The Years

By Alexis Scott

‘The Years’ is a 'faction' novel - some would even call it the 'non-fiction novel' (see Wikipedia). The first chapter outlines, in graphic detail, the facts of Bloody Sunday on January 30th 1972 when fourteen men - many of them teenagers - were shot dead and twenty seven injured by British paratroopers. The rest of the story is part fiction, with fictitious characters but as impeccably researched as a history book. Told in the forceful language of Derry’s streets, The Years is a roller coaster ride down forty years of the town’s history. Francie, released from jail after a long sentence, is trying to come to terms with the changes peace has brought, as well as dealing with what he did – and didn’t – do on Bloody Sunday.
Meanwhile, the unnamed paratrooper who killed a man on Bloody Sunday, is having to return to the nightmare he left behind decades earlier.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alexis Scott
• Release date: Aug 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301625826

Alexis Scott

Born in Derry, N. Ireland. I trained as a solicitor and have worked in welfare rights, money advice, social research, selling art. I have written all my life. My other e-books include The Years and Deaconsbank. My one print book is Eating Wolves (Dewi Lewis 2003).

Book preview

Chapter One

Your granny wouldn’t recognise the place if she was here the day. If you haven’t been here in a while you might not recognise it yourself.

Get yourself on the plane. You can fly direct from London, Glasgow, or Manchester these days. Hire a car and away you down the fast new roads and across the bridge (the oul one or the new one, take your pick), away over to the town. Plenty parking in the multi storeys but mind you’ll have to pay for it. There’s the smell of money in the place these days and you might want to spend some if you’ve got it yourself. Only the shopping centres you can find in any town in England or elsewhere, for that matter.

Forget the shops. You wouldn’t come all the way here to look at shops (although you might remember Wellworths and Littlewoods – how many times did Littlewoods get bombed?)

Wellworths is gone (I toul you to forget the shops). Head you away behind the Guildhall and take you a walk along the quayside where the oul warehouses used to be. Mind where the boats came in? Carrying people, cattle, coal and God knows what. Your granny might mind the cattle lowing on the decks below if she ever took the Glasgow boat.

The boats are back. Only these days it’s yachts, cruisers, dinghys and the like. Tourists welcome.

You’re not here to look at boats. Och, do what you want. It’s a free country. Take a good look at the brand new waterfront apartments if you like. Penthouses and all. You wouldn’t believe the prices. You wouldn’t credit it’s only a stone’s throw from where it all happened.

Maybe you’ve never been here in your life. Maybe you think it looks like some nice wee English town. Maybe you find it hard to imagine the Rossville flats. Think Birmingham’s Bullring. Think Glasgow’s (oul) Gorbals (Queen Elizabeth Square? That do ye?) Think Skarne blocks. Think concrete slabs, layer upon vertical layer, row upon horizontal row. Think black mould on the walls (your ma and da can’t afford the central heating - they’re on the dole), think lifts that jam (and mind there’s families upstairs with wee babies and toddlers), think ten flights of stairs, the noise of young uns echoing down them (there’s plenty of teenagers here as well, about the same age as you, not much help with the pram but, always clearing off with their pals, hanging round the streets, looking for trouble).

Think army checkpoints all round the town, soldiers in steel helmets, soldiers on the bridge, on the walls, foot soldiers, guns at the ready, soldiers in saracens, pigs, lorries.

A sandbagged, barbed wired town. The Bog under siege.

Does that help concentrate your mind?

You left school last summer and went straight on the burroo. On your way there and back you get searched at the army checkpoints. Some of the soldiers are still in their teens. Sometimes you get mad at all the stopping and searching – harassment, so it is (what else do you call having a rifle poked in your chest? You feel picked on, so you do. You have nothing to do with the IRA – they don’t speak for everybody round here.) Your granny used to say she felt sorry for the soldiers, that they were somebody’s mother’s son, but your granny’s dead and gone and anyway she lived in the Waterside and the soldiers left her alone.

You’re going on the Anti Internment march because it’s a day out as much as anything else. A bit of a laugh maybe. All your friends are going. Some of them throw stones at the soldiers, getting their own back. You don’t blame them, after the soldiers came and smashed their doors in. You don’t want to get arrested but. You’re not planning on throwing any stones yourself. Your ma has enough worry without all that carry-on.

You try and sneak out before they can ask where you’re going. Your ma is away to a neighbour. Your oul boy hears you and says he would go hissel if it wasn’t for the state of his shoes. He’s always got some excuse, your oul boy. You’re too old to be hanging around with him anyway. He just embarrasses you. You call round for your pal. His ma says the baby has the coul but maybe she’ll go to Free Derry Corner later on sure. She doesn’t even tell him to watch hissel. She doesn’t need to. It’s common knowledge there will be no shooting the day. Your da musta got wind o it too. He’s an oul fusspot, so he is. Thinks because you’re the youngest you can go nowhere without him. Only he never said it either. Watch yoursel. At least your da trusts you not to go throwing stones at soldiers. Your oul boy isn’t as daft as he looks.

You haven’t got tuppence in your pocket but sure the best things in life are free.

Chapter Two

Operation Forecast

Father Bradley, Father Carolan, Father Daly, Father Irwin, Father McIvor, Father Mulvey, Father O’Gara, Father O’Keefe. They all took to do wi the march in one way or another. A fair few of them joined at Bishop’s Field in Creggan. Father Daly joined in when the marchers passed St Eugene’s. Sounds like some religious festival, doesn’t it?

In a way it was. If you’ve waited, literally, for half a century for civil rights it must seem like you’re seeking the Holy Grail. Some used the word ‘parade’ but it wasn’t a regimented procession, or organised like a military operation, more a loose gathering of souls, seeking manna from heaven. Professional people joined wi the ones on the dole. Wee wains and teenagers. Middle aged wummen in headscarves and the Sunday coats they wore to church. There had been trouble before on NICRA marches. Still, Dr McClean, who was on the committee, was confident. No trouble the day. He decided to leave his medical bag behind. John Hume wasn’t so confident, not after Magilligan last week. He decided to give the march a miss.

A quarter, ten to four and they’re coming in, heading for Free Derry Corner. There ones stood around in small groups, some intent on listening to the speakers, others just passing the time of day, thinking about getting back for their tea. It would soon be getting dark. It was too coul to hang about for long.

Inevitably, there were ones trying to get to the Guildhall. The stewards said no (for God’s sake, was it worth the tear gas, the rubber bullets?) Mindful not just of Magilligan but October fifth ‘68 (water cannon, truncheons), the hidings at Burntollet, the Battle of the Bogside (how long, Lord, how long?) Mindful of rioting that got the young uns nowhere, except a jail sentence. Six months mandatory (Special Powers Act). The usual crowd (teenagers, mostly) had started already. Rioting was a ritual in these parts, as much as going to confession or mass anyway. Rioting was learned in ‘69, via the B men and the RUC. The young uns didn’t need the excuse of a parade. They were a nuisance, right enough, but the stewards couldn’t do a damn thing about them, any more than they could get the Brits out of Derry just by marching down the streets. If they marched to Macgillicuddy’s Reeks and back sure the soldiers would still be there when they got home. Still, it was the principle of the thing, not letting them uns walk all over you, trample you into the ground. You didn’t have to join the IRA to do your bit.

Riot: (Pocket Oxford, 1969 edition) 1. N. Tumult, disorder, disturbance of the peace by a crowd (R ~ Act, by which persons not dispersing after official reading of part of it incur guilt of felony); loud revelry; loose living, debauchery; unrestrained indulgence in or display or enjoyment of something (a ~ of emotion, colour, sound; person or his tongue or fancy runs ~ , throws off all restraint). 2. V.i. Make or engage in a ~; live wantonly, revel. ~ous a. [F riot®]

Aye, well. Revelling maybe wasn’t far off it.

Derry wasn’t always a riot but. Not in that sense. In ’72 the place was unrecognisable from ten years earlier. Places burnt down: Abbey taxis, Stevenson’s bakery, Ritchie’s factory. Pilot Row, Eden Place, Fahan Street razed to the ground. Slums they might have been but what did they become? Wasteland. Your granny might mourn the oul houses if she was here. Oul bodies standing at their open doors, talking to everybody as they go past. You wouldn’t have to go that far back to them days.

There was no riots before ’69. There was no protests before ’68. Maybe they learned a thing or two from Paris and the race riots in the U.S. of A (aye, and maybe even the anti-Vietnam protests in London – not that too many would admit to taking lessons from the English). Before ’68 the Nationalists took their seats (aye, and their big salaries) in Stormont and on the few hard chairs allocated to them in gerrymandered Derry. They took what got doled out (and the Protestants liked to say they took the dole but sure where were the jobs? Jobs for the Prods, so they were.) With the new order of things they learned not to let the Unionists walk all over them. They learned how to speak to foreign journalists (including the English but hadn’t Derry people always been used to talking to the English – hadn’t they been to-ing and fro-ing across the water, navvying on English building sites, working in English factories, picking spuds on English farms, English hops and English berries?) They learned how to force the new Commission, if not the old Corporation, to build houses for them. They learned (or they liked to think) the streets belonged to them. Maybe they learned a few marching tunes while they were at it. We shall o-ver-co-o-ome. Some day-ay-ay-ay-ay. It made a change from the Sash and the Lambeg drums shoved down your gullet from time immemorial.

The mood had been pleasant enough to start with. The sun came out and if you were happed up in a good winter coat then sure it was a grand day for a walk. Plenty of women and wains in a town where women always knew their place - down the shirt factory the minute the wains were old enough to hold their own bottles. More came along the day, no doubt, because there was to be no shooting. Never mind Derry people, they came from all over – from Belfast and even England, for God’s sake.

So no Guildhall then. Don’t be surprised a good few weren’t too happy. Kept down for centuries, locked in your ghettoes. Who do you think you are? Still, most people were resigned. A time and a place. The Unionists still thought they owned Derry. The Development Commission had limited powers. Faulkner and his cronies still ruled the roost. Tiocfaidh ár lá was not yet on everyone’s lips. Let’s face it, Tiocfaidh ár lá was not on anyone’s lips, not even the IRA’s. The IRA were not in great shape, to tell you the God’s truth. If it wasn’t for internment they would have been a spent force.

Talking of spending, there was never enough money in Derry people’s pockets (Catholic Derry people’s pockets anyway) for a decent Sunday dinner never mind going and buying guns. Guns, did you say? Jammed half the time, the bastards were. The whole Bog knew it so the army must’ve got wind and all. For show, more than anything else, the oul rifles. Need to keep face. They had more volunteers than guns, right enough.

The IRA didn’t grow on trees. They were nurtured and fed on a diet of discrimination and sheer brute force. Never mind the Black and Tans you could go all the way back to the Famine if you wanted. To the Penal Laws you could go back, so you could. Hundreds and hundreds of years you could go back if you knew your history.

The lorry – a coal lorry borrowed for the day (nobody worked on Sundays in them days, apart from priests) - at the front of the march, where the speakers stood, including Bernadette herself, had not been long stopped when the shooting started. The speakers had barely drawn breath. By the time the pigs were roaring in people were getting a move on. Starting to run. The army never needed no rioters as an excuse to enter the Bogside. The rioters were retreating and all, thinking about going home for their tea like everybody else, by the time the shooting started.

If you didn’t know the sound of different types of weapon – and in them days not everybody (except maybe the IRA and not all of them, not by a long chalk) had that much savvy – you might have thought it was rubber bullets to start with. There was rubber bullets and gas, clouds of the gas that always causes confusion because it burns your throat raw and half-blinds you. Enough to put you off your tea if you’d only had a whiff – a couple more whiffs and you might be keeled over retching your guts up. If you had a weak chest you had a good chance of landing in the hospital. If you were still around twenty years later your doctor would be wondering why you had bronchitis when you never even smoked.

If you were in William Street just before four o’clock you might have seen young Bubbles Donaghy clutch his leg and fall to the ground. You might have thought it was a rubber bullet. If you saw, seconds later, John Johnson fall, you might have thought twice and realised those were not rubber bullets.

If you were in the Rossville Street car park fifteen minutes later you wouldn’t have had any doubt about what kind of bullets. Or the back of the flats, Glenfada Park, Joseph Place, Abbey Park, minutes later still, you might not have lived to tell the tale.

If you stayed at home in the Rossville flats you might have got shot at, standing on your own balcony, even if you never went near no march.

The yellow card says only shoot at aimed targets.

Generals Tuzo and Ford said shoot the ringleaders (rioters). The reverend Dr Ian Kyle Paisley (let there be no mistake) said (or says he said) shoot petrol bombers anyway (don’t shoot them dead but). Paisley said nobody was listening to him but.

Nobody listening to Paisley. That’s a good one.

Heath said to Faulkner, we’ll leave it up to you.

Brigadier MacLellan sat in the barracks across the Foyle, twiddling his thumbs while Colonel Wilford egged him on over the phone.

RUC Super Lagan said, for God’s sake hold them back. The marchers would still be there. Leave it a bit.

MacLellan went out. When he came back in he said he was sorry, the Paras had gone in. Lagan had his doubts whether MacLellan ever gave the order.

Ford popped his head round the Bogside and let the chaps get on with the job.

Wilford was right in there with his men. Well, some of the time anyway (when and where exactly is the sixty four thousand dollar question).

What did the captains and the majors think?

What were the sergeants, the corporals, the lance corporals, the privates supposed to think?

You can’t go back. The day of the march, the day the pigs came roaring in, the soldiers with their guns already cocked even before they got out their pigs – high as kites, so they were, you’d think they were on drugs or something, that excited they ran over young Alanna Burke (six months in the hospital, so she was) and Thomas Harken. Who needs drugs when you’re in for the kill?

You can’t go back. That time is gone forever. All the photos and the tapes and the films and the articles and the books in all the world will never bring it back. John Johnson and Bubbles Donaghy shot before the Pigs even got past the barricades. Jackie Duddy bleeding to death by the Rossville flats, Father Daly with the hanky. You had to have a colour TV to see it was stained with blood. There wasn’t too many colour TVs in Derry in them days.

Michael Bradley’s pregnant wife never wanted him to go. Bradley wasn’t worried. He never courted trouble. They needed extra stewards, what with the size of the crowd so he agreed and put on his white armband. He kept control of himself till he saw his friend Duddy killed. ‘Pigs, cunts, fucking bastards!’ he roared. He saw the soldier leaning over the mudguard of the pig take aim. They couldn’t tell if Bradley was shot once or twice, but the bullet or bullets tore through his right arm, ripping open a muscle before entering his chest and exiting through his left arm. Months he spent in Altnagelvin, needing spoon-fed like a baby to start wi, feard of Protestants coming and shooting him. He had no regrets about missing Widgery though. Damien Donaghy was different: he wanted to give evidence from his bedside but Widgery wouldn’t hear of it.

Peggy Deery was shot in the thigh, the bullet shattering the femur and slicing a muscle, her knee-length boot filling with blood.

People ran. You couldn’t blame them. It’s instinct, when there’s shooting, to run away. The ones that stayed couldn’t cope. How many men does it take to carry a body? How far can you get in two minutes carrying one?

How many soldiers (or gunmen) does it take to shoot twenty seven people? Running targets, most of them, except for Bradley and Bridge, one (or both) of them shouting,

‘Don’t shoot the priest! Shoot me! Shoot me!’ till some soldier or soldiers shot them.

Not me, said Sergeant O. Not me, said Private R. Not me, said S. Nor me, said Q.

INQ 1579 did as he was told and sat at the back of the Pig, watching them all and saw nothing. Not a thing. Captain 021, of REME (the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers), attached to the Light Air Defence regiment, was based at OP Echo, high up on the roof of the Embassy ballroom. A few hundred yards away from the action sure but with a grand view of the Bogside. He saw nothing either and nor did any of his mates, up there with him. No innocent civilians being shot but no gunmen either.

How many bullets do you need? Depends on whether you’re aiming correctly, looking down your sights (the soldier’s weapon is standard issue SLR, the bullets standard 7.62mm). If you fire from the hip, or the waist you might need a good few bullets (unless you’re pretty close) but you might just feel more like John Wayne in the movies. John Wayne is my hero, soldier O told Saville, thirty one years on.

Once you’ve had your first blood, the adrenalin is pumping its way round your system, the way the blood is surely pumping its way out your victims.

Ah, wait a minute. Victims, did you say? Well, you wouldn’t call them that if you were a soldier in the Parachute regiment in 1972. Maybe, at Saville, you would concede some of them were (but not all, not all. How could they be? You’re not a murderer. And nor are your comrades. Paras stick together, mind. Even after thirty years.) You were only doing your job. A dirty, filthy job, maybe, but a job’s a job. And orders are orders.

And a yellow card’ll do for wiping your arse when the bog roll’s run out.

And the British army. I mean, renowned the world over, eh?

And as for the RUC. Whatever you say say nothing.

They’ve been saying nothing for thirty odd years.

To give them their due, the IRA have kept pretty quiet theirselves.

Sergeant O still likes the cowboy movies. The old-fashioned kind. In the movies the bullets are fake and the blood is fake. It’s easy to get carried away, right enough, watching films, thinking it’s real.

Maybe the place seemed unreal enough itself. All that wasteland. Burnt out cars. Debris scattered around. Barricades, for Christ’s sake. Like something out of a movie shoot. Maybe it’s not hard to imagine yourself as John Wayne in such circumstances. If you’ve just got out your Pig, hard to imagine real people living there. People with families doing ordinary things like making the tea, looking out the window, wandering onto their balconies to see what’s up. People are naturally curious. Including the ones that never went on the march. Over-cautious, afraid of trouble, just not political (even in the Bog there were ones like that), or not up to it, oul bodies, not keeping well. Still, if you heard shots you’d want to go and look out your window, wouldn’t you? Why would they want to shoot you?

The gunfire is real enough. You couldn’t miss it. Gunfire has its own peculiar stench. Try and imagine the stink in Glenfada Park/Joseph Place/Abbey Park/Columbcille Court. Mind they’re only yards apart. Glenfada Park is only round the back of the Rossville flats (if Derry was a small place, the Bogside was even smaller). Imagine you are high in the Rossville flats, block 1. From one side you can see Sergeant O and his men, from the other side, different flats, you can see Glenfada Park and the Anti-Tank platoon boys are coming.

Cowboys wasn’t in it thon day.

Try and imagine it. Paddy Campbell shot. Danny McGowan goes to help him. The two of them crawling along the ground to the entry behind Joseph Place. Danny McGowan shot. Paddy Doherty crawling from the car park behind the Rossville flats. Paddy Doherty shot in the back, calling for help. Bernard McGuigan crawling to help Paddy Doherty. Bernard McGuigan gets shot now. A bullet to the head. The Knights of Malta running around with their wee first aid cases, trying to bind up bullet wounds. You should try it. Try putting sticking plaster on severed arteries. Try and imagine the smell of hot blood and gunsmoke. John Wayne isn’t in it.

The three young fellas crouching behind the rubble barricade. William Nash, Michael McDaid, John Young. Feard to come out. Nobody had the nerve to come to their aid, there was too many bullets flying. Nobody came. Alex Nash tried to get his son but he got shot too.

Maybe your imagination is running riot now. Maybe you can hardly believe what comes to mind. Maybe you think it sounds more like the French Revolution, falling at the barricades, than some cowboy film.

James Wray, shot twice. The first time he was running away. After he was shot in the back he tried to get up and crawl away. Someone finished him off. Soldier H says it wasn’t him. Soldier F said the same. Soldiers E and G cannot speak. Soldiers E and G are dead. Father forgive them. QC Harvey called them a death squad. E, F, G, H.

Lance Corporal F is keeping mum. His memory is failing him. Him and Corporal P remember nothing, not a thing (they’re not the only Paras suffering from amnesia). H is telling the same old story he told to Widgery.

Dr McClean told the first aider to carry on trying the cardiac massage on James Wray. The boy said sure it would kill him, the state of his chest. The doctor said he would die if he didn’t.

He died anyway. Within minutes. When the bleeding stopped they knew it was hopeless. The Knights of Malta deserved a medal, the Victoria Cross, you might say, but that’s only for British soldiers. The Paras were the ones got the medals. (Sergeant O got the Queen’s commendation for Brave Conduct and the Military medal).

Brave British soldiers. F. U. C. K.

The priests had their work cut out for them and all but they got no medals either.

It was all over in fifteen minutes.

Paras 13, Paddies 0.

Good job lads. Well done.

It didn’t take long to score. A hundred Paras with guns and sure the Paddies have none. (Aye, well, a couple of Stickies wi pistols. Pulled away. Told not to be eejits.)

Soldier H, soldier A, soldier T, soldier E.

Paras 13, Paddies 0. Not counting the fourteen shot that survived, although John Johnson never saw the year out.

Not counting daft volunteer Red Mickey Doherty shot in the leg. Shot by a soldier on the walls, not a Para (at 16.40 hours, a while after the Paras finished shooting).

Paddies are liars. Take the Mortar platoon in the Rossville flats carpark. Lance Corporal F saw gunmen in the flats. On the second floor. Third window from the end. Then another one, next window along. Then (phew) right up on the top floor. Private T fired at an acid bomber. Private R and Private Q shot nail bombers. Lance Corporal V shot a petrol bomber.

Corporal P shot another one near the rubble barricade. And a man with a pistol. I mean, they were all over the place, weren’t they? Paddies with pistols, acid bombers, petrol bombers, nail bombers. Leopard-crawling gunmen, gunmen with rifles, gunmen waving their weapons from windows in the Rossville flats. Gunmen on the roofs of the flats. Like men up trees. Jungle warfare. Imagine it. Or maybe you’d rather leave the imaginings to the soldiers.

Paddies are liars (and reporters, including English reporters, must lie as well, and so must photographs and so must films. Or there must be some mistake) but soldiers can be forgetful. Lance Corporal F forgot to tell the military police (and Widgery, to start with) about the gunman in Glenfada Park. Slipped his mind.

Don’t laugh. The excitement, the heat, the exhaustion (it was two in the morning). Lance Corporal F was just a young lad. Early twenties. A lot of them were. Some of them still in their teens. Some mother’s son. It was war. A dirty, filthy business. And anybody can make a mistake. Take Corporal P, for instance. Corporal P told the RMP he had fired eleven shots. That was wrong, he says. He changed it to nine two days later. And Corporal P kept changing his mind about the man with the pistol. I mean, one minute he was lying on the ground, the next he was kneeling and aiming. He told Widgery he hit a man three times. None of the thirteen was shot three times. That was thirty one years ago but. At Saville he couldn’t say. He had blotted it out. He never killed another human being in his life before Bloody Sunday (he wasn’t the only one) and, just for the record, he never killed one since.

S made a few mistakes and all. When he toul the RMP a gunman fired six shots from the ground floor of the Rossville flats he forgot there was no windows on the ground floor.

Oh, and nail bombs. He got that wrong first time too.

And the acid bombs.

By 2003 it was just bottles, or objects, being ‘fired’ from the flats.

S, like most of them, couldn’t remember much.

Next to nothing.

He doesn’t remember:

assaults on civilians,

rubber bullets fired into his Pig,

other soldiers, apart from sergeant O, firing,

Jackie Duddy, lying dead on the ground or

the priest, with the hanky or

Peggy Deery, shot in the back of the leg or

Michael Bridge, shot or

going to pick up bodies at the rubble barricade and dumping them in Lieutenant N’s Pig before driving off to Altnagelvin hospital.

Even though there are numerous eyewitnesses testifying to these events taking place within yards of Soldier S on Bloody Sunday.

The eyewitnesses include other soldiers.

Soldier L told Saville he thought they were supposed to kill Bernadette Devlin and Martin McGuinness. To eradicate the hold of the IRA on Londonderry. While in Belfast soldier L was waiting on the order to shoot Martin McGuinness dead.

Soldier L was from a disadvantaged background. As a child he chased the rats for a game. He joined the Paras at twenty four – a late recruit. He needed something new in his life. He had lost his daughter. He imagined parachuting and mountaineering. He was fit and enjoyed boxing and gymnastics. He had a 52 chest and a 30 waist and weighed 182 pounds, he says, even though he was only 5’7" tall. ‘We were made to feel as if we were emperors,’ soldier L recalled in his statement.

When they went to Belfast, soldier L said, it was like walking into a horror movie. A number of ours went over to the IRA, he says. How odd, you think. There again, maybe they weren’t so different from the Paddies, some of them. Children chasing the rats in the East End of London, or in Divis flats. A game. The IRA. The Paras. Games for grown ups. Killing games. Seek and Destroy was the name of the game, soldier L says.

The thing is, had soldier L been watching too many horror movies (or just thrillers, epic tales – Gladiator, for example - or playing too many computer games) or was he telling the truth, at least some of the time? Maybe there was more than Sean MacStiofain did his training in the British army.

Could soldier L distinguish fact from fiction? Could the rest of them?

Soldier L didn’t say Bloody Sunday was like a horror movie, not in so many words.

Bloody Sunday was a long time ago and people make mistakes and they forget things. Soldier L says he knows what he saw. He says he saw Father Daly, now Bishop Daly, taking rifles and hiding them in his cassock. Soldier L did not shoot Father Daly, as he shot the man armed with a rifle, doing the leopard crawl. Soldier L did not shoot the priest because you do not shoot priests. This much he knows.

Soldier L said the British army have to go in and fight with one arm behind their back. Like Iraq in 2003. The Paras called the Rossville Flats Mick Alley, soldier L explained. He didn’t mention anything about Paddies.

Other soldiers disputed much of soldier L’s statement. That was because of his race, soldier L explained. They would do against a coon, he said.

Soldier L did not say, war is a dirty and filthy business. Nor did he say racism was, or is, prevalent in the armed forces, at least as regards the Parachute regiment. Not in so many words.

He didn’t talk about rats and sinking ships or use other, similar metaphors, either.

He says he worried about soldier H, who seemed to have lost it, became hysterical, threw a wobbler, flipped it, standing there emptying almost a full magazine into a dead man. Every time soldier H fired the body jumped.

Private L says he sent soldier H back to his Pig.

Civilians cannot judge soldiers, in soldier L’s view.

Soldier L is perhaps a special case, with special difficulties. Leave him for the moment. You may think he has suffered enough. Soldier L still has, he says, nightmares about Bloody Sunday (Christ, he isn’t the only one). And remember this. He was only one of nine hundred and twenty witnesses to give evidence to Saville, two hundred and forty five of them soldiers. A lot of nightmares, not counting the ones that weren’t even there – the families, the relatives, the friends.

Let us leave soldier H also. Another special case, perhaps (well, not every Private got to be a senior NCO).

Mind S and R were only eighteen – youngsters, practically. Q was nineteen, V was twenty.

Seven of the fourteen were teenagers and all.

Mind the soldiers are not on trial. The tribunal is an investigative exercise, its sole purpose to find out the truth.

A difficult job. Never mind poor, or false, memories or downright lies by individuals, there is also the question of disinformation. A common propaganda tool in times of war (or civil unrest, if you insist). You cannot always trust a document, any more than you can a practised liar.

Investigations can be exhausting. It is bad enough having nightmares in your own bed at night without having to have them in a public place, even when you are standing behind a screen and your identity is anonymous. If Paddies were and maybe still are the enemy then they are all around you. Even in London, even far far away from the Bogside, they are listening.

And traitors are all around you. Take Soldier 027. Letting the side down. Trust no-one.

The truth will out, they say. The QC for some of the soldiers said different. It is too long ago. Too many witnesses dead. We cannot know the truth. At least not the whole truth.

The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Ah, if it were only that simple.

There is only one truth, one, but the truth can be sliced up, carved out, divided into portions, dressed up, packaged and presented according to how it suits you.

Even photos can be altered. Many of the photos taken on Bloody Sunday, or of the Bogside in the months and weeks afterwards, were ‘foreshortened’, creating different impressions, making background detail more prominent.

Some people’s memories (and some people’s consciences) are more foreshortened than others.

Virtual Reality makes the Rossville flats look like some Bauhaus, or Frank Lloyd Wright creation. OK, I exaggerate but take away the damp, the broken lifts, the litter, the dog dirt and the difference is amazing.

Aye, virtual reality. Makes it sound like a game.

The next round will be played back in Derry. The IRA are on next. Some of them have got anonymity too.

Paras 13, Paddies 0.

Not counting the ones just battered and bruised and bloody, the lucky ones carted off to Fort George. The dogs running up and down, growling, sniffing for blood. Take William Doherty in his fifties who lived to see another day but never made it to Saville. Fifty seven of them carted off to Fort George and stuck in a cage, Father O’Keefe among them. Not wearing his collar. Take McLoughlin and Liddy forced to stand in front of a hot stove. For half an hour. Made to watch their skin turn an angry red. Wondering when they would start to blister and crackle. Afraid to move. Afraid to speak, to yell out. Afraid to be shot. The lucky ones. It was only half an hour.

But you can’t listen to Paddies, can you? Paddies are liars. Soldier G, God rest him, said there were no stoves; the Paddies – I mean the prisoners – made it up. He did not strike anyone and nor did he see anyone being struck.

Soldier G is dead and gone; many rifles have been destroyed, along with the Rossville flats. What can they prove? The only two bullets recovered were F’s and G’s. F’s in Michael Kelly and G’s bullet in Gerry Donaghy. But Gerry Donaghy had nail bombs in his pockets. Eyewitnesses saw them. (Not counting the Paddies. Paddies are liars, mind.)

There were bodies spirited away, the soldiers said. Away to Donegal. Letterkenny hospital, for example. No, says the registrar. Not on Bloody Sunday, or soon after. They never came here. We checked our records.

Paddies. Liars.

Who’s to say now who was lying and who was telling the truth? How much do you remember after thirty years?

Eye witnesses. There are some things you can’t forget. But not all will be here to tell the tale. Soldiers E and G are not the only ones dead and gone.

Paras 13. Paddies 0. The RUC men clapped. V. I. C. T. O. R. Y. They never saw the match, they didn’t need the score. The bodies in the Pig said it all. Piled like sacks of potatoes, one on top of the other, QC Mansfield said.

Tiocfaidh ár lá

Numbers don’t tell the whole story. Think of Bloody Sunday, think colours. The faint white of the sun, the grey buildings (Derry was a grey place in them days). Grey skies, mud-coloured streets and buildings, the khaki green of the pigs and the uniforms and the respirators. A mass of khaki green. The marchers were a brighter lot but they soon scattered.

We all know the colour of blood, no matter who you are. But what about the colours skin turns when shot at point blank range with a baton gun? (Point blank? Think the inside of a Pig, think practically right next to you, think that and see you what you think then.) You might have asked poor oul Willy Doherty to describe it but he was afraid to mention it, sure, too busy thanking Our Lady for having mercy on him.

You might choose not to believe the statement of Willy Doherty but there were eye witnesses. Take Captain 200 who says he saw a soldier fire a baton round into an armoured vehicle. He had no idea why the soldier had done this and it was not one of his men.

It’s hard not to think in terms of numbers. A full battalion. A hundred with guns. Anything between maybe two, three and ten, fifteen thousand marchers. Nobody counted. There was no time.

Paras thirteen. Six of the dead seventeen years of age. Gerry Donaghy in his brand new jeans, too tight to get them off him, stiff as a poker on the ground.

It’s hard to think rubber bullets when there’s so much lead in the air. Emma Groves in Belfast had her eyes put out by one. Got her straight through the bridge of the nose. If they got you on the head you might be a goner. But there wasn’t too much talk about rubber bullets that day. Maybe there should’ve been but nobody was afeard of rubber bullets, even the ones reinforced with coins or even batteries. (The plastic ones came later and they were a different story, right enough.)

The army counted the lead ones and came up with 94, then 106. Widgery reckoned 108. God only knows. Lance Corporal F, thirteen shots, Private S twelve shots, one after the other. High velocity shots: cracks followed by thumps (as distinct from the low velocity thud of the armalite), into the alleyway between blocks one and two of the Rossville flats. Unjustifiably dangerous, Widgery called it, considering the crowd. Dangerous times, you may recall. Her Majesty’s Forces under attack from all sides. Only doing their job (a dirty, filthy job).

Corporal P nine shots, Sergeant O eight shots, Private R four, Soldier …Och, what’s the point in counting? Sergeant O never bothered his backside. CSM Lewis was dealing with that. Soldier H must have seen a lot of gunmen. He fired twenty two, he says. A crack shot they said. Expert marksman (he said it himself). Nineteen times through the same window (some gunman, glutton for punishment but Paddies are stupid, aren’t they?)

A right laugh they had after. Tittered all the way to the morgue. Still laughing and joking as they dumped the dead. Even Widgery never believed the one about the nineteen shots through the same hole. The window that never broke.

The (gun)man (and nail bomber) that never was.

You can’t go back. You can’t go back and you can’t go forward. You remain in no man’s land while you wait and you wait and you wait. There’s more than your granny, your mother, your father, died while you were waiting. There’s many’s the one since whose life was cut too short. There’s many the mother, sister, father, brother with a sore heart in this town.

Tiocfaidh ár lá

You can’t go back and you can’t go forward. There is nowhere left for you to go.

Tiocfaidh ár lá

You wish to God it could be true.

Chapter Three

When the doorbell rings he is disinclined to answer it. He was having a nap on the settee and is expecting nobody. It must be getting on for teatime and he has had an idle enough day but isn’t his an age when you are entitled to be idle? His wife used to say he was idle all his life but Martina was always one for exaggerating. Besides, these days Sammy is not a well man. Sometimes it’s his back but then there’s the angina. He is up during the night with the pain and then he can’t get back to sleep so he lies in or he goes to his bed in the middle of the day and hardly knows the time of day sometimes. It’s not as if he has much to get up for. His own family hardly come back at Christmastime even. If he minds he doesn’t say anything, not even to Gerry. They have their own lives to lead. As for his own life, that is all in the past. He’s not the only one living in the past round here. You have to come to terms with the past to face the future and that is what too many people in this place can’t do and he won’t deny he is one of them. Knowing something and doing it are different things altogether.

It’s ringing again. If it’s some salesman or what he’s going to give them a mouthful. Except if he thought that was who it was he wouldn’t be putting on his slippers and dressing gown and hurrying to the door.

He had an idea it was Gerry, right enough.

‘Have you heard?’

‘What?’ If there’s anything of interest Gerry has usually heard it before him, right enough. Gerry keeps in touch wi more people.

‘Put the news on.’

His heart is pounding as Gerry goes over and turns on