Tight security shields soldier from relatives

Soldier 027 paused frequently as he gave evidence today at the Bloody Sunday inquiry.

Hidden behind a screen amid tight security at Westminster Central Hall in London, while the relatives of the dead looked on, his voice sounded educated, measured and seemingly thoughtful.

Before the evidence got under way, the inquiry heard that passages from a draft of a book written - or to be written by the soldier - which contain references to the Bloody Sunday events, would be made available.

He had earlier arrived in a car with blacked out windows and was rushed in through a back entrance of the building about half an hour before he was due to give evidence.

In his witness statement, he said he joined 1 Para, aged 19, in 1971, and first arrived in Belfast in August or September of that year.

Joining 1 Para, in Belfast, he said, "There was an element of enjoying the violence of the situation. We adapted to it and the abnormal became normal."

He added: "Depending on our individual natures, we were all, to various degrees, brutalised by it."

A couple of weeks before Bloody Sunday, he said bombs were planted in the Palace Barracks by someone working in the cookhouse.

This incident increased the frustration of the soldiers, he said "there was nothing 1 Para wanted more than for the IRA to come out into the open and take us on."

Riots were generally a sort of 'ritualistic' game with people playing their roles, he said.

"What made Bloody Sunday so significant was that the rule book was torn up and the accepted game plan, developed through precedent, was thrown away.

1 Para was the 'rottweiler' of the British army, he said, which put a 'certain onus' of responsibility on those in authority.

If misapplied or directed either by senior commanders or politicians, then that was where the responsibility must lie.

The constant threat of sniper fire was a major factor in a soldier’s life, as was 'contempt for an opposition that would not reveal itself'.

Living in this environment led to the expression 'going ape' being used, along with the term 'beasting' - when pent up tensions were released on whoever happened to be in wrong place at the wrong time.

Asked about what 'going ape' meant, 027 said: "I do not have an accurate definition for this, I think it is more along the lines of adapting to the prevailing situation."

He said he did not consider himself an aggressive or violent person, but, he had done things he was ashamed of in Belfast.

These incidents included hitting a man in the face after he attempted to make him shut his front door while he was investigating reports of a machine gunner in a dark street.

When he arrived in Belfast, 027 said he received a beating at the hands of a soldier called UNK 180.

On a day off with a colleague, this man attempted to rob a post office in Belfast and was later dishonourably discharged. He later died as a mercenary in Africa.

This man was an 'extreme example', 027 said, but was not unique in being discharged dishonourably.

There were those who came close to crossing the line but were not dishonourably discharged, he said.

There was a story that a corporal - named as 036 - who shot a Chinese restaurant waiter following a dispute over the bill.

It was a story that was told among the platoon and 'was duly applauded and was laughed at. It went down in the platoon’s folklore', he said.

Many of the men were getting rich from the wallets of the people they searched in hundreds daily, 027 wrote in a 1975 account, the inquiry heard.

Asked if he had actually witnessed this, or whether this was soldiers’ stories, 027 said: "I believe that what I wrote at the time reflected probably a mixture of both.

"A prevalent feeling amongst the troops in Ulster by December 1971 was that they were operating with their 'hands tied behind their backs,' he said in his statement, reacting to the initiative of others.

"We were generally young men, with a good opinion of ourselves - which was probably justified in soldiering terms - and we were not able to perform to our potential in the way that we had been trained," he wrote.

"We faced constraints in the face of all provocation. If presented with an opportunity to do our stuff, we would certainly take it."

The inquiry heard that in an 1975 account of the evening before Bloody Sunday by 027, he had written that Lt 119 - the Lt in charge of the anti-tank platoon - had said ’let us teach the buggers a lesson - we want some kills tomorrow’ - a suggestion 'utterly refuted' by Lt 119 in evidence to the inquiry.

Asked if 119’s denial made him doubt his version of events, 027 said he had 'no reason' to doubt that it was an accurate reflection of 'what I believed to be the case at the time.'