www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B086WHT2K5/
More than once, Tom Murray held someone as that person died in his arms in Ireland during the conflict between the Irish Republican Army factions and the government of Great Britain during the troubles from the 70`s.
Born a Catholic in Derry in the heart of the Bogside on the 12th of July. The very day the Protestant Orangemen march throughout the province but especially on the Derry walls looking over into the Bogside with a shout of “no surrender”. While many joined the IRA various factions against British rule became a volunteer as a medic, at the First Aid post in the language of the time and location. He didn’t care who was wounded, he only wanted to help those in great needed of first aid before medical aid was available.
Being born into a Catholic family does not make a person a Christian, as Tom would learn. When US President John Kennedy was assassinated, Tom took a major step in following the Catholic teaching but it was not the full journey that he’d make later in life.
This is most decidedly not a story about the fighting. This kind of story is played out across the world every day in conflicts that make international news and violent disputes that barely make the local media. As Tom says in the introduction, "This book is about a conflict that goes far deeper than the history of Ireland, or of any other place – the conflict within the soul, which has expressed itself in a myriad form of ways since man first rebelled against God at the dawn of creation."
It is the story of one man trying to come to grips with his fellow man and the inhumanity displayed toward each other. The time and the setting are real, the Northern Ireland conflicts and the people are equally real. It is the IRA factions war against the British forces.
In these very real battles that are also a metaphor, Tom sometimes identifies the people by name and rank. The atrocities of conflict are very real, but Tom does not dwell on the horrors of that. In other words, this is not a story of fighting, blood and gore in the physical realm. The fighting Tom goes through is just a real but is on the spiritual battlefield.
Tom signing up as a cadet as a first Aider, brought his journey into the horrors of the conflict which was an unforgettable one.
He saw the Battle of Bogside, a three-day fight that ended with the British Army coming in. He was also there at the infamous Bloody Sunday march. In 1983 by the band U2 in the song Sunday Bloody Sunday became famous and much more.
Read about his own conflict with the disinfected Catholics and the IRA. The IRA`s quest to find out did he every work for the British Intelligence while he lived in the Bogside of Derry and read how he replied to their question in the Maze prison indirectly.
HIs personal transformation came about at the Maze Prison, where he put his trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Maze goal was a facility used to hold IRA and UVF/UDA paramilitaries arrested by the police. Later Tom’s baptism was a further step of obedience to His Lord Jesus. In the Catholic church, babies are baptized but In the Bible believers in Christ, were baptises when they believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. The author's baptism came as an adult and was an outward sign of an inward conversion that happened that was once a condemned man cell converted into a bathroom in the Crumlin Road Goal.
The Troubles changed many people, how could it not. It changed Tom too, in his case for the better. Come, read about Tom`s journey own Damascus Road experience and see why he nailed a scroll to a cell door with the words It Is FINISHED!!!