Grateful thanks to those of all ranks and from all services for their duty and sacrifice here over such a long period. Words aren't enough but they're all that ordinary NI people like me have got.
Sadly I must agree 100% with ZOFO regarding his quote "they haven't gone away" and I must equally vehemently disagree with his description of anyone who says that as a "politician". Most of we law-abiding citizens, including the relatives of the twelve British subjects incinerated and 23 seriously injured at La Mon hotel on 17 February 1978, know exactly what such a person is and what they stand for.
I'm classed as a dinosaur here because I still know right from wrong and I'm still prepared to call a spade a spade. Unlike so many (at all levels of society and led by our spineless Westminster politicians) who find it convenient to overlook the facts, when I walk through the regenerating Belfast I know that I am actually wading through the blood of thousands of innocents, civilian and military, whose deaths the Establishment would prefer to airbrush from the record at the same time as it accords mass murderers the status of political statesmen.
The decent people of Northern Ireland will not forget the service and sacrifice of our armed forces, without which the cut-throats would have wreaked even more death and destruction upon us.
And we will not forgive the murderers or the morally bankrupt administration that has delivered us into their clutches after 40 years of torment.