Paras' Bloody Sunday log 'inaccurate'

British army records about the order to send the paratroopers in on Bloody Sunday do not fully reflect the decisions made at the time, the Saville Inquiry was told today.

The Quartermaster General at Ebrington Barracks, the headquarters of the 8th Brigade covering Derry, was in the room when the order to send in the paratroops was made on January 30 1972.

Paratroopers shot dead 13 unarmed men on a civil rights march.

The officer – identified only as INQ 1900 at the inquiry sitting in London - was taken through every entry of the brigade log and para log for that day.

He could not recall specifics of the actual order given to 1 Paras commanding officer although he could remember a summary of it.

Written orders show there was a call to go in behind one barrier for a scoop-up arrest operation and permission for that was given.

In fact three companies of 1 Para entered the Bogside. They went over that barrier and also another

in armoured vehicles.

INQ 1900 said sending in one unit would have been military “nonsense” for an arrest operation and there must have been a “misunderstanding” in the logs.

INQ 1900 said he believed the actual order had been for 1 Para to carry out the arrest operation and for a sub-unit to go through the Barrier 14 at the same time. The logs do not accurately reflect this, he said.

Lord Saville said: “As I understand you to say militarily it does not make much sense because if you are going to go and do an arrest operation you would want to send units not just one barrier or barricade but through a number so you could in fact get round behind and encircle the hooligans.”

The written orders call for one unit to be deployed through Barrier 14 to “pick up yobbos in William Street/Little James Street”.

INQ 1900 remembered advice that they were not to conduct a running battle down Rossville Street where it is believed they could have been drawn into a possible sniper attack.

Some soldiers who opened fire during the Bloody Sunday killings committed “blatantly wrong” breaches of the army’s rules of engagement, INQ 1900 said.

After reviewing just two or three of the hand-written statements from soldiers to the Royal Military police the day after Bloody Sunday, INQ1900 believed that some of the rules of engagement listed, on the on the army’s Yellow Card, had been broken.

After reading the statements, which were taken on Bloody Sunday, INQ 1900 said: “It was clear to me that much of what had occurred was outside” the requirements of the Yellow Card.”

He recalled that one soldier had fired 19 shots at a shadow in a window while another had fired over the heads of the crowd.

He “expressed his concern” to the Brigadier and gleaned from his body language that the Brigadier was “pretty depressed” about the situation.

INQ 1900 said: “Every soldier going to Northern Ireland had to learn the Yellow Card by heart and if anybody acted outside it, they could expect disciplinary action.”

After the scale of the events which happened on Bloody Sunday it became obvious that his department would not be dealing with any disciplinary matters.