Army chief faces attack over Bloody Sunday role

The most senior Army officer present on Bloody Sunday will face hostile questioning at the Saville inquiry today from a lawyer for a group of 25 former soldiers demanding to know whether he deliberately "escalated the battle" in Londonderry that resulted in the deaths of 14 people.

Maj-Gen Robert Ford, Commander of Land Forces in Northern Ireland at the time of Bloody Sunday in January 1972, will be asked by Gerard Elias QC to justify his decision to deploy paratroops in the Bogside district to conduct an arrest operation after a civil rights march.

Details of the former soldiers' concerns are set out in an "Advanced Notification of Issues" submitted to the tribunal, currently sitting in Westminster. Lawyers say they know of no precedent for the public questioning under oath of a senior Army officer about his role in a military operation by representatives of junior ranks. The advanced notification makes allegations of planning mistakes, loss of military discipline and misconduct. Not all of the 25 soldiers are associated with each of the allegations.

The document names a number of military units said to have had good knowledge of geography and conditions in the city and which were available to launch the planned arrest operation but which were passed over in favour of the 1st Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, brought in from Belfast on the morning of Bloody Sunday on the orders of General Ford.

Mr Elias will ask General Ford "whether it was his deliberate decision ... to escalate the battle against the rioting element in Londonderry ... [and] if so, whether such escalation was justified?"

The former soldiers say an original plan, drawn up by officers of the 8th Brigade, which covered Londonderry, had envisaged the "province reserve", the King's Own Royal Borderers, being brought in and held in reserve to await developments. As late as six days before Bloody Sunday, they say, "there is no suggestion that Brig MacLellan [commander of 8th Brigade] saw the reserve force (whoever they were to be) as the unit to conduct the scoop-up, let alone that 1 Para should undertake that task."

Among the 25 is a former company sergeant-major with 1 Para who says: "There is nothing to be proud of in soldiering terms about what happened on Bloody Sunday ...

"I do not now feel that there was a proper controllable plan to contain the march or a clear indication before we deployed of what was expected or of how the arrest operation was to take place. The result on the day was that people were all over the place."

The CSM says 1 Para's plan was to get behind and corral rioters and then make large-scale arrests. What happened instead, he says, was "a frontal assault". He cites faulty reconnaissance and, more generally, "significant failures in the planning and execution" of the operation.

A Royal Green Jackets soldier recalls remarking to a colleague, "What a plonker" after watching a paratrooper firing a number of rifle shots in rapid succession at the Rossville Street Flats. Another of the 25 recalls "seeing [a paratrooper] fire his rifle from the hip. He was running in the direction of the crowd when he fired."

Taken together, the allegations are not of a deliberate plan to inflict death or injury on unarmed civilians but of irresponsible and/or incompetent planning in advance and undisciplined or improper behaviour on the day.