From Derry to Vietnam’s killing fields, the waste of war is laid bare

AS the media were reporting here on the finding of the Saville Inquiry into the events in Derry on Bloody Sunday in January 1972, I was in the American Military Cemetery in Luxembourg, where 5,075 American soldiers and one American nurse were buried. All were victims of the Second World War.

It had long been my ambition to visit the cemetery, as my father is buried there. The man who directed me to the grave was actually with my father when he died. I have previously written about the chance finding on the internet of John Thomas Ingram and learning that he had been decorated for helping my dying father after he was fatally shot in Wallmerath, Germany.

On February 11, 1945 — two days before my mother was informed by telegram that my father had been killed in action in Germany on January 31, 1945 — Private John T Ingram was recommended for the Silver Star for bravery for trying to save my father. “The company was then halted by an enemy counter-attack with four tanks, strong machine gun and small arms fire and sporadic artillery and mortar fire. Much of the machine gun and small arms fire came from the enemy-occupied buildings in the rest of the town,” according to the official report.