screenwriters, documentary makers and, it must be said, journalists to try to closely interpret the events of one January afternoon in Londonderry's Bogside the December night even more lives perished just down the road has more or less been ignored.

None of their artistic number, in contrast, has tried to examine or record for posterity, for the generations to come, the human suffering of Ballykelly's great tragedy.

I vividly recall attending the funeral of Patricia Cooke, a beautician who I had known as a vivacious, chatty, 21-year-old. Her family, highly respected in the community, then owned The Well as the locals called it and she had been helping out on a busy night by gathering up empty glasses when the no-warning bomb exploded.

Ten days later she tragically lost her courageous fight for life and on a cold winter's day. After her funeral Mass, they buried Patricia on a hillside above the village. Tomorrow night I will remember all of the Protestant and Roman Catholic victims of that fateful night in my thoughts and prayers but time marches on and the name of The Droppin' Well Bar is now no more. Recently the Plantation Road premises, beside Ballykelly's tiny Fern River, had a name change. In the spirit of Northern Ireland moving into a new era Una and Gerard Miller, who took over there last February, decided to change it to The Riverside Bar. The name may be different now but each time I pass the spot I never fail to think about that black evening and the innocents who were never to join their loved ones around the Christmas fireside again.