Saville Inquiry told of advance troops in Derry's bogside
Soldiers were hidden in a yard "with all the paraphernalia for a war" inside Derry's Bogside district on Bloody Sunday before troops are known to have entered the area that day, it was claimed today. Mr Frank Bradley told the Saville Inquiry that he stumbled across "a handful" of men positioned in an enclosed area off Rossville Street as he tried to take a short cut from William Street a short distance away. He said he climbed a wall eight or nine feet high and peered over to see the soldiers carrying kit bags and wearing gas masks, their backs to him, against a wall looking further into the Bogside, which at that stage was a no-go area for British security forces. Mr Bradley, whose brother Mickey was wounded that day, said he made the sighting as he fled the rubber bullets and tear gas fired by security forces that day - a confrontation which happened some minutes before the first Paratroopers came into the area from behind barricades. He said he only glanced at the men and ran from the scene telling the tribunal: "The British soldiers frightened me, they had gas masks and they had all the paraphernalia for a war, whatever you want to call it." As he returned to William Street he saw the vehicles - the armoured personnel carriers bringing the first Paratroopers into the area - emerge from their point of entry Little James Street, he said. The Inquiry has already heard of numerous sightings of soldiers posted in buildings off William Street, on the perimeter of the Bogside. Asked by Counsel to the Inquiry, Mr Christopher Clarke QC, if he was mistaken and had in fact seen the men on the northern side of William Street, outside the no-go zone, he replied: "No. I seen the troops inside the Bogside, in ahead of the parade. "Ahead of the parade they were already in there." PA