Remembering the Fallen: on this day in 1971, Guardsman Paul Nicholls, 1st Battalion, The Scots Guards, was killed in Belfast.

His patrol had been carrying out a cordon-and-search operation on St. James' Crescent off the Falls Road. They approached a house which they did not know at the time had been taken over by at least four gunmen. The lance-corporal who was in charge of the patrol reported that Guardsman Nicholls, the radio operator in the four-man patrol, was walking some distance behind him when he heard a series of single shots fired in rapid succession. He saw Guardsman Nicholls lying on the ground, having been shot in the back, and called for help but Guardsman Nicholls was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.

Paul, from Caithness, the middle child in a family of five sons, was 18 years old.