A Derry woman who was going out with a British soldier on Bloody Sunday said today soldiers who were not members of the Parachute Regiment were angry at the paras following the shootings on Bloody Sunday.
Ms Maureen Gerke also confirmed at the Saville inquiryher police officer brother Mr Danny Barr had been attacked by a large crowd and seriously injured in his native Bogside six months before the Parachute Regiment shootings there which left 13 people dead.
The attack happened when he was walking to his grandmother's after Mass and he only escaped being handed over to the Provisional IRA because Father Edward Daly - later Bishop of Derry - intervened the hearing in the Guildhall was told.
Giving evidence on the final day of public hearings before the summer recess Mrs Gerke told Mr Gerald Elias QC, acting for a number of soldiers, that she was going out with a member of the Royal Greenjackets stationed at Ballykelly, Co Derry, identified as Inq 222, on Bloody Sunday.
She stated: "I remember speaking to my boyfriend who told me that there had been trouble back at the army barracks between the regular soldiers based in Derry and the Paras.
"The regular soldiers felt that the paras had gone in and caused trouble and that it was the regular soldiers who would face the brunt of people's hostility."
Mrs Gerke lived in the Rossville Flats in the Bogside in 1972 and said she watched events from her home, including the shooting of the youngest victim Jack Duddy (17) whose body was carried from the scene with Father Daly famously to the fore waving a bloody handkerchief.
Another of the dead, Hugh Gilmour (17) was a friend of a brother of Mrs Gerke and she commented: "Hugh Gilmour was a bit of a jack-the-lad but there was absolutely no harm in him whatsoever.
"My family knew his family and I remember that we went to see them after Bloody Sunday."
She said in her statement, adopted as she entered the witness box today: "It was very difficult for my whole family after Bloody Sunday.
"Having a brother in the police made life very difficult, particularly for my parents. I felt like people were saying 'Your brother's in the police and look what they are doing'.
"People also knew that I was going out with a soldier at the time but my parents were very good at protecting us from all this.
"The atmosphere in Derry was awful. It was almost like someone had ripped the heart out of the whole town."
Mrs Gerke said she provided a statement in 1972 of the shooting of Jackie Duddy including claims acid was thrown from a flat in the car park.
She stated: "I felt that giving my statement was something I had to do because the young lad I saw get shot was not doing anything wrong when he was shot."
Earlier the inquiry heard that a priest who attempted to help men shot on a rubble barricade across Rossville Street that day was forced back by army gunfire.
Mr Lawrence Connor claimed Father Denis Bradley was waving a white handkerchief as he stepped out from the shelter of a gable wall onto the road but had to retreat under fire.
Mr Connor said he was with the large group of people behind the gable which looked onto the rubble barricade across the street on which the mortally wounded John Young, William Nash and Michael McDaid lay.
Another witness, Ms Mary McCann, described William Nash's father, Alexander, being shot as he attempted to rescue his son.
Ms McCann said she was watching the scene from a flat beside the barricade and saw the man put his hand up, then she heard a shot or shots and then saw his hand fall.
"I think I heard him shout, 'come and see what you have done to my son'," she stated. "He repeated this a number of times over several minutes," she continued.
The public hearings were adjourned until 10a.m. on Monday September 3rd.
PA