A uniformed paramedic who helped the former Bishop of Derry tend to a dying teenager on Bloody Sunday was assaulted by troops three times that day, the Saville Inquiry heard today.
Mr Charles Glenn, who was 19 at the time, told the hearing he was arrested by paratroopers after returning from carrying the dead or dying Jackie Duddy to safety in the group led by the then Father Edward Daly waving a white handkerchief.
He said he was hit for the first time - a blow to the chest with the butt of a rifle - shortly after troops entered Derry’s Bogside district when he challenged a soldier striking an elderly man over the head with the barrel of his weapon.
Later that day he was arrested, spreadeagled against a wall, stripped of his uniform, kicked between the legs and hit across the foot, losing a toenail, he told the hearing.
Mr Glenn, like other witnesses, claimed he was forced to run a gauntlet of troops, being struck with the butts of their guns, on arriving at the Fort George military base in the city.
"It was terribly noisy as we entered the building since the paras outside were screaming at the tops of their voices while inside we could hear dogs barking fiercely. It sounded like Hell," he said.
Mr Glenn also claimed he saw both the commanding officer of 1 Para, Lieutenant Colonel Derek Wilford, and the Army's second-in-command in Northern Ireland, General Robert Ford, at Fort George.
Mr Glenn was later processed for prosecution, accused of throwing stones, but told the hearing: "It would be grotesque for someone in my position to be throwing stones."
PA