A Monaghan man who almost drove into the direct blast of the Monaghan bombing 50 years ago today said, if the car he had been travelling in had been one second earlier, he and his friends would not be here today. Austin McArdle was aged 15 on 17th May 1974. He had left school after his Junior Cert and had just started working. He and friends drove into Monaghan Town and were supposed to turn at the bottom of Mill Street and if they had done so they would have driven to their deaths. He described a busy Monaghan Town where workers from local furniture, poultry and bacon factories who had just got paid, families doing their weekly shop, and bars full of people having a drink on what was also a Friday 50 years ago. Then mayhem.
The first victim Austin saw was only 30 feet away and was known to him. He told the Wider View programme earlier today that his legs wouldn't work as shock had taken over his body. Austin said the people of Monaghan didn't really talk about that fateful May day and he couldn't talk about it himself until well after the 40th anniversary. His thoughts have always been for those injured, killed and their families.
"I can remember wandering," Austin said about the immediate aftermath of the bomb, "I wandered for about two days to tell you the truth y'know. I wandered down towards Church Square, the Diamond and on down Dublin Street. I went to my aunt's actually and then I went home and when I got home I couldn't eat and my parents didn't realise, until the man I was with told them, I was in the bomb but y'know it's not something you forget like some things you can't un-see but, I think about the people that died like and their families. That's what I think about."
