Army started Bloody Sunday gun battle: professor
A university professor who attended the Bloody Sunday march said today he knew army claims that the IRA started the gun battles ‘‘this time at least would be a lie’’.
Professor Bill McCormack also told the Saville Inquiry that a sniper shot was fired from behind a gravestone in Derry’s City Cemetery - about half a mile from the scene of the 13 deaths on January 30 1972.
A Dublin Protestant who is now Professor of Literary History at Goldsmith’s College, University of London, he claimed to have been with the main body of the march on Rossville Street when there was ‘‘a sudden and sustained burst of what I believed was live fire’’.
He stated: ‘‘It probably continued for over a minute. It all came from one direction and I have no sense of there being an exchange of fire.’’
Prof McCormack, who was teaching at Magee College in Derry in 1972, said the gunfire came from William Street, the direction from which troops entered the Bogside that day, and he was ‘‘certain’’ it was army shooting he could hear.
He described running from Rossville Street with his wife and friends and his growing fear that they would become trapped in the Bogside after dark.
An article he wrote shortly after the event, under the pen-name Hugh Maxton, indicated that ‘‘there would be a gun battle which the Provos would start’’.
He added: ‘‘I expressed it in that way because the Army always claimed that the Provos started the gun battles, but after what had just happened, I knew this time at least it would be a lie.’’
On their way to the Creggan estate, uphill from the Bogside, Mr McCormack’s party went through the City Cemetery.
‘‘I also remember a sniper shot being fired from behind a gravestone. One minute we were walking through the cemetery, believing ourselves to be relatively safe by then, the next minute a shot rang out from close by,’’ he stated.
‘‘The cemetery was a well-known hiding place for local terrorists. This made it a safe place to escape from the soldiers but brought its own risks after dark. I recall that the sniper shot woke us up and pushed us on the run again.’’
