Ireland's OWN: History

 

From War and an Irish Town* —by Eamonn McCann When the shooting started that day the first reaction, after fear, was bewilderment. Why were they shooting? At Free Derry Corner where most people had gathered for the meeting the crow flung themselves to the ground as the crack-crack of the self-loading rifles came from the bottom of Rossville Street. Looking up one could see the last few stragglers coming running panic-stricken, bounding over the barricade outside the High Flats, three of them stiffening suddenly and crumpling to the ground. One ought to have realised at the time that what was happening was that they were being killed. An hour and a half later no one knew for certain how many were dead. Some said three, some five. From McCafferty's house in Beechwood Street, Bernadette Devlin phoned Altnagelvin Hospital and asked for the names of the casualties. About twenty people crowded around her into the hallway as she prepared to write them down. The pushing and shoving stopped as she just kept writing. Later in the shop in Creggan Martin McGuinness, the Provisionals' OC, proposed and an Official seconded the call for a national strike until after the funerals. The Official Command Staff voted to drop the fiction that they were on a "defensive" campaign. The next morning there were groups of people standing around in Rossville Street, staring at the spots where it happened. Everyone knew them now, the names of the dead. They could recite them as readily as a football fanatic rhymes off the names of his favourite team. And they knew how each one died from the telling and retelling of it: how Jack Duddy had been just behind Father Daly in the car park of the High Flats laughing to see a priest running when the bullet got him; how Pat Doherty had been lying out in the open moaning, "I don't want to die on my own"; and Barney McGuigan, a big quiet man, had gone out to him waving a white handkerchief and was shot in the base of the skull; how John Young had been dragging himself, wounded, in the shelter of the barricade across Rossville Street towards the door of the flats, people screaming down at him from the windows, pleading "Come on lad, come on, come on, you're nearly there," but he didn't make it.  And all the others. Bloody Sunday upset us considerably. A few weeks later the Officials planted a bomb outside the officers' mess of the Para headquarters in Aldershot. Unfortunately it killed six innocent people. Had it killed a dozen British soldiers, there would have been dancing in the streets in Derry. *2nd edition. London: Pluto Press. 1980. pp 101-102. Page updated 31 Mar 2008 Ireland's OWN Logo by Eamann Website Design and Celtic Background by Míchealín Daugherty Copyright © 2008 Ireland's OWN All Rights Reserved.