Word: coffin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...British army helicopters clattered anxiously overhead, some 50,000 Northern Irish Catholics lined the streets of Belfast last week for an emotional ceremony that was part funeral, part political demonstration. A lone piper led the way as thousands of mourners followed a Daimler hearse bearing a coffin draped in the green, white and orange flag of the Irish Republic. Beside the hearse strode seven hooded members of the outlawed Irish Republican Army, dressed in mottled green combat jackets and berets...
...Andersonstown Road, in the heart of a Catholic section, the cortege stopped, and the coffin was removed from the hearse. Three more I.R.A. men suddenly appeared with rifles and fired into the air the traditional three volleys of honor and mourning. The procession, discreetly shepherded by police and British troops, moved past Protestant strongholds, where tall screens were erected to prevent even eye contact between the rival sectarian groups...
Finally, at the Milltown Cemetery, the coffin was carried to a special area studded with the graves of more than 200 I.R.A. faithful. Republican Leader Gerry Adams declared: "We will bury our dead with the dignity denied them while living." He added, "The ordinary people of Ireland have turned out to show their solidarity with Bobby Sands. They know that [his] death didn't have to happen...
...Sands said no, said it every day, while his body ate itself, till he went from 155 pounds to less than 80. Those who saw his body, and there were thousands who filed through the parlor of his project home, said two Bobby Sands could have fit in the coffin, that his face, what face was left, was yellow wax, stretched tight over sharp bone. Bobby Sands is a hero...
...that these fanatics insisted on continuing to kill each other, or, like good Harvard students, considered how complex the whole problem must be. But complexity is an excuse that means nothing to the 20,000 people, maybe more, who watched them bury Bobby Sands, watched his coffin go by draped with the proud tricolor of Ireland and the black gloves and beret of the army that fights to free it. Hundreds took to the streets later, to throw rocks. They don't understand why they must live their lives with British troops standing on the corner. They don't understand...