The family of a British soldier killed in Co Fermanagh has returned to scatter his widow’s ashes close to the spot where he was murdered.
Corporal Thomas Agar, 35, was one of two soldiers who died instantly when an IRA bomb exploded under their van in Enniskillen in May 1984.
Lance Corporal Robert Huggins, who was 29 and a father of three, was also killed outright.
A third soldier, Lance Corporal Peter Gallimore, 27, died of his injuries five months later. He had a four-year-old son.
They had been part of a group of off-duty soldiers attending a fishing competition on Lough Erne.
All were members of the 1st Royal Regiment of Fusiliers.
An event is taking place to commemorate the deaths of the soldiers and of a colleague, Corporal Clive Aldridge, who lost both legs in the blast and died in 2013 aged 63.
No one was ever charged with the bombing.
Fifteen members of the four families are attending the commemoration to mark the 40th anniversary of the attack.
Thomas Agar was married with a young son when he was murdered.
His wife Sheila died last November and the couple’s only child, Craig, has travelled to Enniskillen this weekend to scatter her ashes on Lough Erne.
He was eight when his father was killed.
He only visited the spot where his father died for the first time in 2014.
Craig said he always felt a great connection to him along the shores of Lough Erne and he was fulfilling his mother’s final wish to be reunited with her husband.
“I feel a connection with my father in this place, by the lough, by the water.
“So I think I get a feeling of them being reunited in any way I can possibly do that, to fulfil her wishes.”
Christine Huggins said she had been to Enniskillen several times since her husband was murdered and it always filled her with mixed emotions.
She said it was only right that the personal stories of soldiers killed in the Troubles were memorialised alongside the civilian victims.
“Too many can be forgotten. They signed up for the job, but they didn’t sign up to be killed.
“You know, at the end of the day, they weren’t even working, they were on a pleasure thing.”
Recording the stories of the soldiers is something Craig feels strongly about.
“For me, the soldiers are sort of the forgotten story of the Northern Ireland Troubles and they all need to be remembered and be spoken of.
“It’s no longer a dirty subject.
“It seems like that in Great Britain.
“The Northern Ireland conflict isn’t really discussed.
“It isn’t memorialised, there is no memorial in England for the soldiers murdered in Northern Ireland.
“So I would like to bring their stories to the front. Families like us have never really been heard.”
