Omagh 20 years on: 'It was just pure slaughter'
Stanley McComb lost his wife Ann in the attack
Last updated 15th Aug 2018
A man who lost his wife in the Omagh bomb says he will never recover from his loss.
Stanley McComb was at a pipe band competition with his son in Scotland when the real IRA car bomb exploded.
“Unfortunately I wasn’t in the country that day.
“I’d been to Scotland with my son Clive to compete in the world pipe band championships.
“Being a Saturday, Ann never usually worked Saturdays, she only worked part time in the Wattersons drapery store but because of holidays and one thing and the other she had to work the odd Saturday and unfortunately she was working that day.”
When the news began to come through about the bomb in Omagh, he had to wait hours before finding out his wife’s fate:
“We were sat in the hotel room and the driver came up and he said ‘Stanley it’s for you.
“I knew in my own heart, David said ‘listen Ann’s gone.
“I’ve never had a feeling like it my life, it’s the worst.
“You’re numb and you don’t know where you are, you’re not yourself, it’s like an out of body feeling, you’re beside yourself, you don’t know what to say.“
The 70-year-old described his wife fondly and paid tribute to her character:
“Ann will always be remembered as a beautiful woman and that’s it, nobody ever seen Ann not well dressed.”
“When Ann came down the stairs in the morning, you’d have thought Ann was going to a wedding, always dressed, hair done, make up on.
“She always said to me: ‘Stanley, if anything ever happens to me, you make sure if anybody’s looking at me in a coffin that my hair’s done and my make-up’s on and my hair has to be right and my make-up has to be right.
“That’s real hard now when you think of that.”
Along with Michael Gallagher and other bereaved families, Stanley now campaigns for victims and helps run the Omagh support and self help group.
He says the horror of that day 20 years ago will never go away:
“We live it every day of the week and I live it every day of the week, I do get emotional of course I do, it’s still very raw with me.
“It’ll never go away from you, to be brutally murdered after all the years that there’s been trouble in this country and she’d lived through it all and I’ve lived through it all, just to be slaughtered.
“It was just pure slaughter.”
The Real IRA claimed responsibility for the attack but no one has ever been convicted.
Stanley said he has battled to forgive the terrorists responsible:
“Anger more than anything else, anger that people can come in and destroy your town and destroy 31 families and that’s when the hate comes in to it and I never hated anybody in my life.
“I’d been held up by the IRA a few years back, before that but after the Omagh bomb I hated those people.
“It tells on you, the stress and the strain and seven years ago, I took two heart attacks.
“20 years has passed and I don’t know how long I have here, I don’t have another 20 years to fight."