The last Last Post: Remembering the final soldier killed by the PIRA a quarter-century on – 23-year-old Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick

He was fatally shot by a sniper in south Armagh at about 6.30pm on February 12, 1997, in an attack which also almost killed the bystander he had been talking to.

Just over five months later, the IRA’s second ceasefire was declared.

This made Lance Bombardier Restorick, from Peterborough, the last soldier to be killed during the main phase of the Troubles.

His mother Rita Restorick, father John, and brother Mark all survive him to this day.

Here, the News Letter recalls the killing, 25 years on.

Mrs Restorick, a former secretary aged 74, began this interview by describing the kind of boy her son had been.

‘I WILL BE ALRIGHT, MUM’:

“He was a typical outgoing, good-looking lad,” she said.

“The army hadn’t been his first choice. He’d wanted to go in the RAF because his father and grandfather had been in the RAF.

“But due to recruitment cutbacks the trades he was offered in the RAF didn’t interest him, so he just went next door and went for the army – which he knew I was dead against, quite honestly, cause I knew it was far more dangerous.

“I remember him saying to me: ‘I’ll be alright, mum, I’m joining the artillery so I’ll be on big guns at the rear, not infantry at the front’.

“But of course they come to Northern Ireland and have to do infantry duties. And he ended up in south Armagh.”

In an era before mobile phones, he kept in touch with his parents by landline.

“Typical blokes – they’re not like we women [who] witter away every day to one another,” she said.

“It was one or two calls a week.”

As to how fearful she was while he was stationed in the Province, she said: “It’s something you have to live with if they join the army.

“To me it’s like having a small child; you can’t think every day they might be run over by a car.

“In the back of your mind is the possibility. But you can’t live your life thinking every day he might be killed.”

The book Lost Lives says that the fatal shot which struck Stephen hit him in the back as he was checking a motorist’s licence at a Bessbrook checkpoint.

The woman, Lorraine McIlroy, was injured but lived.

She recalled a few minutes of “eerie silence”, after the other soldiers had shouted for everyone to get on the ground to avoid more gunfire.

“In all that time I could hear the soldier on the ground moaning, and I wanted to get out and help him,” she said.

“He was there smiling and a while later he was dead.

“I watched that young man dying last night. It was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.”

A KNOCK IN THE NIGHT-TIME:

Mrs Restorick recalls how the family heard the news.

“It was about eleven o’clock at night, and my son and I were sitting watching TV. My husband was working away at the time.

“There was this knock on the door. Mark said he’ll go and see what it is.

“He was a minute or so, and I though I’d better go and see who it was. It was a male police officer and a guy in army uniform.”

They asked her to sit down, and one of them said Stephen had been fatally shot.

“Your mind just absolutely goes when you hear that,” she said.

“Then it’s just the usual denial: ‘it can’t be true, it’s not true’.”

Has it got any easier in the decades since?

“The pain gets less, the absolute physical pain you feel at the beginning. They say your heart’s breaking and that’s just what it feel like - your heart’s been ripped out.

“That eases over time. But I find it difficult watching programmes where it features a couple and their child has been killed. It throws us straight back into that situation.”

As to what Stephen would be doing now if the sniper had missed his mark, Mrs Restorick said: “I think he might be a fireman, he was looking at doing something like that.

“I see him married, with a lovely wife and children, which of course we’ve been robbed of.”

BOTH SIDES NOW:

Stephen Restorick was a member of the 3rd Battallion of the Royal Horse Artillery.

While he was the final soldier to be killed before the Good Friday Agreement, 12 years later dissident republicans killed two more at Massereene Barracks.

IRA man Bernard McGinn was convicted of a long string of paramilitary offences, including Mr Restorick’s murder, and given a 490-year sentence.

He was released after just 16 months, and went on to have three convictions for murder – including that of Stephen – quashed on a legal technicality (namely that he had not been properly cautioned by police officers while confessing to his murders).

He is now dead, but in any case, Mrs Restorick believes he was not the actual triggerman himself.

She said that “I’ve always been able to see both sides” of the Troubles, and that its history consists of “shades of grey” more so than “black and white”.

She also suggested that if Stephen had grown up in a republican family in a republican area he may well have been “tempted” to get involved in paramilitarism too.

“I’m not excusing what he [the sniper] did,” she added.

“I mean, Stephen was shot in the back.

“It wasn’t as if it was a shootout between them – he was talking to this lady who’s car was going through the checkpoint.

“The bullet went through Stephen and grazed her forehead.”

When it comes to the legacy of those 722 soldiers who were killed by paramilitaries in Operation Banner, she said: “I know there’s two ways people look at the army in Northern Ireland.

“But their job was to stop the bombs and shootings happening if possible. It wasn’t always possible.

“I don’t feel they died in vain. They died doing a job which was for the people, whether all people saw it like that.”

Upbeat and engaging despite the darkness of the topic at hand, as she chatted about family life as this interview drew a close, Mrs Restorick said: “As you can see, I can laugh again now.

“At one time, you think you never will laugh again. But they’d want us to laugh again.”

More from this reporter:

Click here: Mum speaks out over LVF murder of her only son 20 years after campaign declared over

Click here: Police family speaks out for first time 35 years after IRA murdered their brother and three other young officers

Click here: IRA murder 40 years on: ‘We will have to wait until the next life before we see justice’

Click here: Fancy an LVF duvet or a ‘Disband the RUC’ shower curtain? Multinational retailer Redbubble has what you want

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