Bloody Sunday - 30 Jan 72

Bloody Sunday sometimes called the Bogside Massacre was an incident on 30 January 1972 in the Bogside area of Derry, in which twenty-six unarmed civil rights protesters and bystanders were shot by members of the troops from 1 PARA. Thirteen males, seven of whom were teenagers, died immediately or soon after, while the death of another man four and a half months later has been attributed to the injuries he received on that day.

The Provisionals (PIRA) campaign against the partitian of Ireland had begun two years earlier prior to Bloody Sunday, but public perceptions of the day boosted the status of, and recruitment into, the organisation enormously.

Within a month of the incident, 1 RWF took over from 1 Royal Anglian in Ebrington Barracks at the commencement of the first of their Residential Tours in the Province.

ITV 1 Broadcasted their version of events in a documentory type film last week, they appeared to portray that the blame lay clearly on a rogue element of 1 Para, even though no military personal were ever disiplined in relation to any event regarding bloody Sunday.

One thing is for sure though, it gave the P.I.R.A. the biggest recruitement drive throughout their history.

Boy!!! that was a busy time for us just after that incident. The sigs plt windows in Ebrington Barracks looked out over the front parade square across the river to the Creggan and Bogside. We had someone who's job was to circle and date the new bullet holes that had appeared in the front wall of that building, and there were lots. When bored we also used to sit in the windows making bets on where the next explosion was going to be and then waited for it to happen. Not very smart us sigs guys.
Tough but good times.