Book excerpt: Who were the people who marched, who fired from the flats, the barricades, who died? In narrative form, a modern myth is unfolded and revealed fully, and so tells the story of the recent history of the armed struggle in Ireland. Free Derry Corner, 30 January 1972, site of one of the pivotal events in modern British history. A civil rights march was led into an ambush. Thirteen civilians died, many killed by the British Army. It was the first instance of the British Army firing on its own citizens since the Peterloo Massacre in 1819 chk]. It ruined British authority in the province for a generation and was the single identifiable cause of the rejuvenated armed struggle that would last for the rest of the century.