A senior British army officer was "very, very annoyed" when he learned that paratroopers were being sent into the Bogside on Bloody Sunday and urged his superiors to think again, he told the Saville inquiry yesterday.
Col Roy Jackson, the lieutenant-colonel commanding the 1st Battalion of the Royal Anglians in January 1972, believed that sending in the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, trained as shock troops in Belfast, was a bad tactical move which could poison community relations.
Col Jackson, then the army's longest-serving commander in Northern Ireland, was so alarmed that he broke ranks to complain to Brig Patrick MacLellan, commander of 8th Brigade.
He complained at a commanders' conference two days before paratroopers shot dead 13 Catholic men at a civil rights march in Derry on January 30th, 1972. This was a rare occurrence because junior officers do not as a rule question orders from their superiors.
"It was most unusual, but I felt that this time I had to so something. I was very, very annoyed," he told the inquiry in central London.
Col Jackson had even considered contacting Northern Ireland headquarters to protest. He decided against it after realising that he would be sacked.
Deploying the Paras also angered frontline soldiers because "those with wisdom" and at "the highest level" were bringing in an outside battalion to do their job, Col Jackson said.
The 1st Royal Anglians should have been deployed in the operation for the mass arrest of rioters because "we would do a better job", he said.
Col Jackson said: "We knew the ground. We had been there for nearly two years. We knew virtually every rock there was. We knew the people. We knew the hooligans we could not get. We knew who to arrest and that was the hooligans and not the people on the periphery of the crowds."
His battalion was overlooked while 1 Para, who had never operated in Derry, were "going in blind" to the Bogside, he told the inquiry.
The decision to bring the Paras from Belfast to arrest rioters was made by Maj Genal Sir Robert Ford, commander of the Land Forces in Northern Ireland.
When Col Jackson complained Brig MacLellan told him the decision was made "at the highest level" and he was not in a position to change anything.
Col Jackson told the inquiry that 1 Para's deployment was a political decision rather than a military one.
Everyone was aware of 1 Para's tough reputation and Bogsiders, both innocent civilians and hooligans, would be "surprised if Belfast arrest procedures were carried out on them", he said.
Brig MacLellan has told the inquiry he does not recall Col Jackson's complaint.
Lieut Col Peter Welsh, commander of the resident 2nd Royal Green Jackets, also believed that sending in the Paratroopers was wrong. He raised his concerns in a phone call to Gen Sir David Ramsbotham, the military assistant to Gen Sir Michael Carver, Chief of the General Staff, at the time.
- (PA)