Honouring the dead further reconciles the living

Some in the crowd wept softly as Taoiseach Enda Kenny bowed his head in honour of Britain’s military dead at Enniskillen’s war memorial.

The tears were not for the significance of his presence, nor for the far off slaughter on the Western Front, but in remembrance of one of the most shocking moments of the atrocity- laden Troubles, when the IRA exploded their poppy day bomb on the same spot in 1987, leaving 12 people dead and another 60 injured.

The two-minute silence preceding the wreath-laying had only interrupted by birdsong — and the distant wail of an ambulance siren.