A former British soldier today described how he came under fire after entering Derry's Bogside on Bloody Sunday.
The lance corporal, of Company C in the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, said the shots were fired from a Thompson sub machine gun - a weapon known to have been used by the IRA in the 1970s - as he was running across waste ground with two other members of his platoon.
He told the Bloody Sunday Inquiry, sitting in London, that they were the first shots he had heard after entering the Bogside on that day.
The lance corporal, identified only as Soldier 003, said in his statement to the inquiry: "After we had started running across the waste ground and were about half way, we came under fire.
"Shots were fired somewhere from our right (west) which I think came from the direction of Columbcille Court."
He said the round hit the ground about 10-15 metres ahead of him and that some had hit a puddle surrounding burnt-out vehicles.
Soldier 003 continued: "The shots were fired from a Thompson sub machine gun, which has a very distinctive heavy sound and couldn't be mistaken.
"There was at least one burst of shots, and quite a few rounds hit the ground although I cannot be more precise.
"As far as I was concerned I was concentrating on getting to the houses we were heading for as fast as I could run."
The witness said he could not recall hearing any other gun fire or explosions before the Thompson shots.
But in his original statement to the Royal Military Police in February 1972, soldier 003 said he had heard automatic fire which "could possibly have been a Thompson sub machine gun", the inquiry was told.
The witness also claimed he saw a soldier at some time on nearby Rossville Street firing rounds from a kneeling position.
"I did not see where he was aiming, apart from south down Rossville Street," he said in his statement to the current inquiry.
"I didn't know who the soldier was although I found out later that he would have been from Support Company."
Soldier 003, who did not fire any rounds himself on Bloody Sunday, described how soldiers appeared "passive" at the army barricade on William Street when he first arrived at the scene.
He said: "The crowd on the far side of the barrier were very close to it and throwing everything they could at the soldiers behind the barricade.
The soldiers standing at the barrier, he said, were "passive, and not firing baton rounds or doing anything".
The witness said he was initially ordered to enter Bogside "to get the crowd away from the barrier, as they had been threatening the soldiers on duty standing there".
Another witness, referred to only as INQ 945, told the inquiry "all hell broke loose" when he first heard gunfire after entering the Bogside.
INQ 945, who was a Lance Corporal in the First Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, said he was attached to C-Company on Bloody Sunday.
The witness said he recalled standing near the Rossville flats when he heard shots from an M1 caor a similar weapon not used by soldiers.
He said in his statement: "The first shots were two or three single shots from an M1 carbine or a similar weapon ... the weapon fired was definitely not ahandgun.
"It was louder than a pistol but not as heavy as a high velocity SLR (Army-issue self-loading rifle) and the weapon was firing shorter rounds, possibly .30 calibre M1 carbine."
Within a couple of minutes, he said, he could hear the Army returning fire. He added: "There was an exchange of gunfire which seemed to go on forever but I would guess went on for up to five minutes.
"The exchange included both SLR fire and the sound of what I took to be further civilian gunfire."
INQ 945, who said he helped to transport dozens of people arrested from the Bogside to a naval base, told the inquiry he did not see any cases of "mistreatment" of the prisoners by the soldiers.
The witness said he thought at the time there would probably be casualties among the civilians. He added: "There was a feeling of elation in the barracks [that night] because we believed that those who had been shot were terrorists.
"It turned out that the people killed may not have been terrorists, but we did not know that at the time."
PA