British army paratroopers' claims that "a fusillade of shots" greeted them on arrival in Derry's Bogside on Bloody Sunday were dismissed as lies today by a former soldier living there at the time.
Mr Thomas Wilson, who watched events from his home in the high-rise Rossville Flats, also told the Saville Inquiry the army's second-in-command in Northern Ireland in 1972 made a blunder.
He said: "A bad blunder was made and now someone needs to pay for it."
"I know that the soldiers said that they were met with a fusillade of shots when they approached the Rossville Flats. That is simply lies.
"If they were fired at from anywhere at that time it was from behind and not in front. All the soldiers' shots I saw were aimed," he said.
Mr Wilson was 34 on the day 13 men were fatally woundedduring the paratroop operation in the Bogside and had only returned to his native city a few months earlier after spells in England and Australia.
Giving evidence at the Guildhall in Derry he also claimed the soldiers he saw all fired aimed shots and hit only innocent people that day.
Mr Wilson saw the first armoured personnel carriers arrive beside the car park of the flats and said "all hell broke loose" in the car park below him with the gunfire sounding "like a western".
He described seeing one man, probably Jackie Duddy (17) in the car park being tended by the then Father Edward Daly.
"Whilst the soldier had his rifle raised I heard a shot. I do not know where it came from but I think it may have been fired by someone else nearby," he said.
"At that time a man was on the veranda of Mura Place in the area from which bottles were being thrown. I do not know who he was.
"When the shot rang out the man dropped. I did not see if he got up. I do not know if he was shot or was simply taking cover."
He said later: "So far as I could see, and from what I have heard, only innocent persons were shot by the soldiers."
PA