THE father of a Strabane man shot dead by the SAS has said he is "glad to see the back" of the British Army.
But he and his family are keen that unanswered questions should still be answered.
In one of the most controversial killings of the Troubles, IRA man Charlie Breslin was killed with brothers Michael and David Devine in an SAS ambush in 1985.
At the end of Operation Banner, the Breslin family say that they're glad to see the back of a force who they believe should not have been here in the first place.
Joe Snr still vividly recalls the night his son was shot, the noises of the gunfire still clear in his mind.
He said, "They (the British Army) had a machine gun up in the graveyard to stop the young boys coming back into the houses.
" We heard the machine gun fire first, the 'boom boom' of it. The noise of it was terrible, the wife thought it was explosions. The next thing then was the 'rat tat' of the sub-machine gun as the young boys got shot. The last three shots were different, they were pistol shots."
The troops may be gone, but many questions remain about that military operation in which the three young men lost their lives. The Breslin family still want answers.
The inquest following the killings was tainted with "lies" according to the family.
Joe Snr said, "There are so many questions that remain unanswered. There was an inquest following Charlie's death, and it was smudged by lies from the police and army witnesses. Over 300 witnesses who "could not recall" what had happened. There's a lot of hurt still there.
"The army said in a statement that they were pushed into it, that the cops led them into it. Why were the cops coming up whispering in their cars before it happened? They all knew what was going to happen. There were no prisoners taken in that field, no efforts to arrest those boys.
"They say that there was no helicopter involved, but there was. It was up there, operating in silent mode but it was there. They were in the graveyard shooting from the cemetery, but they denied that too."
With Operation Banner, the military support assignment here now having come to an end, Charlie's brother Joe says that he is glad to see the end to British troops in Strabane and across the North, and that the only downside is that it's come too late given the level of grief that has been caused.
He said, "I'm glad to see them going, and it's just not soon enough. It's hundreds of years too late. 38 years ago they weren't welcome, and it's sad that they had to stay as long as they did. All we can do is hope for better days in the future. They caused a lot of grief not just to our family but to many families. It was just years of torture and harassment from them. It's not completely away yet, but hopefully some day we will be."
Strabane now is a very different place and in a changed political climate to when the troops first arrived, and Joe hopes that the next generation of young people will be spared having to go through the sort of harassment and life that he and so many others did.
"We were always subjected to very heavy surveillance in Strabane, maybe more so than other places. There was constant exposure to it, and from a very young age you were subjected to harassment. Basically it seemed as if as soon as you hit your teens you were a suspect. I don't know anyone who wasn't subjected to it in some shape or form."
He continued, "It's a different place now, a lot different to when we were growing up. It's not 100 per cent yet but it's a long way from what it used to be. There's a scar left because of what went on over the years which will take time to heal, but hopefully our children will not have to be exposed to the things we were.
"They've left a legacy of questions that remain unanswered, between them and the RUC. Hopefully in time they will be answered honestly. In South Africa they've a peace and reconciliation programme set up which has meant that people have come clean and that the truth has come out. I'd like to think there'd be the same situation here, but I don't think there will."
