BLOODY SUNDAY INQUIRY: A journalist told the inquiry yesterday he sought out a telephone on Bloody Sunday to call the British army and ask it to stop firing.
Mr Dick Grogan, an Irish Times journalist who was in Derry on Bloody Sunday, said he was absolutely stunned when he heard gunfire which he was sure was high-velocity rifle fire.
There were many single shots fired in rapid succession by many weapons, he said. He did not know why the firing had started or where it was coming from.
As the gunfire got closer, he followed a number of people into a doorway and the firing continued. After a lull in the fighting, he went out and there was a further "very rapid success ion of shots".
"After five or 10 minutes the firing died down again. I was in shock. I had to try and find a telephone to contact the office and tell them that something had happened and to telephone the army to ask them to stop firing," he said.
He was walking along Lisfannon Park when he saw a man standing outside his front door.
"I asked him if he had a phone. He replied that he had and that the army was on the end of the line at that very moment. I went inside his house and picked up the receiver, immediately asking whoever was on the other end of the line to order a ceasefire. The voice at the other end told me that I was, in fact, speaking to the Irish Army in Donegal." Mr Grogan said he didn't know the owner of the house at the time but he turned out to be Mr Vincent Coyle, a civil rights organiser.
He said he was astonished when Mr Coyle told him the Army was on his phone. He was "once again astounded" when told by the voice at the other end of the line that he was speaking to the Irish Army in Donegal.
He explained there had been a major incident and ambulances might be needed. By that time he had already seen two bodies.
He added that the army had earlier opened up with rubber bullets and began firing CS gas canisters on the crowd which had turned out for the civil rights march. They were responding to stone-throw- ing rioters.
"Three canisters of gas landed around where I was standing and I could not breathe. I had to leave the area to regain my breath," he said. He also said he recalled hearing blast bombs exploding that morning. Mr Grogan said he attended an Official IRA press conference in the Creggan estate on the evening after Bloody Sunday.
"About six to eight of my fellow journalists went with me. We were blindfolded and driven for 10 minutes and were then taken into a room. The OIRA then announced to us that they would exact their revenge on the British army for what had happened." He did not see their faces.
Mr Grogan was questioned about his reportage of the incidents in the following day's Irish Times. In one report he wrote that, soon after the shooting died down, he met rank-and-file members of the Provisional IRA in the Bogside and they emphasised they had not been involved in the shooting.
"They said only a few Official IRA members had fired back at the troops and that they had used a variety of non-automatic weapons, including a revolver, a .303 rifle and a .22 rifle.
The latter was used ineffectually, it seems, to return fire at the soldiers shooting from the city walls," the report said.
Asked by counsel for the inquiry who these rank-and-file members were, he said he could not recall speaking with them now, but if he wrote that he had spoken to them he must have been satisfied as to who they were at the time.
He stood over the accuracy of the report.