Advance warnings of deadly military intent on Bloody Sunday were explored yesterday as the inquiry began hearing the first direct evidence by witnesses, followed by cross-examination.
Those first called were civilians, some of the more than 700 who have provided statements to the inquiry. They were all people whose evidence concerns Sector 1 - that is, everything that happened before the Parachute Regiment went into the Bogside on January 30th, 1972.
The chairman of the tribunal, Lord Saville, wished Mr Daniel Gerald Porter "good luck", saying he "had the distinction, if this is the correct word, of being our first witness".
Mr Porter related how, around the time of Bloody Sunday, he was living with his wife and two children in a village called Old Coulson, near the British army barracks of Caterham in Surrey.
He recalled conversations while he played darts with soldiers in a local pub in mid-January 1972. One night they said they would be going to Derry to "clear the Bog", by which he understood they would be clearing away the barricades. They said they would be landing with tanks and he got the impression they would be going to Northern Ireland pretty soon.
He was worried because his wife and children were in Derry at that time, visiting his sister-in-law.
He decided to phone his wife to tell her to get out of Derry, but when he dialled the local operator from a telephone kiosk he was told calls were not going through to Northern Ireland.
However, the local operator knew him and agreed to put him through, "providing I didn't talk about anything to do with security". He got through to his wife, but when he told her to take the children out of Derry because the army "would be clearing the Bog", the line was cut off and he could not get a reconnection.
Mr Edwin Glasgow QC, acting for military witnesses, put it to Mr Porter he was mistaken, asking him: "Are you quite sure that an English telephone operator listened to your conversation and cut you off when you talked about military matters to your family in Ireland?" The witness replied he was, and he had been told it was for security reasons that no calls were going through to Northern Ireland.
Mr John Roddy said he had been a helper on a milk float delivering to the army barracks in Derry, and he had got to know a black soldier who often invited him and his driver to breakfast in the barracks canteen.
In the week before the march this soldier told him that if he knew "anyone in the republican movement who had any control of the march" he should tell them it should not be held as the paratroopers "were coming in and meant to do serious damage and even to kill people".
He did not know anyone in the republican movement and did not pass on the message.