Bullets Rip Through Heart Of Tolerance Northern Ireland Mourns As Best Of Friends, Catholic And Protestant, Are Gunned Down In A Village That Had Been Spared Sectarian Violence.

Philip Allen had asked Damian Trainor to be his best man. In many places across Northern Ireland, that would have raised eyebrows, because Allen was Protestant and Trainor was Catholic.

But the two young men were lifelong best friends, and neither they nor anyone else in this isolated farming village, halfway between Newry and Portadown, had any time for the squabbles over religion and politics that divide Northern Ireland.

On Tuesday night, Allen and Trainor met here at the Railway Bar to talk about the wedding. They were sipping sodas when two masked gunmen burst in and ordered them and seven other customers to the floor. After the customers complied, the masked men opened fire.

Allen and Trainor, nearly inseparable since they were kids, were shot as they lay side by side. They died an hour later, side by side in a hospital emergency room. Two other men were wounded; they will survive.

It is tragically ironic that the only way the outside world became aware of the mutual respect and decency epitomized by the friendship of Philip Allen and Damian Trainor, and of the village that produced them, was through an act of cruelty. Although no one claimed responsibility for the attack, police say the killers were Protestant extremists.

The gunmen probably assumed that their victims would be Catholic. This is a predominantly Catholic village, and all three of its pubs are Catholic-owned.

But this village prides itself on its tolerance. All the pubs have a mixed clientele, especially on Tuesday nights, when the village sheep market brings farmers in from surrounding villages.

Dessie Canavan’s obviously Catholic name adorns the sign outside the Railway Bar, so that was enough for the gunmen, who probably had no idea that the crowd they had lined up was split between Protestants and Catholics.

For the past 30 years, the Troubles had bypassed this village, a mere 35 miles southwest from Belfast, and its 300 people. Unlike many other villages in Northern Ireland, no flags or painted curbstones mark off turf.

But as the details of what happened in the Railway Bar sank in Wednesday, so did the realization that village folk had been living on borrowed time, that despite their determination to live together peacefully, they were surrounded by those equally determined to exploit divisions.

“We thought we had our own little world here, but we don’t,” said Brian Canavan, whose parents own the Railway Bar.

Allen, 34, was a truck driver. Trainor, 28, worked as a mechanic in his family’s garage.

“I remember,” said Eoin Murchan, 75, standing in the village center, “the pair of them used to ride their bikes everywhere as boys. When you saw the one, you saw the other. They were more like brothers than friends.”

Bernadette Canavan, who runs the Railway Bar with her husband, used to watch with satisfaction from behind the bar as the two friends had conversations about every conceivable piece of a car engine. Canavan, 67, ran from the bar as the gunfire erupted. A killer fired several shots at her but missed.

Philip Allen’s two brothers, David and Alfie, were in the pub, too. David rolled away when the shooting started, and felt a bullet whiz by his head.

Another customer, James Monaghan, survived only because he pulled down one of the stools as a shield; a bullet that would have hit him was deflected away in a splintering of wood. The two men who were wounded are Protestant farmers from a nearby village.

The shock of the shooting led politicians to pledge themselves to a settlement in two months. Britain’s prime minister, Tony Blair, spoke of the two men in the House of Commons, saying their friendship symbolized the future of Northern Ireland, while their killers symbolized the past. Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, said the killings made them only more determined to bring about a settlement.

Seamus Mallon, deputy leader of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labor Party, and Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble emulated Allen and Trainor, visiting the grieving families together.

The Rev. Desmond Corrigan, a retired Roman Catholic priest, said he hoped that this time,the politicians were serious. Corrigan rushed into the pub moments after the shooting.

He knew right away that Allen and Trainor were, as he put it, “in a bad way.” He gave the Sacrament of the Sick to Trainor, and said a prayer over Allen.

“I’ve known them both since they were little boys, so it was very hard,” the priest was saying outside the Trainor home. “They were both conscious, but they couldn’t speak. Their parents came in.”

Sean Trainor and Cecil Allen had been lifelong friends, too. The Trainors and Allens huddled together as Father Corrigan spoke soothingly to their dying sons.

“It was very quiet,” Corrigan said. “I tried to console them. I encouraged them to live. I encouraged their parents to speak to them, and they did, softly, urging them to stay with us.”

But it was not meant to be.

“They were the salt of the village,” Father Corrigan said, tears welling in his red eyes. “But now they’re gone, and we are the lesser for it.”