Opinion

Denis Bradley: Fifty years on from that infamous day, and still the tears flow

Denis Bradley

Denis Bradley

Denis Bradley is a columnist for The Irish News and former vice-chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board.

St Mary's Church, on the Creggan estate, during Requiem Mass for the 13 who died on Bloody Sunday. Photo: PA/PA Wire
St Mary's Church, on the Creggan estate, during Requiem Mass for the 13 who died on Bloody Sunday. Photo: PA/PA Wire St Mary's Church, on the Creggan estate, during Requiem Mass for the 13 who died on Bloody Sunday. Photo: PA/PA Wire

After all the dead had been taken to the morgue and the injured taken to the hospital, I walked towards the Cathedral.

Amongst a small group of people standing outside the gates was a British Army Catholic chaplain. He had visited the parochial house on a few occasions and he and I had crossed swords about what was taking place on the streets of Derry.

He asked me what had happened. “A massacre”, I said. “Your army have massacred the people”. He said nothing for a few moments, and then “I hope that is not true”, but let’s say a prayer”. He bowed his head and recited the words of the Our Father. I had just come from saying prayers over the dead and the dying, but I was relieved and touched that someone was now praying over me.

The hush had already begun to fall over the city. The word of the killings at the anti-internment march was spreading beyond the Bogside. How many and who was killed, was not yet clear, but the hushed tones indicated that the thousands who had walked on the streets that day knew that something enormous and transformative had happened.

My friend, Fr Tom O Gara, had gone in an ambulance to the hospital with some of the wounded and then on to the morgue. He came to tell me what he had seen and the number of people he thought had been shot dead. We both needed to talk, and we both needed to walk. The streets were mostly deserted save for small groups of young people at their usual corner hangouts. They wanted to talk too. Not the jousting or giggling or shyness that a conversation with two young priests would usually arouse. Quiet determination and anger that there would be a response to what the army had done that day. And they were going to be part of that response. The truth and the wisdom that violence begets violence and that an eye for an eye makes people blind was going to struggle against the depth of this anger. As we walked on through the streets, we agreed that as well as killing the people on Bloody Sunday, as this infamous day would become known, the Parachute Regiment had also mortally wounded the Civil Rights Movement.

But for now, the dead and the wounded had to be attended to and the faces and the pictures in the head had to be given a name. The young man that I had said prayers over was Michael Kelly. Among those I saw lying behind a mound of rubble on Rossville Street were Michael McDaid and William Nash. The body of the boy lying in the square as we were frog marched away by the Paras was Jim Wray. The body near the entrance to the high flats that I could see from across the street was Paddy Doherty. As I stumbled back into the area after an officer shouted to ‘Let the padre go’ I knelt with others as they prayed. I think it was Gerard McKinney, but I have never been sure. The shock was setting in.

And the story had to be told. The eight or nine priests who had been on the streets met to decide their response, to hold a press briefing, to tell what they saw. It was the first and perhaps the only act of synodality that I experienced within the Church. There was interview after interview with world media. I vaguely remember doing one with a French television crew.

They sent me a transcript of what I said to them fifty years ago and returned last week to interview me on the streets where the killings took place. I was surprised when I had to interrupt the interview as the tears welled up.

The well of grief and sadness that is Bloody Sunday is a deep one.