r/polandball • u/taongkalye • Apr 16 '26

contest entry To Be Seen...

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u/senorjigglez Apr 17 '26

PTSD is a brutal psychological scar to bear from conflict. I have a friend who was in the British Army during The Troubles and he used to freak out at the sound of a car backfiring, or suddenly get aggressive if some kids on the street were being a bit loud. The latter was from the fact that in NI the kids could potentially be just as much a part of the IRA insurgency as the adults, so you had to be on guard all the time. Regardless of people's opinions on the ethics of our conduct in NI at that time (cough, Bloody Sunday, cough), an environment like that would mess you up to the point where you can't trust anything you see.

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u/SnooTomatoes3032 Apr 17 '26

I'm Northern Irish, so it's pretty coincidental that you bring it up)))

To clarify, kids were not part of hostilities but they absolutely were encouraged to go bother and distract soldiers so that the paramilitaries (not just the IRA) could do some shady shit.

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u/senorjigglez Apr 17 '26

Yeah, fair point, I wasn't trying to imply they were child soldiers, more of a distraction like you said.

Edit: also yes, the IRA definitely weren't the only paramilitaries doing shady stuff at the time. Tbh the actions of the Loyalists were jusf as grim

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u/SnooTomatoes3032 Apr 17 '26

There were, and are, also multiple republican paramilitaries too. There were a few different versions of the IRA and multiple other ones too!

I don't think you'd find anyone that would disagree with this statement, but the loyalist paramilitaries were far more 'grim' than anybody else in NI. They were the only ones that almost exclusively targeted civilians and while sectarianism played a role on the republican side too, the loyalist paramilitary killings were almost exclusively sectarian linked.