Recent interviews with some of the survivors of that day
13.6.2010
All interviews are from the Derry Journal
Friday, 21 May, 2010
Friday, 14 May, 2010
Wednesday, 12 May, 2010
'Shot in the back as I ran away'
By Derry Journal
Patsy McDaid was 25-years-old when he was wounded on Bloody Sunday. Moments after helping carry the injured Peggy Deery to safety, Patsy was shot in the back as he sought refuge from the incoming fire. His experiences on January 30, 1972, have remained with him. He spoke to 'Journal' reporter JULIEANN CAMPBELL this week.
Patsy McDaid had joined the civil rights march in Creggan like thousands of other people. He remembers the optimism of those around him as the march set off for the Guildhall.
"It was like a day out, having a laugh as we walked along. I remember one man remarking that, with so many people marching, we'd probably get to where we were going."
The march, however, came to a standstill at William Street where the usual bit of trouble flared. Suddenly, the army advanced and marchers began to run towards the Bogside.
"As we reached the car park of the Rossville Flats, I saw a woman being carried. I ran over to help some men carry her into a house in Chamberlain Street. We laid the woman, Peggy Deery, on the sofa where people attended to a gunshot wound to her leg. She was the only woman shot on Bloody Sunday."
Patsy then ventured outside again. "I'm not sure if I was going for help but when I got outside I sought shelter from the shooting behind a high wall along with 30 or 40 other people. We couldn't see the soldiers aiming and couldn't escape from this corner; some people decided to run for it across open ground to safety.
"I made a run for it and I was shot just as I ducked to dive over a wall. I didn't realise at the time and someone had to show me the blood before I believed I was hurt. That's when I began to panic. There was so much blood.
"I have no doubt that bending down saved my life. If I had been standing a fraction straighter, the bullet would have went straight through me. Instead, the bullet cut deep across my back."
Patsy's wound was dressed in a house at Joseph Place before he was taken to hospital. In the ambulance, he recalls a body - perhaps two - on the floor. He also has clear memories of the "mayhem" at Altnagelvin Hospital as the reality of the situation unfolded.
"The doctor examined me and was amazed that the bullet hadn't penetrated and just cut across me. He said you could see my bone through the wound but that I probably didn't feel it with the shock.
"I think it's only natural to feel lucky after something like that. You realise that a few millimetres saved my life. Thinking - there but for the grace of God - it could have been me shot dead. The fact that I stooped over was literally the difference between life and death."
Inquiry
Patsy needed answers and was relieved when the new Bloody Sunday Justice Campaign came into being.
"I wanted a campaign. The British had told the world a bunch of lies. They had blackened the names of the dead and the wounded to justify the murder of peaceful marchers. If I was a nail-bomber or gunman, why was I never arrested or questioned? They never came near me.
"I'm always amazed at how hypocritical they are - reporting on massacres like Tiananmen Square and the murder of protestors in the Middle East, but they won't show you Bloody Sunday and what they did in Derry. Our people were literally shot out of the streets, but they don't show you that on TV," he says.
Patsy gave evidence during the subsequent Bloody Sunday Inquiry hearings. "It wasn't difficult to give evidence. I have nothing to hide. I can only tell the story of what happened to me - it was a peaceful march and I was shot in the back as I ran away, unarmed."
At the London hearings - at which British soldiers gave evidence anonymously - Patsy was horrified to discover he had actually cheated death twice on Bloody Sunday.
"In London, a man gave evidence that he had been a sniper positioned on the Derry Walls. In his testimony, he said that he had lined up two people as targets and followed them to the back door of a house. He claimed he only held back as he was unsure whether we were legitimate threats, but he could so easily have shot the both of us.
"You get a shock when a man tells you that. It was bad enough getting shot, but to later hear that someone was watching you from far away and had the power to kill you - that is a strange feeling."
On the ongoing delays in publishing Lord Saville's report, Patsy says: "This is typical British behaviour. They will use every tactic in the book to drag this report out and delay it further. I don't have much faith left in Saville - how could it possibly take so many years to complete a report?
"I know what happened on Bloody Sunday and everybody else knows what happened too, so why has it taken so long? The British spun a lie throughout the world that we were gunmen and bombers and they will not make themselves out to be liars - so it will be interesting to see how Saville's report gets around this."
To this day, Patsy feels fortunate to have survived when so many others died.
"Just by chance, I survived. Every time I pass the Bloody Sunday monument in Rossville Street, I think to myself, 'your name could have been on it' because it so nearly was."
Copyright © Derry Journal 2010
Saville must exonerate every victim
Truth more important now than ever before
By Derry Journal
Mickey Bridge was 25-years-old and a march steward on Bloody Sunday. The Bogside had just descended into pandemonium - marchers fleeing advancing troops and running for shelter towards the Rossville Flats and Free Derry Corner - when he was shot by a paratrooper. This week he spoke to JULIEANN CAMPBELL.
Mickey Bridge was shot as he confronted soldiers in the courtyard of the Rossville Flats. He was shocked and indignant at the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Jackie Duddy - someone he had known in boxing circles in the city.
"When I saw young Duddy fall, I went back towards the soldiers, probably shouting obscenities at them, and they shot me, quite deliberately," he remembers.
"Bloody Sunday was different. Nobody could ever have seen it coming - we had no concept of something like that ever happening."
The bullet hit Mickey just below the hip and he spent two weeks recovering from his injuries at Altnagelvin Hospital.
"At the time we had no idea how many people were shot and we didn't know the full extent of what had happened until the next day. It was only when I saw the newspapers that the reality began to hit me."
Mickey recalls the frustration he felt after the widely criticised Widgery Inquiry into the January 30 killings - an investigation that largely cleared the soldiers and British authorities of any blame.
"I was angry about Widgery, everyone was, but we couldn't do anything about it. They avoided the wounded like the plague. They ignored witnesses and important evidence. They were aware of police reports and did nothing and they got rid of the survivors as quick as possible.
"The investigating officer at the time said that the shooting of Jackie Duddy was murder. He also said that I was innocent - facts which were never brought to the Widgery Inquiry but were later used during Saville."
Mickey acknowledges that Bloody Sunday has adversely affected his life.
"Overnight, it changed everything. They tried to justify killing so many people by classing us as terrorists. Because of the environment we were living in, if I strayed into a staunch Protestant area and they found out who I was, I was targeted for being Catholic. It restricted where you could work. That was a reality then."
Distrust
Mickey says that part of the psyche within the whole community was a distrust of the armed forces.
"Once you were identified, they took it upon themselves to stop you - once I was stopped seven times in one week. I was a name they recognised; they checked my ID and they thought, 'There's that nail-bomber from Bloody Sunday'. You had to live with that for years. It affected your personal life, it affected your life, everything. When I went to England they held us in security for hours. I was labelled. I still haven't shaken it off."
Before the British government announced a new Inquiry in 1998, Mickey had avoided the subject of Bloody Sunday.
"I stayed away from it and didn't address it at all until the new inquiry started. I tried to keep my family distant from it all, too. They never even knew I was shot. A teacher told my daughter at school and that's how she found out. I didn't talk about it and wouldn't have if it hadn't been for the Inquiry."
Second inquiry
"We were granted a second inquiry for one simple reason - the Public Records Office was being thrown open after 30 years and the British government knew we were going to find something out. Irish Rights Watch and Patricia Coyle, a solicitor for Peter Madden, were made aware of papers within the Public Records Office and the best thing the government could do was address the situation. The Public Records forced their hand. The British government couldn't get rid of it, so they addressed it by taking control and establishing an Inquiry, just like they did in 1972."
Mickey vividly recalls seeing soldiers give evidence at the Saville Inquiry. "The whole stance that the soldiers took was that they didn't remember much. Instead of saying they shot a person, they shot a target - a nail-bomber or a gunman. Even at the hearings in Westminster, 'Lieutenant N' refused to acknowledge that I was the person he shot. I was the only person there - he shot me, that is a fact.
"There is no such thing as a mistake. The soldier who shot me did so from only yards away with clear vision. What they did on Bloody Sunday is exactly what they did after Bloody Sunday - they put themselves into overdrive to cover it up," he says.
As the world awaits the publication of the new report into Bloody Sunday, Mickey fears Saville may "scatter the blame all over the place."
"I have no faith in Saville, but they have put him in a position where he has to address the evidence presented to him, as long as it's factual with proven evidence, and if it isn't, then we will take him to task. The likelihood of prosecutions is very slim. Saville can only recommend it, he doesn't have the power to make it happen, and I really don't think he will recommend prosecution for anybody involved.
"However, what I do say is that Saville must put individual blame on specific soldiers and he has to exonerate every individual victim - that's the only way this will draw to a conclusion. That's the only thing that will satisfy me."
Copyright © Derry Journal 2010
'Bloody Sunday changed everything'
By Derry Journal
Alana Burke was just 18-years-old when she was badly injured on Bloody Sunday. Crushed by an armoured Saracen as she and hundreds of others fled the advancing British paratroopers, Alana sustained serious, life-changing injuries and the trauma of her ordeal has yet to fade. She tells her story to Derry Journal reporter, JULIEANN CAMPBELL
In January 1972, Alana Burke was the eldest of nine children and her father had died just six months earlier. She recalls that her mother encouraged her to attend the ill-fated civil rights march on January 30.
"My mother was a proud nationalist woman and passionate about civil rights, believing that nationalist people were entitled to the same rights as everyone else in the North. She had told us earlier that day about the march, so I just went for the craic. I remember I was wearing my new brown corduroy 'maxi-coat and' I thought I was the bees' knees.
"I joined the end of the march quite late at the top of William Street where the City Baths would be now. There was the usual bit of stone throwing at 'Aggro Corner' but nothing unusual. The only difference was that there were thousands upon thousands of people on the march."
In William Street, Alana and her friend found themselves quite near the front of the march but moved further back when the aggro began. When the British Army started spraying marchers with water cannon, Alana was soaked to the skin with pink dye and quickly overcome by CS gas fumes.
"I remember being very sick and disorientated but not scared," she recalls. "That probably sounds strange, but I just thought the crowd would disperse and the army wouldn't come any further. A man took me into a house in Chamberlain Street. After a glass of water, he advised me to go home.
"At the waste ground at Pilot's Row, everyone was milling round and I could see the soldiers coming towards us on foot. Someone shouted to me 'run' and that's when I heard the rev of the army vehicle. I remember seeing it coming and being frozen to the spot, the weight of my soaked coat weighing me down. Someone tried to help me, but we lost each other and he left me there - it was every man for himself. At that stage I was petrified and on my own.
"I glanced behind me and I saw the Saracens coming in one after the other, then I heard the thud and hit the ground and remember crawling along the earth and not feeling my legs at all. I knew it was a Saracen that hit me - I couldn't run fast enough to get out of its way. I was totally disorientated, lying there praying that someone would please help me.
"Even talking about it still sends me reeling after all these years and I get awful flashbacks. A man carried me, semi-conscious, to a house in Joseph Place. I suppose I thank God that he did, because Jackie Duddy was shot just a minute or two after that."
"The worst part of it all was the ambulance," Alana remembers. "I was semi-conscious on the floor and there were bodies on either side of me. It's hazy but I just remember thinking: are these people dead? Am I dead? I thought, maybe, I was dead and looking down on the bodies in the ambulance."
At Altnagelvin Hospital, Alana learned the full extent of her injuries.
"They said that one of my vertebrae had been very badly crushed by the Saracen and it was cutting off the supply to my legs. I didn't know if the feeling was ever going to come back, but I still insisted on going home after a couple of days. They put me in a wheelchair because I still couldn't walk, but I just needed to be home around my family."
Eventually, Alana regained the feeling in her legs and she slowly learned to walk again. However, the injuries caused long-term physical damage.
"It affected my whole life afterwards. Doctors told me it was a miracle that I conceived my son Gareth as my pelvis and insides were so badly damaged. They don't know how he survived. The gynaecologist told me afterwards to be thankful that I had a child because my body was so messed up I would never have any more - and he was right.
"A few years later, I had to have a hysterectomy. It dictated the way my life was going to go. I dreamed of having a couple of children but it just wasn't to be. I went on to adopt another boy."
Almost 40 years have passed since that day in Derry's Bogside, yet the psychological effects have haunted Alana every day since.
"It was a terrible, terrible time. No matter how many times you tell the story or how much therapy you have, it makes no difference. Bloody Sunday changed everything. It's something that will never, ever go away. You live with it every day and, the longer it goes on, the angrier you get."
Quest for justice
Alana says she was horrified when first approached about playing a role in the Bloody Sunday justice campaign in the early 1990s.
"I remember someone phoning the house, saying they needed me to tell my story, and I said: 'how dare you phone my house and bring this back to me'. I wanted nothing to do with it initially. But, after talking to some of the wounded and going to a few meetings, eventually I became more comfortable talking about it. It was so hard reliving it all over again, but I knew what they were doing was right."
As the Bloody Sunday Justice Campaign began its long quest for the truth, Alana's determination grew, strengthened by the drive of those around her.
"Once I got involved in the campaign, I became passionate about it and still am. We banded together. It wasn't easy because there were so many different personalities, people who had lost their daddy, brothers, uncles, and those living with their injuries. So many obstacles were thrown up and there was so much criticism, but with fourteen wounded and fourteen dead, we just needed the truth,"
The Bloody Sunday Justice Campaign proved to be a success with the British Government subsequently forced into action, announcing a new Bloody Sunday Inquiry, led by Lord Saville, in 1998.
Speaking of the Inquiry, Alana says: "Bloody Sunday is something that has affected the whole city and it's a subject very close to everybody's heart. Everyone had such traumatic stories to tell at the inquiry and I'm so proud of Derry people as a whole coming to help us in any way they could and by giving evidence in the Guildhall."
The Bloody Sunday Inquiry concluded in 2004 and Alana is understandably frustrated to be still waiting for Lord Saville's report: "We are hopeful, but this waiting is frustrating and makes me very angry. It has taken so long now that it is clear, to me, that the British still have the upper hand. They are still dictating to us that they will give us the report when they're good and ready.
"We are entitled to the truth of exactly what happened on that day and I have no doubt whatsoever in my mind that the blame goes all the way to the very top. None of us know what to expect, but one thing we do want is a declaration of innocence across the board. We deserve nothing less."
Copyright © Derry Journal 2010