by Peter Taylor
It was nearly an hour before the march finally got under way, which was not unusual for an event of this size. By 3.30 p.m. it was moving down William Street towards the Green Jackets who were manning barricade 14 that blocked the entrance to the Guildhall Square. The stewards, not seeking a confrontation with the army, diverted most of the march right along Rossville Street and towards ‘Free Derry’ corner where the rally was due to be addressed by Bernadette Devlin and the Labour life peer Lord Fenner Brockway, a veteran campaigner on Northern Ireland civil rights issues. But, as predicted, the Derry Young Hooligans, and some older ones too, broke away from the main body of the march to get within, literally, spitting range of the Green Jackets at barricade 14. The soldiers then came under attack from a hail of missiles.
Meanwhile, with the riot gathering momentum, stragglers at the end of the march were still making their way down William Street and past the Paras who had taken up position by the Presbyterian church where they had been doing a ‘recce’ over a high wall. Two soldiers were positioned on top of an oil tank to do so. ‘Phil’, the sergeant of the Mortar Platoon, told me that initially the plan was for his armoured vehicle ‘to punch a hole through the wall so that we got onto open ground and got behind the crowd if it was required’. Abuse, bottles and bricks were hurled at them too. By now it was clear to the marchers, seeing the soldiers’ red berets, that the Paras had been deployed, which probably gave added impetus to their throwing power with memories of Magilligan still fresh in their minds. The Paras responded by firing baton rounds.
The precise sequence of events in what happened next, just before 4 p.m., is confused but of critical importance since it was probably the incident that triggered ‘Bloody Sunday’. What is beyond doubt is that both the IRA and the paratroopers opened fire. The IRA fired one round and the soldiers fired five.2 The critical question is, who fired first? According to the Major who was Support Company’s commander, at ‘about 3.55 p.m.’ a single shot rang out from Columbcille Court, the flats on the other side of William Street, directly opposite the Presbyterian church. The high-velocity round hit a drainpipe running down the side of the church. It did no damage, except to the drainpipe, but its significance was immense. It told the Paras that what they had heard at their briefing was true. ‘Phil’ has no doubt that was the first shot, fired at the two soldiers on top of the oil tank. Lieutenant-Colonel Wilford heard the sound in his command post nearby. ‘That shot was aimed at us, sir,’ his Adjutant informed him. Wilford was not surprised and knew the implications. ‘Its significance was that there was at least one weapon on the other side. And if there was one, then there were probably others.’ The shot is believed to have been fired by a member of the Official IRA. The gunman is said to have been confronted by the Provisionals and told in no uncertain terms to get out of the area.3 Around the same time, just before 4 p.m., two members of Support Company’s Machine Gun Platoon in the vicinity of the church fired five shots at rioters they said they believed were nail-bombers. The rounds hit a fifteen-year-old schoolboy, Damien Donaghy, in the thigh, and 59-year-old John Johnston in the leg and left shoulder. Donaghy survived but Johnston died over three months later. Neither was a nail-bomber. Johnston was not actually on the march but on his way to see a friend in Glenfada Park, the low three-storey block of maisonettes opposite Rossville Flats.4 Donaghy was simply retrieving a rubber bullet.5
By this time, the rioting at barricade 14 had become even more intense and the army had brought in water cannon in the hope of dousing the rioters’ spirits. Wilford, eagerly awaiting the order from MacLellan to move in for the ‘scoop up’, thought the scene was ‘a bloody shambles’ with soldiers playing their accustomed role as ‘Aunt Sallies’. The Lieutenant-Colonel was becoming impatient lest the optimum time to strike was being lost, and the commanders of Support and C Companies, who were to make up the snatch squads, were growing impatient too. According to the Brigade log, Wilford finally got the green light at 4.07 p.m. but with the specific instruction in ‘Serial 159’ that he was ‘not to conduct running battle down Rossville Street’.6 Clearly MacLellan wanted to keep the problem within bounds. C Company was to advance through barricade 14 and up Chamberlain Street and Support Company through barricade 12 and up Rossville Street. Barricade 12 was located in a side street just below the Presbyterian church. Together the two Companies were to form a pincer movement to cut off the rioters and perhaps trap many of them in the extensive courtyard of Rossville Flats.
Wilford gave the command, ‘Move! Move! Move!’ and Major-General Ford, who was watching close by, purely as an observer of the implementation of MacLellan’s plan, wished them well and apparently urged them on with the words, ‘Go on, One Para. Go and get them and good luck!’7 Suddenly pent-up tensions were released as Support Company leapt into their armoured personal carriers (known as ‘pigs’) and prepared to roar after the DYH. The Company Sergeant-Major (CSM) told me he was concerned when he saw one of his men cocking his weapon as he jumped into the vehicle in front. ‘I earmarked him and thought, “When I get back, I’ll kick his arse, because cocking a weapon like that is contrary to orders.” But I could understand it. The guy was probably tensed up in view of the briefing we’d had.’8
Support Company’s ‘pigs’ screamed into the courtyard/car park area of Rossville Flats and fanned out to hem in the fleeing crowd. Chief Superintendent Lagan, who was in MacLellan’s office when Serial 159 was given, had no doubt it signified a strictly limited operation and the Paras, by roaring into the Bogside, were exceeding the order ‘not to conduct running battle’. The containment line had not just been breached, it had been smashed.
‘Phil’ was in the second ‘pig’ behind his Platoon commander’s vehicle which hooked left into the crowd. ‘Phil’ ordered his driver to go past it and then swing left into the crowd as well. ‘But we went a little bit further than I’d actually intended and ended up in the car park area of Rossville Flats. We de-bussed there,’ he told me. ‘By that time, we’d trapped 100 to 150 of the crowd in that area and they were streaming past us. We then went in to make arrests.’ ‘Phil’ says he got hold of one man and, ‘after a bit of tussle’, dragged him towards the back of the ‘pig’. It was at this point that he says he heard shots coming from the area of the Flats. ‘Three or four weapons,’ he said. ‘I’ve got no doubt in my mind there was a multiple of weapons firing. It was the highest concentration of fire I’d personally heard in Northern Ireland. I’d heard one or two gunmen firing before but this was a quick sort of burst, maybe twenty to thirty rounds from various weapons. There was a strike on the ground between us and the wall which was to my left.’ ‘Phil’ threw the man he had just arrested to his Lance-Corporal, moved to the front of the ‘pig’, took up position by its left bumper and started looking for targets.
The weapons were ready cocked. We were ready to go. As far as I’m concerned, we were under fire. It changed from an ordinary ‘scoop-up’ arrest operation to ‘hey, someone’s trying to kill me! Let’s find out who it is and do the job back.’ And that is very much the attitude you’ll get from the Parachute Regiment soldier. He doesn’t go for cover. He doesn’t crawl around on the ground. He looks for targets. We looked for them, started identifying them and started dropping them – shooting them. The first one I saw was in the car park with a pistol, within 50 metres, and I’ve no doubt whatsoever the man was armed.
Couldn’t it have been a piece of wood he was holding, or a rock or something?
Why should it be kicking? There was a definite jerk as the trigger was pulled. There was a definite movement of the man firing a weapon at me.
Wasn’t it risky opening fire when there were so many civilians milling around?
You’ve got to be joking when you ask a question like that. Someone is trying to kill you. What do you say? ‘Well, I’m very sorry. I won’t fire back. I’ll let someone else just keep shooting at me.’ My job was to stop that, to put them down. And that’s what we did.
Did you hit him?
I’m positive I did. The first round missed, I’ll give you that, but the second two didn’t. Once I knew he was down, I was then looking for other targets.9
In all, ‘Phil’ fired eight rounds that day, each one, he says, an aimed shot. The second target he says he identified was a man on the first-floor veranda at the junction where two blocks of Rossville Flats meet at an angle. ‘I’m clearly convinced that it was a shot by a shoulder-held weapon, not a pistol, and he was firing down into the area where we were. Again, I’d seen the flash of the weapon being fired. I fired three rounds at him. He went down and I’m sure I hit him as well.’ He says he then fired two more rounds, making eight in all, into a tunnel of the Flats where he says the same type of weapon was firing back. ‘Phil’ does not know whether he hit that particular ‘gunman’ or not, but that was where he put his last two rounds. ‘We returned fire and we won the day,’ he told me. ‘We were hitting them or making them go to ground. They were not hitting us.’
As with the earlier shooting of Damien Donaghy and John Johnston, the question of who fired first in the Rossville Flats area is central to unravelling the true story of what actually happened on the ground. The first person to die in the courtyard of Rossville Flats was seventeen-year-old Jack ‘Jackie’ Duddy. Four others – Margaret Deery (37), Michael Bridge (25), Michael Bradley (22) and Patrick McDaid (24) – were wounded. Duddy was hit by a single shot in the chest. Father Edward Daly, later Bishop Daly, came to his aid, having seen him running away from the soldiers. Dr Daly and other eye-witnesses had no doubt whatsoever that he was unarmed. Bishop Daly later told me that he was certain that the paratroopers did not come under fire. ‘I am satisfied in my own mind from the behaviour of the soldiers themselves that they were not being fired at. I’m quite satisfied too that every individual was picked and targeted. But even if there were shots, I do not think that what the Paras did was justified. I believe it was murder.’10 One of the lasting images of ‘Bloody Sunday’ is that of a stooping Father Daly, waving a white blood-stained handkerchief as a flag of truce, leading the knot of men carrying Duddy’s body. He had already administered the last rites. Bishop Daly confirmed that he did see one gunman with a pistol, but only after the Paras had started firing.
The other twelve victims of ‘Bloody Sunday’ died elsewhere. Two men, Pat Doherty (31) and Bernard ‘Barney’ McGuigan (41), were shot dead on the other side of Rossville Flats. McGuigan was hit in the head as he crawled to the aid of the dying Doherty who had been shot through the buttock with the bullet exiting through his chest. Two others – Daniel McGowan (37) and Patrick Campbell (53) – were wounded in the area.11 Six men, most of them teenagers – Hugh Gilmore (17), Kevin McElhinney (17), Michael Kelly (17), John Young (17), William Nash (19) and Michael McDaid (20) – were killed in the vicinity of a rubble barricade placed across Rossville Street between the Flats and the maisonettes of Glenfada Park. It has been suggested that McDaid, Nash and Young could have been shot by one or more of the army snipers who were in place on the city walls and who did open fire. These soldiers were not Paras but members of 22 Light Air Detachment and 1st Battalion, The Royal Anglians who were positioned on the walls or in derelict buildings nearby as observers and snipers.12 Four men – James Wray (22), Gerald Donaghy (17), Gerald McKinney (35) and William McKinney (26) – were shot in Glenfada Park where many had sought shelter after the intensive shooting around the barricade on Rossville Street and elsewhere. In addition, a number of people were shot and wounded – Joseph Friel (20), Michael Quinn (17), Daniel Gillespie (31), Paddy O’Donnell (41) and Joseph Mahon (16).
In the half hour following Lieutenant-Colonel Wilford’s command to ‘Move! Move! Move!’ Support Company had fired 108 rounds and made thirty of the fifty-four arrests.13 The Paras had overwhelmed the area. ‘Quite honestly, I owned the Bogside in military terms,’ Wilford told me. ‘I occupied it.’14 Having got so far, his men were ready for the order to carry on up into the Creggan, sweep away the barricades and end ‘Free Derry’ and the no-go area once and for all. Nothing would have given Wilford and 1 Para more pleasure than to re-establish the Queen’s writ. But it was not to be. ‘Phil’ was left frustrated and bemused.
The feeling was, ‘Look, this has started. We’ve got to keep moving. Let’s roll. We’re ready.’ We’d won, shall we say, the fire-fight for want of a better word. Now we were ready to move forward. Somebody, somewhere said, ‘No. Stand still.’ Then it was, ‘Right, back out.’ Support Company wasn’t happy with that. There was obviously trouble in the Bogside that day. Why not stop the trouble completely? I think the no-go area would have gone that day. I don’t understand why it was stopped.
In effect, the Paras had carried out the first stage of Option 3 recorded in Ford’s memorandum to Tuzo of 14 December 1971. It was the option Ford rejected because, as he wrote, ‘the risk of casualties is high and apart from gunmen and bombers, so-called unarmed rioters, possibly teenagers, are certain to be shot in the initial phases. Much will be made of the invasion of Derry and the slaughter of the innocent.’ Ford’s analysis was a nightmare come true. Wilford’s men had shot dead thirteen people. Eye-witnesses insisted that none of them or any of the injured was armed or carrying nail-bombs or any other offensive weapon. At the inquests, the Coroner, Major Hubert O’Neill, did not hide his feelings.
This Sunday became known as ‘Bloody Sunday’ and bloody it was. It was quite unnecessary. It strikes me that the army ran amok that day and shot without thinking what they were doing. They were shooting innocent people. These people may have been taking part in a march that was banned but that does not justify the troops coming in and firing live rounds indiscriminately. I would say without hesitation that it was sheer, unadulterated murder.15
To this day, the Paras assert they only targeted gunmen and nail-bombers and insist that they were fired on first. ‘Phil’ described the atmosphere when they returned to their temporary base at Drumahoe. ‘The mood between the blokes was, not elation, but at the same time, it was a job well done. Don’t forget if somebody’s firing at you and you fire back and you kill him, you’ve stopped him killing you. You’re not going to tell me that’s not a job well done.’ I asked him if he had any regrets. ‘My only regret is that I was put in a position where I had to defend myself on the streets of Britain. If it happened again tomorrow in the same set of circumstances, I would do exactly the same thing and I would think my men would do exactly the same thing with me.’ Did the deaths rest on his conscience? ‘No, not in the slightest.’ ‘Phil’ blamed NICRA for organizing an illegal march and putting ‘innocent civilians into an area where they could be killed’ and the IRA for putting ‘gunmen into the crowd to take on the British army’.
The question of whether or not there were other gunmen in the Bogside who opened fire on the Paras – apart from the Official who fired the single shot that hit the drainpipe by the Presbyterian church and the man with the pistol seen by Father Daly – still remains unclear. I understand that the Official IRA did leave some weapons behind in the area for ‘defensive’ purposes. The most that former Officials I spoke to would admit was that ‘there was always the possibility that somebody had a small-arm and used it on their own initiative’. They told me that their Standing Orders had just been changed, permitting weapons to be fired only ‘in defence and retaliation’. ‘Offensive’ operations were ruled out. The smashing of the containment line by a phalanx of armoured vehicles and the apparent invasion of the Bogside by the Paras may have been more than enough in the Officials’ eyes to warrant the use of weapons in both ‘defence and retaliation’.16 But whatever the uncertainty about the role of both wings of the IRA at the beginning of ‘Bloody Sunday’, there is no doubt that once the shooting started and it became clear that people were being killed, both the Official and the Provisional IRA came down from the Creggan with weapons in the boots of cars and opened fire. That seems to have happened some time after 4.30 p.m. when most of the shooting was over.17
Bu
t not every Para shared the gung-ho attitude of ‘Phil’. In a remarkable interview I conducted for the BBC documentary, ‘Remember Bloody Sunday’, transmitted on its twentieth anniversary, the Company Sergeant-Major of Support Company admitted with astonishing candour reservations about what happened. He was still serving at the time of the interview. When his men returned to Drumahoe and were accounting for each round they had fired, he noticed that one had actually fired two more rounds than had been issued to him.
I said, ‘What the hell were you doing?’ And he said, ‘I was firing at the enemy. I was firing at gunmen.’
Did you believe him?
I didn’t know what to think at the time.
Did you believe him?
No. Knowing the soldier as I do know him, I don’t believe he was firing at gunmen.
Did you see any gunmen?
No.
Did you see any weapons?
No.
Did you see any nail-bombers?
No.
Do you believe, all these years on, that all the dead were gunmen and bombers?
No, not at all. I feel in my own heart that a lot of these people were innocent. I feel very guilty about the subsequent effect of that day [i.e. the number of mates he lost as a result of a strengthened IRA]. I think it was badly handled. By everybody. By me, the Platoon sergeants, the individual soldiers and our superiors. There was control from above prior to the deployment. It was contained. But after the deployment, it became quite chaotic.18