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Precisely how the shooting started is not clear, and the matter is now subject to a judicial inquiry undertaken by Britain's Lord Chief Justice, Sir John Widgery. What is certain is that trouble began as the march was ending, and just as the first speaker, Member of Parliament Bernadette Devlin, began to address the crowd. At the foot of William Street, where British troops had blocked the entrance to Londonderry's main business district with armored cars and barbed-wire barricades, there was the clatter of stones, bottles and bits of steel as the troops were attacked by what the army described as "200 or 300 young hooligans." The army responded, first with gas grenades and rubber bullets—ugly black projectiles half as thick as beer cans—then with water cannons that sprayed the crowd with purple dye.
Soon Saracen armored cars roared into the Bogside, and out jumped paratroopers wearing camouflage suits and red berets. Some of the paras, swinging their clubs, charged at the retreating crowd and arrested 43 men and boys. Meanwhile, other soldiers took up positions beside buildings and began firing. As bullets whistled down the long stretch of Rossville Street toward the Free Derry corner where a lorry used as the speaker's platform stood, people ran, dived and crawled for cover. The speakers and march organizers flattened themselves against the top of the lorry to keep from being hit. Around them the air was filled with the cries of the wounded and dying.
The shooting lasted 18 minutes, and it ended with dreadful statistics; 13 Catholics had died and 17 others had been wounded. Among the victims, all between the ages of 16 and 41, was a father of seven children.
Lord Widgery's inquest will try to establish who fired first, whether the paras were justified in their actions, and whether, as the Catholics firmly believe, the troops were acting under specific orders from Stormont, seat of the hated Ulster government. A British army spokesman insisted that the paratroopers had been attacked first with nail bombs and "a total of 200 rounds of ammunition fired indiscriminately in the general direction of the soldiers." He also said that the troops had fired only at "identified targets" —meaning gunmen and terrorists of the outlawed I.R.A. The British claimed that four of the dead men were on their "wanted" list, but they were not named, nor were their alleged weapons produced.
The army's immediate report was later corroborated by Lord Balniel, Minister of State for Defense, in an address to Britain's House of Commons. According to his account, as the soldiers were arresting rioters, "they came under fire from gunmen, nail bombers and petrol bombers. Between 4:17 and 4:35 p.m., a number of these men were engaged. Some gunmen and bombers were certainly hit and some almost certainly killed. The soldiers fired in self-defense, or in defense of their comrades who were threatened. I reject entirely the suggestion that they fired indiscriminately into a peaceful and innocent crowd."