Fifty years on, Bloody Sunday remains an open wound

On Bloody Sunday: A New History of the Day and Its Aftermath
by Those Who Were There
JULIEANN CAMPBELL
(OCTOPUS BOOKS, 384 PP, £25)
Tablet bookshop price £22.50 • tel 020 7799 4064

What is it like to be hit by a bullet? To Joe Friel, a 20-year-old Inland Revenue employee, it felt “no harder than the tap of a couple of fingers”. But within seconds, “a big gush of blood came out of my mouth. I shouted, ‘I’m shot, I’m shot!’” 
Friel at least survived the attack on civil-rights marchers in Derry by the 1st Battalion Parachute Regiment on 30 January 1972. Thirteen others did not, while a further 17 were injured. The soldiers claimed they were returning IRA fire; 38 years later, the British government admitted that none of the victims was carrying a gun.  

Julieann Campbell’s uncle was among those killed, and her skilfully constructed book weaves together dozens of first-person accounts – some new, some from archives – to create a vivid, albeit partial, picture of the terrible day. The witnesses range from Billy McVeigh (“local resident and teenage rioter”) to the late Bishop Edward Daly.