Derek Wilford
Derek Wilford commanded the paratroopers who shot dead thirteen unarmed civilians in Derry on 30 January 1972. Born in 1933, he was a career officer who had served in Cyprus and elsewhere and took command of the 1st Battalion, the Parachute Regiment in 1971. The battalion had an aggressive reputation and had been involved in the Ballymurphy shootings in Belfast in August 1971, in which ten civilians died. On 30 January 1972 a banned civil rights march against internment without trial moved through Derry. Wilford's battalion was deployed as an arrest force to detain rioters, with orders from the brigade commander to launch a scoop-up operation only through a specified barrier, and not to conduct a running battle down Rossville Street. He sent his companies through the barricades and into the Bogside. Within about ten minutes soldiers fired some 108 rounds. Thirteen people were killed outright and a fourteenth died later; the youngest were seventeen. Several were shot while crawling away or waving white handkerchiefs. The Widgery Tribunal, reporting eleven weeks later, largely exonerated the army, and Wilford was appointed OBE that year. The Saville Inquiry, which sat for twelve years and reported in 2010, found that none of the casualties was armed or posing a threat, that soldiers had lied, and that Wilford had disobeyed his orders in sending his men into the Bogside at all. David Cameron apologised in the Commons. Wilford, who left the army in 1981, has continued to defend his soldiers. He died in 2020.
- Lived: 1944 CE – ?
- Nationality: British
- Roles: military_leader
