Bloody Sunday, Derry January 30th 1972

I have taken the liberty of blipping Don McCullin’s photo of troops in action in the Bogside, Derry taken in 1971. From the book of the exhibition at the Tate in 2019. It’s the best illustration I can find for today’s anniversary, as it captures the faces of the soldiers, and two local women they are running past. 
On that day 50 years ago 13 people were shot dead and 15 or more injured when the Parachute regiment opened fire without warning on a peaceful civil rights march, opposing imprisonment without trial (internment) which had recently been introduced. None of the victims was posing a threat to the soldiers, a subsequent public enquiry found. The families of the dead campaigned for decades to have the names of their relatives cleared. 
Many were shot while fleeing from the soldiers, and others were shot while trying to help the wounded. No soldier has been found guilty for his actions on that day. The Saville inquiry, which took 12 years and reported in 2010 spoke in its conclusion of ‘unjustifiable firing causing the deaths and injuries’ and said that the British paratroopers ‘lost control’.
On the other hand, I can imagine some of the individual soldiers were 18 or so, and terrified.