Remembering the Fallen: on this day in 1972, Private George Ellis Hamilton, 8th Battalion, the Ulster Defence Regiment, was killed by a sniper while off-duty.

Apart from his commitment to the regiment as a part-time soldier, he was employed as an electrician by a company in Londonderry. On the day of his death he had been working on repairs at the Croppy Hill reservoir with three colleagues. An IRA sniper hit him in the back with a single shot; he was taken to Altnagelvin Hospital but sadly he died two hours later. His brother’s wife had been seriously injured five months earlier when a bomb was detonated at the hotel of which they were proprietors.

Members of the South East Fermanagh Foundation created a Memorial Quilt, and Private Hamilton is one of many who are honoured with their own individual hand-crafted square. His family asked that these words be included in the booklet which accompanies the quilt: “Too good in life to be forgotten in death”.

Ellis (as he was known) was from Kildoag near Claudy in County Londonderry, 28 years old, and married with a four-year-old daughter.