The Bloody Sunday Inquiry/Day 355: A paratrooper yesterday said he twice fired at a pistol-wielding gunman on Bloody Sunday.
The gunman was aiming down at troops through an open window in the Bogside's Rossville Flats, he told the Bloody Sunday inquiry in central London.
The paratrooper, identified only as Soldier D, cannot recall whether he or a colleague, Soldier C, hit the gunman - but the gunman did not make a third appearance at the window.
Soldier D denied that he and Soldier C had "put their heads together" afterwards to deflect allegations of firing recklessly.
He also denied that the lapses in memory in his current testimony were designed so he could avoid perjuring himself.
Their shots, from a walkway near Kells Walk, missed the target, he told the inquiry.
He saw the silhouetted figure "jump and jerk back" after they opened fire during his second appearance at the window.
In his inquiry statement, Soldier D said: "I waited until the pistol fired on each occasion. Right or wrong, that is what we did."
Mr Arthur Harvey, representing many of the bereaved and injured, wondered why Soldier D's memory of events had deteriorated so rapidly over the past three years.
He asked: "Have you been advised of the consequences of committing perjury? Is that why you have adopted the strategy of saying that you cannot remember, you are basically not giving evidence to the tribunal?"
Insisting that he has told the truth at this and the original Widgery Inquiry, Soldier D replied: "The reason I say I can't remember is because I can't remember."
He did not change his statement to make it fit what anyone else had said, he added.
Mr Harvey disputed Soldier D's account: "What you did was become involved in further terrorising people who had already been brutalised by discharging shots recklessly, either over their heads or simply designed to strike fear into their hearts?"
Soldier D replied: "That is not true, sir."
The inquiry is investigating the events of January 30th, 1972 in Derry.