Scotsman Obituaries: Col. Derek Wilford OBE, officer who commanded Parachute Regiment soldiers in Bloody Sunday massacre

His introduction to the army was with service in long gone English county regiments. He was given a National Service commission in the Royal Leicestershire Regiment and in 1955 secured a regular commission with the Royal Lincolnshire Regiment. He then transferred to the SAS, serving with it in operations in Malaya and Aden. He distinguished himself at the army’s staff college in Camberley and trained with the US army’s airborne forces in North Carolina.

In 1969 he joined the Parachute Regiment as a Company Commander and in late 1971 he became Commanding Officer of the First Battalion in Belfast amidst rapidly worsening communal violence and mounting attacks on the security forces by the IRA. To some it seemed an eccentric decision to give a loner with Wilford’s aesthetic tastes such a command in a regiment renowned for its tough and aggressive ethos. Back then its members, with their distinctive maroon berets, thought of the army as “craphats” and many of them took, to say the least, a flexible view of what was acceptable “in aid of the civil power” in Northern Ireland.

The First Battalion was part of the 39 Brigade in Belfast under Brigadier Frank Kitson, who was already known as an exponent of uncompromising measures to crush internal insurgency. When internment was introduced in August 1971, he ordered 1 Para into Ballymurphy in West Belfast where large-scale rioting had broken out, along with attacks on the area from nearby Loyalist estates. The IRA was there too and the recent inquest has documented very fully what happened. Soldiers have every right to return aimed fire but in the three days after introduction of internment on 8 August ten unarmed civilians, including a local priest, were shot dead.

Not all the lethal shooting was the work of paratroopers. Other units were there too but this episode has been called a precedent for what happened in Derry five months later, with the big difference being that the media were not in Ballymurphy to cover events. When the inquest into the Ballymurphy deaths was held Wilford, advanced in years and suffering from Parkinson’s disease, was not called as a witness but he was allowed to contribute a written statement which threw little light on what had happened.

The nationalist Bogside and Creggan districts of Derry were still, in 1972, “no-go” areas for the security forces, with daily and sustained attacks on them by stone, and sometimes by petrol bomb-throwing crowds. As the Civil Rights Association’s 30 January march through the Bogside in protest against internment drew near, there was political pressure on the army and much talk among senior officers about tougher action against what they called the “Derry Young Hooligans”.

Until the end of 1971 army policy in Derry had been to use troops on the ground to contain the rioters within their “no go area” and to conduct strictly limited “scoop up” operations. Wilford was among those who were contemptuous of this approach, as was Kitson, who agreed to 1 Para being sent to Derry in readiness for the 30 January march. There were serious premonitions among other army units already in the area and among the RUC about the possible consequences of this decision.

1 Para was a big battalion of nearly 700 men and only one of its Companies, Support Company, was ordered to the Bogside, ostensibly to step up the rate of arrests of young rioters, who were in fact outnumbered by people returning home from the march. In response to some sporadic fire within the area Support Company launched a full combat operation, with lethal results. Immediate questions arose as to whether Wilford had gone beyond his original orders. The Widgery Inquiry which took place later in 1972 questioned him about his actions on the day but wanted to exonerate the army from blame. Even so, it described Support Company’s firing as “bordering the reckless”.

Bloody Sunday haunted Wilford and he later claimed it was a factor in the break-up of his marriage and estrangement from his son, who also served in the Parachute Regiment. Although in December 1972 he was awarded the OBE and subsequently became a full Colonel, the incident effectively blocked his career prospects. He stayed in the army another nine years, taking time to study for an Open University degree.

Inevitably, when Tony Blair set up the Saville Inquiry, Wilford was called as a witness. As with the Widgery Inquiry his performance was unrepentant, and sometimes evasive. In TV interviews he had already rejected any criticisms of his battalion. He did drop one or two hints about orders from above and then retreated from them. He could never, it seems, admit, even to himself, that some of his men had been party to an atrocity that would lead to far worse ones by both the IRA and by Loyalists.

In 1993 Wilford moved to Belgium with his second wife and a daughter. They settled in Montignies-Lez-Lens, a picturesque village of medieval origin not far from the 1914 battlefield of Mons. He taught art classes in the locality and took to wearing his hair in a ponytail. In 2010 he was located there by a reporter from the Irish edition of the Mail on Sunday. His response to inevitable questions about Bloody Sunday was “It’s all been said. I don’t want to talk about it”.

The trouble was, and still is, that much more will be said and written about Bloody Sunday, even as key figures in what happened begin to take their secrets to the grave.

Perhaps the last word can be given to Liam Wray, whose brother was shot dead as he lay on the ground, already wounded. Of Derek Wilford he has said “For his family, I understand there will be sorrow. I take no delight in his death but I’ll not be shedding any tears either.”

Obituaries

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