Sir, - In his book Bloody Sunday, James Gleeson asserts that the "frightening clatter of sub-machine guns" was added to the volume of rifle fire: "The scene was made more noisy as machine-gun bullets ripped into the galvanised roof of the dressing rooms in which scores of people had packed themselves for safety."
Ernie O'Malley in one of the classical works on that period, Army Without Banners (1967) - previously published in 1936 under the title On Another Man's Wound - also states that those killed and wounded suffered by "machine-guns and rifles". He says: "I had heard the distant rattling." - Yours, etc.,
Auburn Road, Dun Laoghaire. Co Dublin.