THE BLOODY SUNDAY INQUIRY/Day 300: A platoon sergeant in charge of a company of soldiers attached to the first battalion, the Parachute Regiment, who were deployed into Derry's Bogside on Bloody Sunday, told the Saville Inquiry yesterday that the soldiers under his command "wanted a piece of the action".
The witness, who was a member of the regiment's C company, also told the inquiry into the killings 31 years ago by paratroopers of 13 unarmed civilians that when he saw soldiers from the regiment's support company moving into the Bogside before his platoon, he thought to himself, "jammy bastards getting there first". The now retired sergeant told the 300th day of the inquiry that his soldiers were aggressive when necessary.
"We had a philosophy in the battalion that if someone attacked us, we would aggressively make arrests but we would always act in accordance with the yellow card", he said.
"In a riot some regiments would just stand by and take it, whereas we would go in and make arrests to break up the riot. We did not believe that soldiers were cannon fodder. We were aggressive when called upon, but this was only after the crowd got aggressive. The paras were perhaps more aggressive than other regiments, but this was only because the other regiments would sit back and take casualties," he added.
The witness said when his platoon arrived at barricade 14 on the fringe of the Bogside on Bloody Sunday, the soldiers manning the barricade, members of the Royal Green Jackets, "were taking a real pasting" and "were starting to get a bit nervous".
He told the inquiry's three judges that when he was ordered into the Bogside, he heard low velocity gunfire.
"I thought at the time that someone was shooting at the support company. I took it to be incoming fire.
"I cannot say what type of gun it was from, it could have been anything. I couldn't say if it was automatic but I knew it was low velocity because of the booming sound that it made.
"After I heard the shots, I carried on running for a short while. I then heard high velocity rounds and I assumed that this was the support company returning fire", he added.
"I do not know how many shots I heard. I couldn't really tell what was going on, I knew that there was more than one person firing and I assumed that they had identified definite targets to shoot at," he said.
The former sergeant, who was known to the hearing as Inquiry 488, said that on the way back to barracks, the feeling among the paratroopers was of a job well done.
"We then watched the TV and saw how many people had been hurt.
"On our way back to barracks there were loyalists on the roads along the route shouting things like 'Paras 14, IRA 0'.
"This made my stomach turn as I hated all terrorists," he said.
The inquiry continues.