The inquiry yesterday began hearing the graphic evidence of a woman who, as a teenager, cradled a dying victim on Bloody Sunday and saw another victim killed instantly by a high-velocity bullet just feet away.
Mrs Geraldine McBride said her shock and trauma were such that for 20 years she could not talk about the events of January 30th, 1972.
Then an 18-year-old factory worker, she had fled down Rossville Street when she saw soldiers enter the Bogside and open fire. A youth who she later found out was 17-year-old Hugh Gilmour, was running slightly ahead of her.
She said she heard two shots, which came from her right. She felt the bullets passing her and heard the youth gasp and say he had been hit.
With another youth, Mrs McBride helped him around the gable-end corner of Rossville flats and laid him down. When she saw his wounds, she knew he was dying - "I started praying. I couldn't believe what was happening." Mr Gilmour was still conscious at this time, she said. She watched him die as his head rested on her knee.
Others then pulled her into a group huddled together at the gable-end wall, as they heard the army vehicles move closer.
"Bullets were bouncing everywhere. I could see them ricocheting off the ground, throwing up the dirt," said Mrs McBride. "We were all scared. I remember thinking that I did not want to die."
She could hear a man's voice somewhere calling: "I don't want to die alone - somebody help me." Barney McGuigan, huddled at the wall with her, said he would go to help.
Holding a white handkerchief in his hand, he moved slowly from cover, as the others kept calling to him to come back. Mrs McBride said she remembered hearing two distinct shots, and described the injuries caused as the second hit Mr McGuigan's head.
Her statement, on which she will be questioned next week, describes how she was later taken to hospital in an ambulance and saw soldiers there roughly manhandle the bodies of the dead. Police examined and swabbed her hands and those of other people. "I could see soldiers all about chatting normally, laughing and drinking tea," she said. "I couldn't understand why they were at the hospital after they had killed people."
Another witness, Mr James Joseph Kelly, described seeing three youths fall, apparently dead, as they ran across Glenfada Park. A soldier then appeared in front of Mr Kelly. "He stuck the barrel of his gun into my abdomen." He described being clubbed and bleeding from the head as he was taken with others to Fort George army base, where they were made to run a gauntlet between two lines of paratroopers who beat them with lengths of rubber hoses or batons, as German shepherd dogs on leashes were incited to bite them.
Mr Kelly identified the soldier who arrested him as David Longstaff, a Parachute Regiment private who has not sought anonymity.
Another witness's recollection of a particular incident was queried by counsel for a number of relatives of victims. Mr Brian McLaughlin said he recalled, after the shooting stopped, seeing about six or eight bodies laid in a row on the ground as a priest knelt and administered the last rites.
Mr Arthur Harvey QC suggested to the witness that there was an abundance of evidence that there were never six or eight bodies laid out together like that on the ground.
The witness agreed with counsel that one of the most distinctive images of Bloody Sunday was of coffins laid out in a row in the church in Creggan.
The inquiry will resume on Monday.