THE BLOODY SUNDAY INQUIRY/Day 302: A former British army paratrooper said yesterday he could not explain how he failed to hear his regimental colleagues firing over one hundred shots in Derry's Bogside on Bloody Sunday, killing thirteen unarmed civilians and wounding thirteen others.
He told the Saville Inquiry into the January 1972 killings that he did not hear any shots on the day, because, as a radio operator, he wore headphones during the Bloody Sunday operation.
However, he said he was able to hear an officer close to him ordering soldiers to "only fire at hard targets".
The witness, known as Inquiry 24, said that on Bloody Sunday he was attached to a platoon commander in the Parachute Regiment when he was ordered into the Bogside area.
"We were dodging about as if we were under fire, but I could not say I heard any fire because I had the headphones on all the time", he told the inquiry.
Cross-examined by Mr Brian McCartney, who represents many of the victims' families, the witness denied withholding information about Bloody Sunday out of loyalty to his former regiment.
Mr McCartney said the witness had failed to see three soldiers close to him firing at a barricade in Rossville Street and that he also failed to hear any shots being fired by paratroopers from high powered SLR rifles.
"Can you then explain to this tribunal the inability to hear high velocity shots being fired, but yet the ability to hear a human voice asking people to fire at identified targets?" he asked Inquiry 24.
The witness replied "no" and he also replied "no" when Mr McCartney asked him if he was trying to reconcile the truth with a loyalty to the parachute regiment.
Meanwhile, another soldier who was a corporal in the Royal Green Jackets, said the deployment of the paratroopers into the Bogside took him by "complete surprise". The former soldier said his unit had managed to contain a large group of rioters at a barrier by using rubber bullet guns and a water cannon.
"I did not even know they were there until I saw them running through the barrier and I thought 'the bloody paras are there'. As soon as the paras went through the crowd was gone", he told the Inquiry.
"I just remember as I watched them go through the crowd had dispersed. My next recollection after they had gone through the barrier is of hearing shots. I had heard no shots before they had gone through. I do not know whether the paras had disappeared from sight when I heard the shots, I just remember hearing them after they had gone through the barrier", he added.
The inquiry continues.