Army shooting from Derry's historic walls on Bloody Sunday sent clods of earth showering on to people fleeing the mayhem below, a witness claimed today.
Thomas Ralph Dawe told the Saville Inquiry bullets scudded into the high grass verge sloping from the walls to the Bogside.
Mr Dawe, who was 28 years old and a former Royal Navy serviceman on Bloody Sunday, described running away from soldiers with gunfire coming in behind him and emerging from a gap in the Rossville Flats to hear the firing start again "but this time from a new direction".
"I remember as I looked south down the alleyway seeing clods of earth and grass being churned up by the shots hitting the ground and earth was falling on to the people on the south side of the gap."
He recounted pushing women in front of him over to the shelter of the alleyway and venturing over himself.
"When I was at the other side of the gap we lay down flat and there was some further shooting - I think about four or five shots. "Once again clods of clay and earth were showering down on to us from the embankment above the wall over our heads. I remember getting soil into my hair."
Lawyers for most of the soldiers claim there may have been up to 34 "hidden" casualties, including IRA gunmen, who were spirited away for secret treatment or burial. Mr Dawe claimed the young man was lying on the road on his side, "motionless except for his left ankle and foot, which were twitching". He failed to reach him and was unaware of what became of him.
Also, one of the men wounded on Bloody Sunday today challenged the soldier responsible to meet him face-to-face and tell the truth about what he did.
Michael Bradley claimed he was shot as he angrily shouted at soldiers in the moments after Jack Duddy, 17, was shot dead in the same area.
"I would love to meet the soldier who shot me face-to-face," he said. "I would be angry and I would ask him how he had slept for 26 years - I know how I have. I was innocent, I did not have a nail bomb or anything but I was shot.
"I know even with this new inquiry that we will not get the justice we would like but I would like the soldier to tell the truth.
"I don't want him hung, drawn and quartered - just to tell the truth."
PA