Soldier F, a paratrooper in his seventies, faces murder
charges over the killing of two people at a civil rights march in Londonderry on
30 January 1972 when the First Battalion Parachute Regiment was ordered to
police the event. He held the rank of
Lance Corporal at that time.
Soldier F joined the Parachute Regiment in 1966 and left the
army in 1988 as a Regimental Sergeant Major after a distinguished career which
included a long spell in Special Forces.
It strikes me as typical that the British military and
political establishment are allowing a single NCO to carry the can for Bloody
Sunday while senior officers and
politicians of that era escape the consequences of their orders to enjoy a
comfortable retirement with their pensions, peerages and knighthoods. They were fully aware that the Parachute
Regiment was a highly trained and aggressive assault unit, so which military genius thought it would be
a good idea for them to police a civil rights march?
On Friday last thousands of bikers, many of them
ex-servicemen, protested against the treatment of Soldier F by staging a mass
ride-out in Central London. I say: “Good
for them!”
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