Bloody Sunday. It was more than 47 years ago. On that infamous day in January 1972, a civil rights march through the streets of Derry, Northern Ireland, ended in the deaths of 13 unarmed civilians (a fourteeth person died a few months later). In the decades which followed, more than 35-hundred people died in Ireland's "troubles". That long ago Sunday weighs heavily on the hearts of victims' families this St. Patrick's Day, because the old wounds were opened wide this week.
On March 14th, nearly half a century after a tribunal exonerated the 18 soldiers - and led to a quarter billion dollar, 12 year full public inquiry, which blamed the army - Northern Ireland's Public Prosecution Service announced it would be charging only one anonymous soldier, Soldier F.
Lance Corporal Soldier F., was with the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment. The Prosecution Service says the former paratrooper, a grandfather in his 70s, will be charged with the murder of two men, and the attempted murder of four others. There is insufficient evidence to persue a "beyond a reasonable doubt" conviction against the other 18 soldiers (one has since died) and two Official Irish Republican Army (IRA) gunmen involved the killings that day.
There had been riots. Derry's working class Catholic Bogside and Creggan districts were behind barricades. Rival IRA factions - the Official IRA and the Provisional IRA - shot British soldiers patrolling the streets, killing ten soldiers. Six civilians were killed.
Lt. Colonel Derek Wilford's paratroopers had been sent into Derry to crack down on rock throwing rioters, the "Derry Young Hooligans" (DYH). Wilford raged that his paratroopers would not stand around like "Aunt Sallys" in the face of the hooligans - "ever". The head of the army in Northern Ireland, General Robert Ford, had written a memorandum to his superior which basically said the only way to quell the riots was to warn them, then shoot to kill the DYH ringleaders.
The march, organized by the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association, was in protest over internment without trial, which had been going on for a year and a half. Although political demonstrations were banned, fifteen thousand people showed up for the march that Sunday, only to have the army prevent them from marching into the centre of Derry.
Although the Royal Ulster Constabulary says it wanted to let the marchers pass by, so that they could be photographed and arrested later, the army, under General Ford wanted to scoop up the hooligans, and arrest them in their tracks.
Some youths threw stones. The army responded with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon. Under strict orders not to send his men onto residential Rossville Street, Col. Wilford ordered his troops to chase the marchers down Rossville, in armoured vehicles.
Shots were fired. The twelve year long Saville Inquiry, which heard from two thousand witnesses, and reviewed 125-thousand pages of documents, says the paras fired first. One soldier told the inquiry that the night before Bloody Sunday, they had been told to, "get some kills".
It was carnage. Nearly all those killed were young men.
Soldier F, whose name is Dave (fellow soldiers called out his name), may be in court within a few months for a preliminary hearing. The Prosecution Service says that, "A court would not permit the prosecution to rely upon the majority of the previous accounts provided by the soldiers as evidence against them in a criminal trial. This is because of the circumstances inwhich they were obtained (often by military authorities without a caution being administered)".
John Kelly, whose 17 year old brother Michael was killed on Rossville Street, was one of the family members disappointed with this week's news that only one soldier will be brought to trial. He says, "We have walked a long journey since our fathers and brothers were brutally slaughtered on the streets of Derry on Bloody Sunday. Over that passage of time, all of the parents of the deceased have died - we are here to take their place. The Bloody Sunday families are not finished yet."
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