The voice of a wounded Bloody Sunday eyewitness, tape-recorded on the day of the atrocity, was played to the inquiry yesterday and delivered a vivid and moving description of the events.
Mr John Barry Liddy, now deceased, breaks down several times as he tells how other civilians - including his nephew, Michael Kelly - were shot before him, and how he was arrested by paratroopers and repeatedly kicked and beaten.
The recording of Mr Liddy was made in a house in the Bogside just before he was taken to hospital for treatment for his injuries.
Aged 45 at the time, he was employed as a barman by the NAAFI (Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes) at the Fort George base in Derry. He had served previously in both the British army and navy, and in the UDR.
When the tape was introduced by Mr Arthur Harvey QC, the inquiry heard Mr Liddy relate, in deliberate but often halting and shaky tones, how he was in Columbcille Court in the Bogside when "the British army opened fire indiscriminately against unarmed civilians whose only weapons were stones".
He described how he helped his brother, Seamus, who was hit by a rubber bullet, and as he did his 17-year-old nephew, Michael Kelly "was shot down. He was hit in the stomach from a rifleman firing from Derry's Walls".
Mr Liddy said a Catholic priest, Father Bradley, knelt to administer the last rites. "While he was doing so, the British army were still firing into us and four more innocent people fell, three of them consequently died . . . Father Bradley went out on to the road to administer the last rites . . . As he went out the British army opened indiscriminate fire on him.
"Myself and another lad went out and pulled Father Bradley back. I got out my white handkerchief and went out at the corner . . . and waved it in the direction of the British army. As I did so, a burst of automatic or semi-automatic fire hit the side of the building where Father Bradley and I were standing."
He said a young man at the other side of the road had been hit in the leg and, "as he tried to crawl forward on to cover, the British army pumped bullets into him. He appealed to us for help, but the fire was so heavy we couldn't get across the road".
He told how they were shot at again as Father Bradley again tried to get out to the four who were shot.