Fateful shot that changed both our lives – soldiers share unexpected friendship
Richard Moore doesn’t remember much about being shot as a ten-year-old. One second, it was a bright spring afternoon in Derry and he was running home across the school playground.
The next, amid screams and shouts, he was being carried maimed to the school canteen. “My teacher, Mr Doherty, asked me, ‘What’s your name?’” he recalls today.
“When I said, ‘Richard Moore’, he was in a bit of shock because he knew me very well but I was so injured he couldn’t recognise me. And then I remember being in the ambulance with my daddy and my sister.”
For a while it looked like the head injuries caused by a British rubber bullet at the height of The Troubles in Northern Ireland were so catastrophic Richard might die.
In the event, he survived but lost the sight in both eyes. It was a month before his parents could even bring themselves to tell their son – still bandaged up – that he would never see again.
“I remember crying myself to sleep that night, thinking that I would never see my mammy and my daddy again,” he recalls.
After the tragic events of May 4, 1972, Richard, now 61, could have become yet another victim of The Troubles; one of tens of thousands touched in different ways by the tragic conflict.
But his story is extraordinary. He is someone who not only picked himself up and has led a brilliant life, but also who forgave and became friends with the soldier who inadvertently blinded him.
The story of Richard’s friendship with former Royal Artillery captain Charles Inness comes at the end of a compelling, thought-provoking new five-part BBC2 series about The Troubles, Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland.
Their story of reconciliation against the odds helps tie up the series, proving that forgiveness is possible, as long as the people involved desire it enough.
Charles was a young soldier on his first tour of duty in Northern Ireland when he fired the shot that hit Richard – an incident which has haunted him his entire life.
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Tension was sky high in the province after civil rights demonstrations against the treatment of Catholics had turned violent and were brutally suppressed. Neighbours turned against each other and the streets became a virtual war zone.
“Life had become very unpleasant for the vast majority of people at that time,” recalls Charles. “Every day someone was being killed or maimed – it was violent and difficult – really desperate straits.”
On January 30, 1972, Bloody Sunday – or the Bogside Massacre – saw the shooting of 26 civilians by British paratroopers during a protest march in Derry. Fourteen of them died, among them one of Richard’s uncles – his mother’s brother.
In the months that followed, there was daily violence on the streets and Richard’s primary school was situated at the centre of it. Near his school was a heavily-defended police station. To protect the station, there were two Army lookout posts and a host of armoured vehicles. It bore no resemblance to anything you would relate to as a police station,” recalls Charles, now 81.
“It was, in essence, a small fortress manned by some 30 soldiers. Violence was a daily and nightly occurrence – from shootings to locals throwing rocks.”
Every evening, a single policeman would be ferried in via armoured convoy so officials could claim the station was manned.
“It was political expediency which made no sense whatsoever but it was so they could say they had a police presence across the province.”
Despite their subsequent friendship, what happened on that spring day in May 1972 remains contentious. Charles believes local youths had found a scaffolding pole and were sticking it through the slits of an armoured vehicle to attack the occupants.
“I was called down to take control of the situation and get them to go away,” he recalls.
“The only thing we really had available to us were these very elementary rubber bullets. We fired thousands of those things over that period and normally all they resulted in was a bruise to the leg.” Richard had just come out of school and saw nothing of the incident. He felt he was on safe ground as this was a school playground.
Then the rubber bullet smashed into his face from just ten feet away.Charles didn’t see him and knew nothing about it until later. “I was told, ‘The person that you hit with a rubber bullet was a ten-year-old boy and he may well die,” he remembers. “The shock, the horror, was unbelievable. It was disastrous. It was a major traumatic experience and stayed with me for the rest of my life.”
Richard credits his parents with bringing him up to neither hate nor dwell on what happened to him. Despite his injuries, he finished school, studied at university, worked as a publican and eventually had a family of his own. He subsequently set up a charity helping youngsters in war zones, Children In Crossfire, raising millions of pounds.
When he was in his early 40s, he decided to try to meet Charles. “When you peel everything in my life back, both the challenges and the positive things I’ve experienced were all very much dictated by my blindness,” he explains.
“I saw that as involving two people: me and the person that fired the rubber bullet. And I felt, in a funny kind of way, I was in a relationship with somebody I didn’t know.
“I didn’t know anything about him – and whether he thought about me. I wondered whether he regretted what happened. And I thought that I wanted him to know that I am happy, I am content and I forgive him. I wanted to send a light into a shadow that was there to say that I was okay.”
Charles, who served in the British Army for 40 years, was shocked to receive Richard’s letter. He had thought many times about the boy he had injured and carried a gnawing unease inside him.
“It was a beautifully written, extraordinary document with absolutely no animosity in it,” he recalls. “Because of the way it was couched, I had no apprehension about meeting him.”
Charles replied and, while he didn’t immediately offer an apology, that would come later, in 2020, he confessed that, had he known the consequences of his actions in advance, he would never have fired the fateful rubber bullet. Charles lives in the Scottish Borders and their first encounter was in Edinburgh in 2006 after an exchange of letters. Since then, the pair have met at least once a year.
They have stayed at each other’s homes, met each other’s family and even visited the Dalai Lama together in Dharamsala, Northern India. The Dalai Lama said future generations would draw inspiration from their spirit of forgiveness and compassion.
While they are in so many ways very different people – Richard wears his heart on his sleeve, while Charles has the stiff upper lip you’d expect of someone with his military background – their bond goes way beyond the chance incident in 1972 that inextricably bound them together.
Today they work together to spread a message of reconciliation, speaking in front of thousands of people every year. “That first meeting formed the basis of friendship which has lasted and will continue for the rest of my life,” Charles adds.
“The best way I can put it is that, when I die, there are two people who are going to speak at my funeral, one of whom is Richard.” Richard adds: “The important part of my story is not being shot and blinded but it is reaching beyond it. I’m happier because I can do that. Good people can do bad things and Charles is a good person who made a monumental blunder.”
It was accepted the maiming of Richard was completely unintentional and Charles faced no official action. Their subsequent warm friendship today overshadows the tragedy that linked them. “Our friendship means a lot to me; I really value it,” Richard explains.
“I want to show that with the lack of anger, the presence of forgiveness in my life and the friendship that’s built up, people can see that it is possible to move beyond what has happened. We don’t have to agree on everything – and we don’t – but we can build our own story. That’s what me and Charles have done.”
- Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland is on BBC2 on Monday nights and available via the BBC iPlayer
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