Ballymurphy inquest: Soldier on lookout as bodies recovered
Posted by Jim on May 2, 2019
By Will Leitch BBC News NI
A former soldier told the Ballymurphy inquest he was acting as a lookout as bodies were recovered from waste ground opposite Henry Taggart Army base.
Four people died as a result of shooting there the day internment was introduced in August 1971.
They were Joan Connolly, Joseph Murphy, Noel Phillips, and Daniel Teggart.
M572 was a member of 6 Platoon, B Company 2 Para. He told the court he served several tours in NI, but did not fire his weapon in 1971.
The inquest is looking into the shooting dead of 10 people in the Ballymurphy area of west Belfast in August 1971.
The shootings occurred amid disturbances sparked by the introduction of internment without trial in Northern Ireland.
M572 described shooting at the base coming from the surrounding area, beginning with a burst of four to five rounds from a Thompson submachine gun.
He said thought he saw smoke after that gunfire.
He said he thought Army sentries in sangars outside had returned fire at later shooting, and agreed that they would have been members of his platoon.
He was questioned at length why he did not remember the names of any of his fellow platoon members.
M572 said he had served several tours with many fellow soldiers, and had been new in the platoon at the time.
Later he was able to provide some extra names of soldiers he thought might have been present, to assist the coroner.
Later on 9 August 1971, he said, he went out alongside an armoured vehicle with about 10 soldiers on foot to recover the bodies of civilians lying in the manse area.
M572 said he was acting as lookout, and spent the time watching the surrounding area, without recovering any bodies himself.
He said that later, when back in the Henry Taggart base, he saw the body of a woman placed in a corridor to make room for casualties in the medical room.
‘Ashamed?’
Later M572 said he had suffered from PTSD after leaving the Army and had cut off all contacts with former colleagues and “tried to bury things”.
A barrister for the family of Joseph Murphy asked if the gaps in M572’s memory were because he was ashamed of what happened that night.
“I am not ashamed of anything, I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of,” M572 replied.
The barrister asked if he might be ashamed of what other paratroopers had done.
The former soldier said he did not believe they had, but added: “If they done anything reprehensible, then I would be ashamed.”
M572 added that he was anxious that his memories of several years of tours in Northern Ireland did not overlap and cause him to give false information to the inquest.