Billy Giles - The Troubles

The Troubles

At the age of 14, he witnessed first-hand the events of Bloody Friday on 21 July 1972 when the Provisional IRA exploded 26 bombs across Belfast, killing nine people, and injuring 103. As the years passed, he found himself attending many funerals of friends he had lost and people he had known. In 1975, he joined the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and was trained in the use of weapons and explosives by former military personnel; he had just turned 18 years old. At the outbreak of the republican hunger strike in 1981, Giles had gradually become disassociated from the UVF. Following the deaths of the ten republican prisoners, however, Giles believed that, in the wake of the hunger strike, "there was going to be an uprising and they were all going to be slaughtered" by the IRA. Giles mentally prepared himself to go to war against the IRA and therefore returned as an active member of the UVF.