At the age of 14 , he witnessed first-hand the events of Bloody Friday on 21 July 1972 when the Provisional IRA exploded 26 bombs across Belfast , killing nine people , and injuring 103 . As the years passed , he found himself attending many funerals of friends he had lost and people he had known . In 1975 , he joined the Ulster Volunteer Force ( UVF ) and was trained in the use of weapons and explosives by former military personnel ; he had just turned 18 years old . At the outbreak of the republican hunger strike in 1981 , Giles had gradually become disassociated from the UVF . Following the deaths of the ten republican prisoners , however , Giles believed that , in the wake of the hunger strike , " there was going to be an uprising and they Protestants were all going to be slaughtered " by the IRA . Giles mentally prepared himself to go to war against the IRA and therefore returned as an active member of the UVF
Bloody Friday
Bloody Friday (1972)
Billy Giles