No army plan for ‘Bogside control’
Colonel Derek Wilford denied he led his men in a frontal assault on the Bogside, and that there had been a breakdown in communication between officers in charge of the operation.
Col Wilford said he never thought there was a secret plan to gain control of the Bogside in response to a question from Christopher Clarke QC, senior counsel for the inquiry.
“I was quite certain there was not,” he said. Mr Clarke asked the colonel: “Was it ever envisaged on or before January 30, 1972 that the army would, in any shape or form, take over the Bogside?”
Col Wilford replied: “Not at all.”
In his third day of testimony at the Saville Inquiry at Methodist Central Hall in London, Col Wilford described as foolish his own comments on Channel Four news programmes in the late 1990s in which he accused army chiefs of losing their nerve when his troops gained control of the Bogside.
Col Wilford also told a reporter at the time: “We were put into an arrest operation which I do not think had been thought out fully. The implications had not been thoroughly thought out.
However, Col Wilford yesterday admitted he no longer felt the arrest operation was not thoroughly thought out.
“I think this is the rhetoric of 20, 30 years of irritation and anger and frustration at what had always been described as 14 unarmed civilians being, in effect, murdered, deliberately killed by my soldiers,” he said.
Col Wilford has consistently defended his tactics and the conduct of his men on Bloody Sunday when 13 civil rights marchers were shot dead by soldiers. A 14th man died later.
He said it was always his intention to arrest as many rioters as possible by sending troops through two crowd control barriers and surrounding troublemakers in a pincer movement.
However, Lord Saville yesterday said: “It could be suggested, Colonel Wilford, in fact what happened was not a pincer movement at all, simply a frontal assault going into the Bogside.”
Col Wilford replied: “Yes, it could be suggested, but it would not be so and I think any of the soldiers questioned would say in fact they were conducting a pincer movement.”
Gerard Elias, QC, counsel for some of the soldiers, said there had been “a serious breakdown of communication” between Col Wilford and one of his majors on Bloody Sunday.
However, Col Wilford said: “There had not been a breakdown in communications.”
He said his men were aware from an early stage of what was expected of them. Col Wilford also said he received sufficient orders from his superiors on Bloody Sunday when 13 civilians were shot dead by soldiers.
Col Wilford has complained in television interviews that he did not receive enough orders from brigade headquarters, but yesterday he told the Saville Inquiry he was mistaken.
He told the Peter Taylor documentary Remember Bloody Sunday in 1992: “I had not been told by the brigade commander to do anything. And so entirely on my own initiative I started withdrawing my troops and told the brigade that this is what I was doing. And I withdrew my troops.”
However, Mr Clarke asked the colonel yesterday: “You now accept that any complaint that you had no orders as to what to do is unfounded, in that you did not need any further orders once the arrest operation was over, is that right?”
Col Wilford replied: “That is true.”
He added: “All I can say is this was a reflection a long time after the event and I think I was reflecting, most inaccurately, on a situation which I perhaps thought had happened and when I think about it now I have simply no recollection of it being like that.”
Col Wilford will take the stand again on Monday.
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