Customer Reviews

Those Are Real Bullets: Bloody Sunday, Derry, 1972

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In terms of sheer body counts, Bloody Sunday was not the worst day of the Troubles, as a number of IRA and Loyalist atrocities were to kill more people. However, the negative impact of Bloody Sunday on the course of the Troubles was incalculable. The assault on a civil rights march of Derry Catholics by the Parachute Regiment was intended to round up "Derry young hooligans," with the expectation of a few exemplary Catholic casualties, while reasserting the rule of English law in the "no-go" Catholic ghetto of the Bogside. Instead, 13 unarmed youths and middle-aged men were killed, and the British Army found itself in an operational, logistical, and public relations disaster. Political means toward achieving reform in Northern Ireland were discredited for the next 25 years, and 1972 was to become the bloodiest year of the Troubles. When the British Army arrived in the North in the 60's, they were often welcomed by Catholics as protectors from Protestant pogroms; after Bloody Sunday, every British soldier in Northern Ireland was to lead the miserable and paranoid existence of an unloved army of occupation, a constant target of unseen bombers and snipers.

The strength of Pringle and Jacobson's book is in its detail, stomach-churning at times. Although their style is journalistic and their prose plain, I supposed it must be effective, as I frequently found my eyes welling up with tears of rage. Most accounts of Bloody Sunday focus on the out-of-control nature of the Paras, but Pringle and Jacobson appropriately detail the command failures that led to the tragedy: the ill-conceived use of an elite, lethally-armed regiment to perform a police function; the decision to place civilians at risk; the lack of any overall political strategy to deal with the North; the failure of radio communications that placed the Paras beyond control of headquarters.

Aside from the political significance of Bloody Sunday, the drama of that day illuminates human nature at its best and worst: the teenaged first aid worker Eibhlin Lafferty, preventing a rabid soldier from finishing off a wounded man, asking him, "Are you mad?"; Barney McGuigan, waving a handkerchief to come to the aid of the dying Paddy Doherty, saying "They'll not shoot me" moments before his head was blown apart; Alex Nash, grievously injured running toward his dying son, Willie; the priests who braved gunfire to administer the last rites; the hapless Catholic businessman McKinney, stuck in the march on his way back from meeting an associate, shot by the army with his hands up.

I would have given the book 5 stars, but the account of the political aftermath of Bloody Sunday is perfunctory, and more follow-up on some of the participants would have been interesting. What happened to Alana Burke, who apparently had a spinal injury after been struck by a Saracen? What happened to the young soccer player whose leg was shattered by a bullet? How did the tragedy affect the lives of those involved in years to come?

There is a decent map of the Bogside included, which could have been more detailed, and might have been labelled with the location of exactly where the fatalities occurred.

Pringle and Jacobsen, the reporters who broke through the governmental code of silence to get to the truth behind Bloody Sunday, present a highly detailed and thoroughly engrossing report of the events of January 30, 1972, where 13 unarmed Catholic protesters were shot dead by British paratroopers. The authors provide an unflinching look at the chaos and horrifying events of that awful day. They also detail the events leading up to the incident, and pull no punches in looking at the causes and fallout from the indident. This is a must read for anyone interested in the events currently shaping Northern Ireland.

This book is a good source for the topic of Bloody Sunday. It is from a journalist view of the tragic days of Blooy Sunday. Such events are still talked about in the British Parliment and the Saville Inquiry is reviewing the then handling of the Bloody Sunday event. If you've never read anything about the "Troubles", you will become passionately amazed regarding the events following up to Bloody Sunday.

When 2002 rolls around, the Irish Republican Army will commemorate the 30th anniversary of a tragic, yet defining moment in its history.
On Sunday January 30, 1972, 13 Catholics were killed and another 16 wounded when British paratroopers opened fire on a demonstration march through the Northern Ireland city of Derry.
The event became known as Bloody Sunday, and was chiefly notable for two historic outcomes.
The first was that those responsible for the violent deaths of unarmed Catholic protesters passed unpunished through the subsequent British government inquiry by Lord Chief Justice Widgery.
This in turn had the effect of swelling the ranks of the IRA, transforming it from a ramshackle organisation run by a handful of rusty Carbine-toting extremists, into a formidable hardline military organisation, capable of spending millions of dollars on arms smuggled from Libya and the American Irish community.
The reprisals from Bloody Sunday saw more than 3000 people killed during the next 25 years, as UK ``safehavens'' such as Birmingham, Westminster and Whitehall were hit by assassinations and bombings.
Those Are Real Bullets is an enthralling account of the events leading up to and during the course of Bloody Sunday, put together by two journalists from the British Times Sunday Insight team.
Peter Pringle and Philip Jacobson combine first-hand knowledge, witness accounts and hindsight to deliver an engrossing, if extremely violent, narrative of the massacre.
Both the British military and the victim's movements on Bloody Sunday are re-traced in detail, and while Pringle and Jacobson's effort is perhaps not as objective as lauded in the promotional blurb on the cover, Those Are Real Bullets is compulsive reading for anyone interested in the struggle for total demilitarisation of Northern Ireland.
Slightly off-putting at first is the overuse of military terms, and a glossary of acronyms may have come in handy for those unfamiliar with the situation.
But these soon become minor concerns once the narrative hits the streets of Derry, and should in no way discourage the reader from turning away from this essential account of Bloody Sunday.
Anyone with a slightly delicate constitution should be warned of the book's highly-graphic nature, right down to tracing the track of every bullet through each victim's body.
It also includes some stunning news photography, including Frenchman Gilles Peress' serial account of the death of Paddy Doherty.
A must-read.

With so many great titles about the "Troubles" this book indeed stands out. I covers Bloody Sunday, the people involved, and the events that lead up to the massacre. At first the book is confusing with the Authors jumping from person to person, and discussing the many factions and in-fighting between the many factions of the movement. So, if you are a casual reader on the subject, you might find the book confusing at first (I did and I read alot about the troubles). The book is told from the Irish point of veiw, which covers the real sorrow of this massacre.

I found this to be one of the most poorly written books I've ever read. Not recommended at all. While explaining different situations in the book, the authors jump all over the place and finally come back to the point I think they were trying to achieve. The one plus, a ton of interviews with eye-witnesses. As you read through, these testimonies become too much and too often.

If you are trying to learn the history of the Troubles (not specifically Bloody Sunday)I recommend Belfast Diary or Killing Rage. I just started on The History of the IRA by Coogan and I am already hooked. I'm only a couple chapters in, but I feel it will be a great book.

This is a book that examines the events leading up to, and encompassed by, the infamous Bloody Sunday incident in Derry, Northern Ireland. One of the book's strong points is the level of detail with which the events of the day are examined. However, the analysis seems to be biased in favor of the nationalists. Still, there is alot of valuable content in the book as long as one recognizes that it represents but one point of view and is not necessarily impartial. For some additional information, there is some valuable commentary on Bloody Sunday in Tony Geraghty's book "The Irish War: The Hidden Conflict Between the IRA and British Intelligence".