Derek Wilford Colonel Derek Wilford , OBE , was the British Army officer commanding the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment in Derry , Northern Ireland on Bloody Sunday in 1972 in which at the time he was serving as a Lieutenant Colonel . Col Wilford was exonerated by the Widgery tribunal . On 3 October 1972 he was appointed OBE . However , the Saville Inquiry , many years later , determined that Wilford had expressly disobeyed an order from a superior officer , Brigadier Pat MacLellan , who prohibited Wilford from sending troops into the Bogside . The Saville inquiry found that MacLellan was not to blame for the shootings . Lord Saville said Colonel Wilford was wrong to send soldiers into an unfamiliar area where there was risk of attack from republican paramilitaries , in circumstances where the soldiers ' response would risk civilians being killed or injured . Saville suggested Wilford “ wanted to demonstrate the way to deal with rioters in Londonderry was not for soldiers to shelter behind barricades like ( as he put it ) Aunt Sallies while being stoned , as he perceived the local troops had been doing , but instead to go aggressively after rioters , as he and his soldiers had been doing in Belfast ” . He added : “ His failure to comply with his orders , instead setting in train the very thing his brigadier has prohibited him from doing , cannot be justified . . . Colonel Wilford should not have launched an incursion into the Bogside . ” Colonel Wilford was known locally in Derry in the aftermath as the ' Butcher of the Bogside ' . On 4 November 1972 , Wilford captured the Ulster Volunteer Force leader Gusty Spence , then on the run from prison . He has been outspoken against the criticism at his leadership and has always defended the actions of his soldiers since the incident . He always maintained his soldiers were fired upon first and in 1992 in a BBC documentary he stated " I don ' t believe my soldiers were wrong " , reasoning " If you get into an enormous crowd which is out to make mischief you are in the first instance a party to it . " In 1998 he stated he was angry at Tony Blairs intention of setting up the Saville inquiry and that he should not apologise for it . In 1999 , speaking on BBC radio he angered the relatives of those killed and injured during Bloody Sunday by suggesting that almost all Northern Ireland Catholics were closet republicans . Although he later apologised for his comments , the army distanced itself from him " Wilford has claimed he has been made a scapegoat since that day and has been abandoned by the Military hierarchy and British Government . Despite this he didn ' t retire from the army until 1983 , though he stated he felt constantly picked over for promotion , ending his career only grade higher than in 1972 at Colonel . During this time he stated he became estranged with his wife and divorced her to pursue a relationship with another woman he had met while he was posted in Belgium . He became estranged from ex - wife and son who couldn ' t forgive him for walking out . Wilford left the Army a decade later . In 2000 , he was living outside the United Kingdom . According to the " Derry Journal " , as of 2010 , Wilford has been living in Belgium for a number of years with his new wife and daughter . In the wake of the release of the Saville report , he has refused to make any further comments stating " I don ' t want to talk about it . It ' s all been said . "