Gail Sheehy march and as British soldiers moved in when the boy was struck in the face by a bullet. That day, January 30, 1972, became known as Bloody Sunday or the Bogside Massacre. Sheehy was trapped inside a Catholic ghetto which was under the authority of the IRA. She made her escape in a car over pastureland to Dublin. There Sheehy traveled to several safe houses and interviewed Rita O'Hare. The whole experience affected Sheehy deeply and on her return to the States she had a difficult time writing the story and developed a fear of airplanes which she later described
Free Derry Free Derry Free Derry () was a self-declared autonomous nationalist area of Derry, Northern Ireland, that existed between 1969 and 1972. Its name was taken from a sign painted on a gable wall in the Bogside in January 1969 which read, "You are now entering Free Derry". The area, which included the Bogside and Creggan neighbourhoods, was secured by community activists for the first time on 5 January 1969 following an incursion into the Bogside by members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). Residents built barricades and carried clubs and similar arms to prevent the RUC from entering. After six