Henry McDonald: We were playing Cowboys and Indians when Bloody Friday bomb exploded

Owen was nine and I was seven, and already our young lives had been marked by murder, mayhem and armed men, both in uniforms and not, all around us.

We grew up in the Market area, then a maze of Victorian streets, courtyards and even a cul de sac with cobblestones and gaslight.

Once playing football outside Owen’s house, loyalist snipers, who had infiltrated the giant Gasworks tanks, rained bullets down on the streets, prompting us to flop on our bellies, and lie still until the shooting stopped.

Yet nothing before prepared us for that day – Friday 21 July 1972.

After the explosion there was a huge bank of smoke rising over Oxford Street, which invaded our throats and nostrils.

We ran in panic towards the southern end of Oxford Street where St George’s Market stands today, and looked up.

I held back while Owen ran towards the smoke and fire. When he returned a few minutes later Owen’s face was yellow, there were tears in his eyes. He kept going on about seeing a man with no foot lying on the ground in the bus station. He was shaking.

In the years after the atrocity Owen never joined a riot let alone any paramilitary organisation. I often wonder if the horror he witnessed directly on Bloody Friday had anything to do with that.