The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #30189 Message #391265
Posted By: GUEST
06-Feb-01 - 08:03 AM
Thread Name: Bloody Sunday (30 January 1972, Derry)
Subject: RE: Bloody Sunday
I hear you Keith, but I'd be truly amazed if that has anything to do with what happened on Bloody Sunday. I was there, and my first theory at the time was that some squaddies heard the sound of a low-flying helicopter, wafting between buildings, mistook it for automatic weapons, (which it could cetainly sound like) and consequently opened fire. I just couldn't comprehend that even the paras would open up on an obviously peaceful demo. Everything I have heard since then, including the eye-witness accounts of soldiers that have been broadcast, makes my theory laughably naive.
I think you might have been surprised at how un-fazed soldiers were, even in incredibly tense situations, bearing in mind, as you say, that some were very young. It was as if their training had brainwashed them into responding like automatons when pointed at the enemy, and on Bloody Sunday the demo was the enemy. You have to remember that some on duty that day would have taken part in house searches (the usual retaliation if a soldier got shot - and in Belfast it could be hundreds of searches in one night). Each search trashed a house - typically at four in the morning. Floorboards came up, loos were moved, mattresses torn,and the coup de grace would be to piss on the beds - all done methodically amid a din of hysterical screaming. The occupants would then sign a form listing damage, and several months later they usually got cheques. It may seem a big leap from one situation to the other, but I believe that soldiers who could behave like that in homes full of kids, old folk etc, would be fazed by very little.