Paratroopers who were sent into the Bogside on Bloody Sunday had been led to expect that they would be fired upon by the IRA, the Bloody Sunday Inquiry heard yesterday.
Senior officers who planned the operation are to be questioned closely about what, if any, assessment was made of the risks it entailed for the civilian population.
Counsel for the tribunal, Mr Christopher Clarke, presented an outline of evidence the tribunal will hear concerning the Parachute Regiment's record in Northern Ireland and its reputation for rough treatment.
In a statement supplied to the tribunal, Lieut Gen Sir Michael Jackson, who was in Derry on Bloody Sunday as a captain in the Parachute Regiment, says they believed the IRA would react, "because we would be `invading their turf' when going in for the arrest operation".
"We had an expectation of IRA activity. There was a large `no go' area . . . It was known that firefights were common," he says.
"We could never rule out the fact that we might be shot at - any time, any place. The IRA were good at ambushes . . . It would be foolhardy in the extreme to assume that you would not be shot at."
Notes used by the battalion commander, Col Derek Wilford, for an operational planning meeting the day before Bloody Sunday use terms such as "Concept of the battle" and "How the battle will go".
The inquiry heard evidence of an abortive operation in the Creggan area of Derry in July 1971 involving soldiers of the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (1 Para) led by Capt Jackson.
This was the only time before Bloody Sunday that the battalion had operated in the city. Notes of a journalist's interview with Capt Jackson subsequently have him saying that his unit had tried, but failed, to draw out the IRA and rioters.
He is quoted as saying: "The bloody July operation never got off the ground. We couldn't get the yobbos out." He adds that since then 1 Para had always wanted to "sweep through" the no-go areas of Derry.
However, in a statement to the current tribunal about that operation, known as Operation Hailstone, Lieut Gen Jackson now says: "I am asked if we were there to flush out the IRA. I am quite certain that we were not deployed to tempt the IRA into a fight."
He says he does not remember saying what was attributed to him at the time. "If such things were said by me then I suspect they were the bravado of a young officer," he comments. "I now do not have a clue whether I said that we wanted to sweep through the no-go areas."
The Bloody Sunday operation was codenamed Operation Forecast in advance. A senior officer of the Royal Anglians, the tribunal has already heard, had been so concerned at the plan to involve the paratroopers in it that he had asked for his objections to be passed on to army headquarters.
Further portions of this colonel's statement to the current tribunal were read yesterday. He says: "In my opinion, Operation Forecast should have been an operation to control the NICRA (Civil Rights) march - just that. If someone had wanted to `sort out' the hooligan element, let it be done later in the day when the reasonable people of Derry had gone home.
"We, in Londonderry, wanted the civilian populations to turn against both the IRA and the hooligan element . . . by building on our previous successes. What arrogance at all levels not to even consult those with rather more local experience for their views."
In his statement to the present inquiry, Gen Robert Ford, who was then Commander of Land Forces, Northern Ireland, says it was his decision to send 1 Para to Derry, and "although it is not recorded, I am sure that I told Brig MacLellan that he should use 1 Para for the arrest part of the operation."
Gen Ford also says: "I was certainly not made aware of any formal or informal requests that 1 Para should not be used as intended on 30 January . . ."
Mr Clarke suggested that the tribunal would no doubt wish to consider, in the course of this inquiry, the risks of a planned operation and of the execution of those plans.
That might include certain questions: "Firstly, what assessment was made by the powers-that-be in general, and by Gen Ford, Brig MacLellan and Col Wilford in particular, of the risk to the civilian population inherent in embarking upon an arrest operation on this occasion and with these troops.
"Secondly, should the order have provided that the operation was only to be launched or, whatever the order provided, should it only have been launched if it was necessary to do so in order to put down what was or was likely to become a serious and continuing riot."
Other questions to be answered concerned whether enough attention had been directed to ensuring that Brig MacLellan, who was to give the order for the arrest operation to be launched if it was to be launched at all, had sufficient information before him as to whether the marchers and hooligans had been separated, and whether the degree of rioting was such as to justify launching the arrest operation.
It would also be asked: "Should there have been more brigade involvement in the detailed planning, in particular as to the depth of penetration into Rossville Street, especially as No 1 Para were unfamiliar with Londonderry?"