I still suffer from PTSD — when something comes into my peripheral view quite suddenly I can have flashbacks, and vertigo can make me vomit in the street. Sometimes I can just break down. That sense of striding up and the determination. It was such a busy day. Now I know that I was standing next to the bomber — we had boarded together.
I was very aware that I needed to act, so I took off my scarf and tied a tourniquet around each one. I felt this extraordinary experience then, of being given a choice as to whether I wanted to live or die. The other one was telling me it was going to be challenging but I could live. After that, nothing was the same again: 7 July is an absolute demarcation line in a split life. I look at everything before as life number one, and everything after that as a second chance. Going back to work was interesting.
I do feel angry. In I moved back to Australia and had a little girl, Amelie. I wrote in the book of condolences on the first anniversary that there are 26 lives we lost on my train that I would like to enhance my life for, and I want to show that the tactics of terrorism will never win.
Gill is supporting 10 charities. For more details, go to gilltalks. I worked in recruitment and was earning well, enjoying myself. I was a normal year-old. I remember running late that day. Wood Green station was closed, so I got on at Turnpike Lane. You felt the train shake — I thought we had crashed and derailed. It was quiet at first and then gradually there was screaming. My reaction was to be very still — being a Muslim, we have a belief that when a person dies it was written to happen that day.
I tried to ring my mum, but the mobile networks had gone down, so I stayed and watched the live news on the TV. After a while, I started walking home. After that day, it emerged that the attacks were carried out by four guys who were Muslim.
Why would you do that? What ideology did you possess? From then on, questions played on my mind. Could they have been helped if something had been detected within the home? My work there started to focus on counter-terrorism: working with at-risk and radicalised individuals, and their families.
This was an attack on my faith. I wanted to understand that mindset and change it. Not long afterwards I got married and became a mum to two daughters. Just earlier this year, my eldest daughter came to Buckingham Palace with me to receive my OBE and that was a really proud moment. I can still remember the trip to the train station: walking there, the weather, what I was wearing. There was a blue dot on the platform at Finsbury Park and that day I stood there, exactly where the doors would open.
I was sat down reading a sci-fi novel. By complete coincidence there was an explosion in the story. The real sound was massive. It was like two bits of metal colliding and there was this immediate feeling of being outside, as if I was on a rollercoaster. I remember sitting in total darkness for 25 minutes, helplessly listening to horrendous things around me, then the driver opened his door and said we were going to walk out.
Those of us that could, did. I count myself really lucky because on the concourse I was able to get through to my wife, Sarah, and she came to meet me. I feel like we shared the experience of that day. In hospital, they cleaned up my head wounds. They were throwing away the tissues and I remember the banging of the metal bin lid made me jump out of my skin. After that, I was in denial for a bit.
A few of us on the Piccadilly line train created a website called Kings Cross United, where we could talk and share information, such as how to fill out complicated medical forms. We ended up using the site in its original form until , when the technology was decommissioned.
At that point I asked my employers, Microsoft, if we could switch to some software we used at work called Yammer. I was just moving us over when the Boston marathon bombing happened. I picked up the phone on an impulse and rang around Boston. Eventually someone got in touch from the Boston Medical Help Service and we set up an online network for the Boston survivors.
Since then I have written a white paper on how to generate and use a survivor network anywhere in the world. Last year I presented it at the White House. For us it was kind of obvious: you want to be able to share legally and emotionally sensitive information in one secure place.
Our site is still a bit of a safety blanket. Although I was back to work and on the tube the next day — I felt defiant about that — there are milestones to get through. This year I will go to the memorial service. Next year, maybe not. I had the best job in the world. I was the director of law at the London Development Agency. The mayor of London had decided he was going to bid to host the Olympics and I was fortunate to be the person responsible for the land acquisition of the Olympic Park.
You can imagine the pandemonium and excitement when, on 6 July, we won. I got home late and had been working so much in the build-up that on 7 July I decided to take the day off. My plan was to take my son, who was six at the time, to school and pick him up. There was lots of paperwork for the bid still to be done.
The carriage I usually sat in was the end coach because it was closest to the exit at Tower Hill where I got off. This particular day I was running for the train, so I ended up sitting in the first one.
But in the photos produced afterwards, I was standing next to the bomber. Weirdly there were a few things that passed through my mind just before he detonated.
In October, an impatient Hitler abandoned plans for an invasion and turned his attention elsewhere. Road signs were removed or turned the wrong way, and farmers put old pieces of machinery in their fields so planes couldn't land, but if the Germans had achieved a foothold, we'd have been sunk.
But I was young and believed we were invincible then. We trusted what our leaders told us and we were sure we'd win. Morale never got low. In fact, Hitler's moves had the exact opposite effect. We would say there was no way Hitler was going to defeat us. Though Hitler shelved his invasion plans, London and other large cities continued to absorb punishing German air attacks.
The incendiary canisters, which could start ravaging fires, caused particular concern. Shell Oil organized us into groups that had to go up on the roof to watch for incendiaries that might catch the roof on fire. We grew up with buckets. I actually have a picture of a friend's wedding day and there, right behind her in the wedding picture, are two buckets.
The whole sky was red and you could smell the fires burning. One morning I walked across London and all the streets were littered with debris. Fires still raged. Hoses were everywhere, the firemen with their blackened faces looked dead tired. It took me more than one hour to walk what normally took me 20 minutes.
Still, MacKenzie claims, 'we adapted to any new thing that came along,' whether it be a new weapon or a food shortage. Rationing imposed hardship on most, but somehow people managed to get through. Her mother received ration cards that enabled her to pick up needed items. We had small portions of meat, and some fruit and vegetables. Eggs were almost non-existent. I remember holding an egg in my hand once, staring at it and trying to decide how I wanted to use it--scramble it, fry it, or use it for baking.
Neighbours exchanged surplus items with one another to acquire something they needed. MacKenzie's mother picked up extra meat in this manner, and people in the country came in with extra vegetables to trade for cigarettes.
Soldiers would often bring us some. I don't know where in the world they got it, but we didn't care. When the American soldiers came, they had all kinds of things and were so generous.
We were supposed to draw a line on the bathtub, about five inches up, that we were not to go above. I doubt that anyone cheated on it. In , MacKenzie joined the R. Her job involved tracking British and German fighters for Fighter Command. As fighters moved about, MacKenzie plotted their direction, height, and numbers on a huge map.
Sometimes we plotted German aircraft and we knew that they were right over our heads! The gruelling work taxed each plotter's endurance, for she had to keep track of any plane entering her sector. This was particularly so when an entire group of British planes soared either to intercept enemy planes or cross the Channel into France. We had to have total concentration.
Some of our all-night sessions, where we might have a ten-minute break for soup or something hot, were exhausting. I'd get into a chair with a mug of soup, but the next thing I knew someone was shaking me and saying it was time to get back to work. I would not have sipped anything from the mug.
We all had this feeling that we held all these lives in our hands. It was quite a responsibility. Luftwaffe planes continued to plague England until late when Allied troops pushed German forces back out of range into France. By then, however, a newer weapon terrorized Britons.
On 13th June, , ten V-1 'doodlebugs' leapt from launchers in north-west France toward England. The V-1 Vergeltungswaffen 'reprisal weapon' was basically a flying bomb that delivered a warhead of 1, lbs and travelled at a maximum speed of miles per hour.
The weapon hammered a heightened fear into British souls already pummelled by years of German fighters and bombers. On 14th June alone, V-1s smashed into London. Londoners suffered 10, casualties in the first week of attacks.
Winston Churchill later wrote that the 'blind impersonal nature of the missile made the individual on the ground feel helpless.
0コメント