Paratrooper may have been 'muddled' over shots

A paratrooper today said he could have been mistaken about hearing 15 to 20 shots being fired at paratroopers before they entered the Bogside on Bloody Sunday.

The anonymous paratrooper, identified only as Lance Corporal 366, was driver for Colonel Derek Wilford, the commander of 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment on January 30, 1972.

He initially told the Bloody Sunday Inquiry that he heard shots being fired at them before they entered the Bogside.

In his inquiry statement he recalled hearing 15 to 20 high velocity shots that were aimed at paratroopers as they moved past the Presbyterian Church at Great William Street.

He recalled hearing the shots directly and over the radio and they were definitely not from Army issue self-loading rifles, he said.

But under cross-examination at the central London hearing, he admitted that he “could have muddled it” with shots he heard after the paratroopers went into the Bogside.

British paratroopers killed 13 Catholic men on a civil rights march in Derry that day.

They claim they fired in self-defence at gunmen and nail bombers.

The British government-appointed inquiry is investigating the circumstances surrounding the killings after the original 1972 investigation, which largely exonerated the soldiers, was dismissed as a whitewash by survivors and bereaved relatives.

Lance Corporal 366 admitted that much of his memory of what happened on Bloody Sunday may now be “muddled“.

He did recall being among a group of armed paratroopers, from 1 Para, who went to Derry sometime before Bloody Sunday to try and lure IRA gunmen into attacking them by pretending their Land Rover had broken down.

They then hoped to arrest the gunmen but the plan backfired because no-one took the bait, probably because it had become obvious what they were up to.

The paratroopers spent 30 minutes by the vehicle before leaving without making any arrest or starting a gunfight.