Bloody Sunday soldier describes coming under fire

A former British soldier today described how he came under fire after entering Derry’s Bogside on Bloody Sunday.

The lance corporal, of Company C in the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, said the shots were fired from a Thompson sub machine gun – a weapon known to have been used by the IRA in the 1970s – as he was running across waste ground with two other members of his platoon.

He told the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, sitting in London, that they were the first shots he had heard after entering the Bogside on that day.

The lance corporal, identified only as Soldier 003, said in his statement to the inquiry: “After we had started running across the waste ground and were about half way, we came under fire.

“Shots were fired somewhere from our right (west) which I think came from the direction of Columbcille Court.”

He said the round hit the ground about 10-15 metres ahead of him and that some had hit a puddle surrounding burnt-out vehicles.

Soldier 003 continued: “The shots were fired from a Thompson sub machine gun, which has a very distinctive heavy sound and couldn’t be mistaken.

“There was at least one burst of shots, and quite a few rounds hit the ground although I cannot be more precise.

“As far as I was concerned I was concentrating on getting to the houses we were heading for as fast as I could run.”

The lance corporal told the inquiry that his Company was originally sent to Derry from Belfast merely as stand-by reserves for the civil rights march on January 30, 1972.

British paratroopers killed 13 Catholic men and wounded another 13 people on that day.