No Ordinary Monday
The No Ordinary Monday podcast brings you the most incredible tales from people's working lives. Each week, we meet someone whose work is anything but ordinary - they may be clearing landmines, blowing up movie sets, or exploring uncharted caves.
We dive into the how, the why, and a life-defining moment they’ve experienced on the job. Whether it’s spine-tingling, hilarious, or just plain jaw-dropping, their stories will challenge what you thought a “career” could be—and maybe even change the way you think about your own.
No Ordinary Monday
First on the Scene at a Plane Crash (Tony Bonnar) - Part One
The red emergency phone had never rung before. When it finally did on December 21st, 1988, trauma nurse Tony Bonner and the Medic One rapid response team knew they were facing something unprecedented. A jumbo jet had crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland, and they were racing toward one of the worst aviation disasters in history.
Tony's journey to that pivotal night was anything but straightforward. From seminary school at age 11 where he was preparing for priesthood (despite becoming what he calls an "evangelical atheist" by 15), to psychiatric nursing where he handled volatile patients including two men both convinced they were Jesus Christ, Tony's career path defied convention. Eventually drawn to emergency medicine for its adrenaline and the opportunity to make life-or-death differences, he found himself on Scotland's elite trauma response team, Medic One.
Nothing could have prepared them for Lockerbie. Racing through stormy winter weather at breakneck speeds in a police Range Rover, Tony and his colleagues tried reassuring each other they could handle what awaited. The scene that greeted them was apocalyptic – houses obliterated, fires burning everywhere, jet fuel running down gutters, and wreckage scattered across miles. Following a local GP's lead up Tundergarth Hill, they made a surreal discovery that encapsulates the jarring nature of the disaster – the cockpit of Pan Am Flight 103 lying in a field among grazing sheep.
This vivid, first-hand account offers rare insight into the human experience behind disaster response. Beyond the technical aspects of emergency medicine, we witness the fear, doubt, and determination of those who step forward when tragedy strikes. Join us for this two-part episode as Tony recounts his extraordinary experience at Lockerbie and shares how it eventually led him toward an entirely new career as a criminal prosecutor.
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It's 7.30pm on December 21st 1988. It was a cold and stormy night in Edinburgh, scotland. It was a pretty typical evening in the emergency department. That was until the red emergency phone rings. It's the first time the red phone has ever rung. It's the police and the news is utterly shocking A jumbo jet has crashed in the town of Lockerbie. Hundreds of people are feared dead and Tony Bonner, a trauma nurse for the Rapid Response Unit, medic 1, is ordered straight to the crash to search for survivors with his team.
Speaker 2:And we were terrified. You know, the biggest challenge that an accident, emergency or a trauma nurse or doctor has is when you bite off the big one. Have you got what it takes? And I think we all felt that this was the biggest one ever and we didn't really know if we could function in these circumstances or not.
Speaker 1:As they searched Lockerbie out of the darkness, a mangled cockpit of a jumbo jet appeared lying in a field filled with sheep. This was a night that Tony wouldn't soon forget. Hello and welcome to another episode of no Ordinary Monday. Thank you so much for joining us. I am your host, chris Barron, and each week I sit down with a guest whose job is far from ordinary. We'll explore how they got there, what it's really like behind the scenes, and then they'll reveal the single most unforgettable experience of their career. In today's episode I'm joined by someone who was actually one of the initial inspirations for this podcast.
Speaker 1:Tony Bonner has a fascinating and twisting career journey from seminary school to psychiatric nursing, to becoming a criminal prosecutor later in life and full disclosure. He is also my uncle. Tony's unforgettable story happened in December 1988. At the time he was part of Medic 1, which is Scotland's legendary rapid response trauma unit. That night he and the team were called to one of the worst air disasters in history the Lockerbie bombing. So in this two part episode, tony vividly recounts his Lockerbie story for the first time on record and reveals how his career shifted after that really extraordinary experience. Please subscribe now so you don't miss out when part two comes out next week. With all that said, I am super excited to bring you guys this story You're listening to. No Ordinary Monday, let's get into the show.
Speaker 1:All right, tony Bonner, welcome, welcome. Thank you so much for taking the time today. How are you doing? Good thanks, good, yeah, good. Well, I want to thank you for taking the time for this podcast. It's fantastic to have you because I know that. You know, what's great for me is that you're my uncle, so we I know you're a wee bit. I know you've got a fascinating tale, especially when it comes to the jobs you've done before. You know, I think you know. Just to list off a few things, you know you were there at the locker b uh first response to locker b bombing, which a lot of people will be very familiar with. You went on to have an entirely new career after that, being a broker, fiscal or a what do you call it for, a more international term for that?
Speaker 2:A district attorney would be the American equivalent, but just a prosecutor.
Speaker 1:So a criminal lawyer, a criminal prosecutor? Yes, so you've had a fascinating career and I think that's what's brilliant, is that hopefully we can cover a bit of ground and you can share a bit with that for us. So I guess where I want to start is right at the beginning. What did you want to be when you grew up? Obviously, looking back now, it was maybe a little bit different when you were seven or eight.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you the absolute honest truth, chris. I didn't have a first idea what I wanted to do. My childhood was interrupted by when I was 11. My parents sent me to a seminary, which was a preparatory college, to become a Catholic priest from a Catholic family. And I was only 11 and I was away from home for the next three and a half years, which were all kind of my formative years. They took me out of high school at the end of second year and dropped me back in it at the start of sixth year, and so my formative years were strange. So I probably had more jokes in Latin than I did in anything else, which was a sad admission. But it meant that I arrived in high school at the age of 17 and I didn't have a clue about anything Girls, careers, nothing Up until that point, it was a very religious trajectory, yeah.
Speaker 2:But the bizarre thing about it I was pretty sure I was an evangelical atheist by the time I was 15. And I knew deep down inside that I wasn't good priest material as a consequence but that's kind of a tough thing to tell your parents. My parents, my grandparents, took a lot of pride in the fact that I was at seminary.
Speaker 1:So you didn't have a choice. You didn't have a choice in the matter.
Speaker 2:Well, you know my parents might say well, you know, you chose to go, but no 11-year-old chooses something like that. I don't think, and I certainly didn't. When did I decide what I wanted to do with my life? Actually, I can't think of any point where I I had a determination to do a specific thing interesting so you went in 11 and then you said by 15.
Speaker 1:you knew you were an evangelical atheist and you and you had to keep up the charade for a while, did you? Yes, I did, yes, I did.
Speaker 2:But I eventually told my parents. It came as no surprise to my dad. My dad was a hard-working car mechanic but he was a good judge of people and he knew that I was doing this for them, not for me. And they also knew that I would do anything to get out of having to go to the church. And they also knew that I would do anything to get out of having to go to the church, which really was a parter for ten, Chris. I think even a casual observer would have decided I wasn't the one.
Speaker 1:So you basically kept up the charade, but then at some point did you came clean or did you just get to a point? Because I think, seminary school, basically what happens is you join seminary school and then you're on a trajectory for priesthood, essentially for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2:I was. I was the one that all my friends at seminary felt was the one most likely to make it all the way. What's?
Speaker 1:all the way Priesthood.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean Michael Bifter. I knew inside myself and I think my close I still have two friends from back then, two close friends from back then and I think they knew pretty much that I wasn't, that my heart wasn't in it, my intellect wasn't in it, my intellect wasn't in it, it didn't work for me on any level whatsoever.
Speaker 1:So when I decided to leave, and so you kind of landed in high school, 17 or so, and not a Scooby, just not a.
Speaker 2:Scooby. And so what happened?
Speaker 1:you finished school, and then what was the trajectory? And not a scooby, not a scooby. And so what happened? You finished school, and then what was the trajectory from there?
Speaker 2:Listen, I would love to describe to you some gently and emerging vocation in life, but I can't. My mum was a psychiatric nurse at the time and she worked in the local psychiatric hospital near where we lived. And I got a job a summer job as a nursing assistant in this psychiatric hospital because I needed some money. I wanted to buy a bass guitar because I thought it looked cool. I couldn't play it, you know, these are details. So I got a summer job and I got my bass guitar and went back to finish the next year at school and got a summer job again and my mum said well, you're pretty good at this. She reckoned, why don't you apply to become a student nurse, student psychiatric nurse? So I just kind of fell into it.
Speaker 1:I mean, what did that summer job entail as a psychiatric nurse? What were you getting up to?
Speaker 2:Well, as a care assistant were you getting up to? As a care assistant you would be attached to a ward in the hospital the ones I can remember. There was one full of unfortunate men who had Alzheimer's and such, and then I worked in a ward which had some people of limited mental ability and a wide range of social skills or lack thereof. So you just really spent all day trying to organise their lives, you know. But I didn't find it particularly challenging. I thought it was. You know, I could do it. There are a lot of people who can't do it, you know. So I suppose I had a head start and certainly they took me on as a student nurse in the South Lothian College of Nursing and Midwifery, Took me on straight away. So I found myself a qualified psychiatric nurse working in Edinburgh without actually thinking that I'd made any decision to arrive there at all.
Speaker 1:That's crazy Interesting. And then you've I mean I'm sure that being a nurse, you know you've got.
Speaker 2:you've probably got some fascinating tales, I'm sure, from all over so at the bright old age of 21 I might have been 22 I'd find myself working shifts in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital, had a locked ward and because I was a staff nurse at this point, fully qualified psychiatric nurse, I had a badge telling everybody that I was fully qualified and in fact I didn't have a first idea of what I was doing.
Speaker 2:But I would find myself in charge of this locked ward in the Royal Edinburgh Hospital and it had 15 beds and the most disturbed people in Edinburgh, male and female, were all locked up in the same ward at the same time and you can imagine it's not a recipe for peace and quiet. Were all locked up in the same ward at the same time and you can imagine it's not a recipe for peace and quiet. I can remember a couple of situations where one poor chap was in who was labouring under the belief that he was Jesus Christ and whilst he was quite mad, unfortunately that afternoon another Jesus Christ got admitted and you can imagine none of them were so bereft of knowledge of the Bible and how the story should have gone, but both of them were pretty sure there could only be one Jesus Christ. What would that be? The other was obviously an imposter and must be disposed of forthwith.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, so there was a battle of the Jesuses.
Speaker 2:There's no doubt about it, and I remember I was in the. The deuteron was the one end of a long corridor and door into the ward was at the other, and we were having a lively day, as was pretty usual, when this second guy was brought in and what he'd done is he'd taken a white bed sheet and cut a hole out the middle and the door swung open and this guy was standing at the far end of the corridor with his arms out welcoming his flock, and I remember just thinking it was almost like a mirage or something, or like a hallucination, that a celestial figure had just turned up at the far end of the world.
Speaker 1:Anyway, it all kicked off after that when they led Jesus on, but then that I guess in a place like that you've probably got to not always go by the book. You've got to find your own solutions a lot of the time.
Speaker 2:Right yeah, you've just got to just get own solutions a lot of the time, right? Yeah, you've just got to just get through the day. You know, whatever you know, there's a lot of serious analysis going on of people's psychiatric conditions and stuff, but actually you spent the day just trying to keep the peace.
Speaker 1:You started on this track of almost being a priest, fell into psychiatric nurse, absolutely Medic one, and then kind of just give us a very quick version of the entire thing up until today, just to give us a very abbreviated version of things.
Speaker 2:So the word that I've described was known as the intensive psychiatric care unit, and I decided that once I'd done that, I probably didn't want to go into any other part of psychiatry. Was known as the Intensive Psychiatric Care Unit, and I decided that once I'd done that, I probably didn't want to go into any other part of psychiatry. So I applied to do my general nursing, which was a qualification. I would need to work in a general hospital and I always had my eye on accident and emergency as being somewhere. I wanted to work, but my first job what was that? Accident and emergency as being somewhere.
Speaker 1:I wanted to work.
Speaker 2:What is that? It will become obvious to you, I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie actually. I like challenges in fast moving situations.
Speaker 2:Life and death, Certainly that. And I think a year and a half leading up to that I worked in anaesthetics and intensive care in the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh and that was a pretty exciting job as well. But accident and emergency was especially in Edinburgh at the time was a cutting edge of trauma care and I just wanted to be part of it, wanted to test myself in these difficult environment, very difficult environment it's.
Speaker 1:it's really interesting because some people I guess if you interviewed a lot of people in the medical industry, they might say oh, you know, I got into this because I wanted to take care of people, or you know, I wanted to try and help the world, or whatever. But you know that might be part of your answer, but really it's like you just wanted a thrill.
Speaker 2:You wanted something that got your heart rate going. That reflects really badly on me.
Speaker 1:No, no. What I'm saying is that I reckon that you're not the only one. I reckon that's the stock answer for a lot of people, but it might not be. The actual, true answer is what I was getting at, you know, because it is an exciting place to be.
Speaker 2:Yes, it is, but but also you know, like the fuller answer would be. I knew I was able to work in these environments, I knew I'd be okay and and the main motivating factor was you make the difference between people surviving and not surviving. So a large part of it was a desire to provide public service to I don't want to be over biblical about it, but you know to help your little man at a time where they really needed somebody to keep their shit together. And I was quite sure I was that guy. You know, and there are lots like me it's not just me, but you know, I knew it would be a challenging environment and I knew I could work there and I knew that there would be times where that would make the difference between people who I didn't know living and dying. So that was a part of it was was to care for people in difficult circumstances and how?
Speaker 1:how did you handle it? I guess there's always the first time someone dies on the table or near you, or because of you potentially.
Speaker 2:What was?
Speaker 1:it like the first time. How was that?
Speaker 2:Listen, I'm happy to put on the record that I don't think I've actually ever killed anybody.
Speaker 1:Well, that would put you in a difficult position with your later career. Well, that would put you in a difficult position with your later career.
Speaker 2:But there were times that there was nothing you could do to save somebody and I found that difficult Because it was kind of Almost like a rejection of your skills and abilities To actually lose somebody. Because actually the people I worked with and I worked with some of the best trauma surgeons and nurses, I think, anywhere in the world and we fancied our chances of saving everybody. So when the time came and it didn't happen, we were all gutted, you gutted. We were pretty much devastated. We'd become introspective, kind of look at our performance, almost like a post-match analysis of what had happened. But that's because we felt it. We felt that actually we'd let somebody down, whereas in fact I don't think anybody. If we couldn't save anybody, I don't think it was possible to save them.
Speaker 1:Do you remember the first time?
Speaker 2:I can't really, because I've seen a lot of death in both of my careers and there's nothing terribly memorable about it. People can die quietly and just look like they're sleeping, and people can die because they've just been hit by a bus and they look dramatically different, but nothing really sticks. No individual sticks in my mind. I can't remember the first time. I think the first dead person I saw was my grandfather when I was about 13. And then when I started, I saw some people dying when I did my psychiatry and again when I did intensive care. It was actually quite a usual feature of your day that somebody wouldn't make it.
Speaker 1:You're talking about the amount of death that you've witnessed at that time. That's obviously a low point, but what are the high points in that job?
Speaker 2:Well, the high points were working with an amazing group of people and you all had your eyes on the prize. Everybody wanted the exact same outcome. You learn how to do something that's really difficult with the very best. It becomes easier because of the skills and the knowledge that they've imparted to you.
Speaker 1:I guess a little bit further back we talk about Medic One. You're in Accent A&E trauma care unit emergency nurse. Just tell us what is Medic One, because a lot of people have no idea what this thing is.
Speaker 2:What do they do? Plus the? The evolution of, of, uh, out of hospital care now is unrecognizable. Now to what?
Speaker 1:it was back then.
Speaker 2:But then there were no paramedics and what Dr Little had done is that he had decided that, rather than because don't to be disparaging of the actions of ambulance crews back then and we're talking 1985, it was pretty much a scoop and run policy. You know, you come across somebody who's been injured on the street, pretty much get them scooped up and get them into hospital as soon as possible.
Speaker 2:But if you've had a cardiac arrest or you've just, you know, fallen off a building or been hit by a fast moving car, you need the best care and you need it immediately. Yeah, people knew this. So they purchased a van and kitted it out with all the emergency gear. And the van stood outside the emergency department and it was called Medic 1. In fact, I'll send you a photograph of me standing at Medic One with my uniform on and the necessary stethoscope around my neck.
Speaker 2:Love it Just give you a laugh and it was the only out-of-hospital emergency response team, I think in Scotland or the UK. I think the States were a wee bit ahead of that as a notion. But Keith Little wanted to take the research room to the people rather than bring the people to the research room, and that was pretty edgy at the time and you'd be called out to what kind of events at the time.
Speaker 2:And you'd be called out. To what kind of events, as we'll come on to. I ended up down at Lockerbie because I was rostered as the Medic 1 staff nurse on that day. But the more usual use of Medic 1 would be either cardiac arrest I remember one occasion where a guy was stabbed in the heart. So really just absolute emergencies that they don't have time to go, and drive out there, pick him up and bring him back.
Speaker 1:You have to bring the hospital to them. Very severe car crashes.
Speaker 2:Really bad car crashes don't have time to go and drive out there pick them up and bring them back. You have to bring the hospital to them. Very severe car crashes, really bad car crashes. We've got a lot of those and it would be called out only about three or four times a week. It wasn't, you know a daily thing.
Speaker 1:A couple of times a day day, but that would be unusual and, and I guess that brings us on to there was thankfully something like medic one on the day of the, the lockerby bombing um and I don't know if you can just take us through and we were coming on to the main chunk of the story here but just take it from every single moment, from the start of that day until everything. Just tell us how it went.
Speaker 2:It was 21st of December 1988, your Auntie Irene's birthday, and don't you forget it.
Speaker 1:Don't I forget it, never have, never will.
Speaker 2:And I'd got a big bunch of flowers. They were sitting in one of the sinks in the back room of the emergency department. I was on a back shift which was kind of one o'clock in the afternoon until nine o'clock at night. I was on for Medic One. I was the Medic One guy. So if Medic One got called out, the routine was that the most senior doctor, a junior doctor and the rostered staff nurse would go out as the Medic One team and we would all jump in this vehicle and head out to whatever it was.
Speaker 2:And it was an unremarkable day. The the phone went in the area that I was working in. The phone went and it must have been about the phone went and it must have been about between 7.15 and 7.30 that night. One of that certain emergency doctors I think he was from Dublin but he was a notorious prankster and it was him on the phone and I answered the phone call. I said, right, tony, I don't know what you're going to do with this piece of information, but it's important. And I said, okay, let's hear it. Tony, I don't know what you're going to do with this piece of information, but it's important. And I said, okay, yeah, let's hear it.
Speaker 2:You know, I think I came down with yesterday's rain. Anyway, I've just been watching the Channel 4 news and there's something flashed up saying that there's been a jumbogenic crash in the Scottish borders, you know. And I said where you go, you know, not falling for that old chestnut, you know. And I remember he said in the coldest tones that really caused me to snap to attention. He said, Tony, if you never, ever, believe me about anything, ever again, believe me now. Wow, yeah, yeah, I absolutely stopped him in the tracks. Dr Little I mentioned earlier was in the department at the time, for a good thing. I used to call him the boss, because that's what you do and he's the boss. And he was standing chatting to one of the senior sisters outside his office and I saw them standing there and I thought, well, I'm just going to go and tell them and we can discuss what we do about it. Anyway, in the boss's office was a red telephone. You know the old-fashioned telephones with the dials on them, yeah.
Speaker 1:the rotary phones, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, bright red sat at his desk and it was the hotline literally to Lothian Borders Police Headquarters. Wow, and it was there, for you know speed of communication. If something serious was going down, this was how the police would contact the NE Department and it had never rang. They didn't use it. None of the staff could ever remember the red telephone ringing.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:So I walked up to Keith Little and Maggie White was the name of his senior sister and I said to them pretty much what Chris had said to me. I said to them Liz, I don't know what to make of this, but you're as well hearing it when it goes from here. I don't know what to make of this, but you're as well hearing it when it goes from here, I don't know, I said, but I've just spoken to Chris Luke. He says that he's heard on the Channel 4 News that a jumbo jet has crashed in the borders. And they both looked at me as if I was daft. And then the phone rang.
Speaker 1:Wow, so Channel 4 News knew before anybody else.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm not sure how that happened, but that was a sequence of events. So I'm thinking it would maybe take the police 10 or 15 minutes to try and get their head around before they picked up their red phone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But I remember the three of us standing out in the corridor turning towards the ringing phone with look, absolute astonishment on the on our faces yeah, oh geez and of course the boss answered the phone and he was.
Speaker 2:What I had just said to him was confirmed by the police and they were requesting that Medic 1 was mobilised because they were not sure what was going on. But they knew it was big and you might think Scottish Borders is a good old distance from Edinburgh, but you've been to our home. It's 30 miles south of Edinburgh and Lockerbie's maybe another 40 miles on from that. So geographically it was right in the middle of cities that could respond Carlisle, newcastle, glasgow, edinburgh, manchester Stretch so we were actually in pole position but we were also the only out-of-hospital response team.
Speaker 1:None of those other major cities had anything. I don't think so.
Speaker 2:My recollection is no, they hadn't. Wow, but I think why the police were so interested in us was because we had our vehicle that had all our emergency kit already loaded onto it. And there were also boxes in the NE department which were the major incident boxes and in that were emergency supplies in the event of a major incident and they were boxes packed full of intravenous fluids and bandages and airways. You know, you can imagine, yeah, so that's what happened.
Speaker 1:So you load up the van Get all off yeah. So it was you.
Speaker 2:Keith, yeah me, keith, little. So how it panned out wasn't? The standard response would be we'd all jump in the van, mm-hmm, and that wasn't going to be good enough, because we were talking Lockerbie here and it was a few-year-old driveway.
Speaker 1:What time of day is this again? This is evening, right? It's night time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's half past seven in the evening.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's dark.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was dark, cold.
Speaker 1:it was dark, cold wintery night and a horrible night yeah yeah, that was sort of blowing a gale and rain and hail and all sorts. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was really, really unpleasant and, of course, in true fashion, we had all the emergency gear, but we didn't have a box that had extreme weather clothing for the staff in it.
Speaker 1:Oh jeez, you just had your overalls and whatever you brought from the street Wet, wet, wet.
Speaker 2:Oh jeez, a coat over the top. So we were woefully unprepared for the weather. But the police quickly came up with a plan, and that was to divide a medic one team in two, because obviously we weren't going to send a skeleton crew there was two consultants, two registrars and two nurses went. Three nurses went and Keith Little and Dave Steedman were two of the doctors, and Maggie White decided that they would travel by helicopter.
Speaker 1:That's brave. That's brave in those kind of weather.
Speaker 2:In the weather? Yeah, and the other half of the team would be taken down in a police traffic car. You know a high-speed road journey. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what about the van, but you need the van with all the gear, right?
Speaker 2:Well no, the van was an old Bedford van Chris. It had a top speed of about 60. We had the full expectation that one of the wheels would come off. There was no money in this kind of stuff at the time. It was cutting edge, but it was.
Speaker 1:It's a shoestring thing.
Speaker 2:Yes, very much, very much. So we took the gear out of Medic 1, apportioned it between the two teams, got the major incident boxes out, apportioned them between the two teams. And I don't know if you know where the old Royal Infirmary is in Edinburgh. It's at the top of a path called Middle Meadow Walk and there's a big path in the middle of Edinburgh called the Meadows and it seems within 15 minutes or so it may have taken longer, I don't think significantly longer a helicopter had landed in the meadows and our porters and whatnot reeled all the equipment down to the helicopter and by this time a white police Range Rover pulled up, you know, in clouds of blue smoke at the door, and we chucked those of us who went by car, chucked our gear in as much as we could get in the back of the Range Rover and we jumped in.
Speaker 2:So there was me and Lorna Sloan, both nurses. There was Colin Robertson who was one of the A&E consultants and a guy called Steve Cusack, a Dubliner, who was an A&E registrar. But there would be a senior doctor who was usually in training or recently qualified as a trauma expert.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. So you guys all bundle in the police, Range Rover gear in hand.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And then what were you? Obviously it's a long, it's probably an hour and a half, two hours something like that yes, drive.
Speaker 2:Well, it would have been, but the the police driver and I remember your nickname was was Titch, because he wasn't very tall. But boy, that boy was some driver, let me tell you. I don't think he did below 100 miles an hour at any point. And you know what a range rover is like. I know because your father, yeah, I mean, you're all about them, you know. But this guy is flinging this Range Rover around corners and roundabouts and he quite rightly decided that the quickest way to get to Lockerbie was not to take the small roads down through the borders which you're familiar with. He said we take the M8 to Glasgow and then we take the M74 south, and that's the route, because you can just pelt it Absolutely, absolutely. And that's the route. Oh, because you can just pelt it Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, and that's what he did. Bizarrely, because of the weather conditions, the team that left in the helicopter didn't arrive until after we arrived. We were quicker Wow by road, wow Than the helicopter had been in the storm that night.
Speaker 1:Because the helicopter was probably flying as a crow flies.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and you guys had a detour.
Speaker 1:And what was that car ride, like that must have been, it was crazy, it was terrifying.
Speaker 2:It was terrifying on a lot of levels. So we were scared about what we were going to, because by this time some information Was coming through it was a jumbo jet and it was really bad.
Speaker 1:That's all you had. It was really bad. Yeah, that was it. Yeah, jeez.
Speaker 2:We had no details whatsoever, we didn't have numbers or anything, but we thought a passenger jumbo jet, it was going to be carnage. We knew that and we were terrified, you know. And so there was a, the physical terror of hurtling through the night and this white torpedo ridden by a, a wee freddie merkin, which was bad enough, but we were also trying to reassure each other. Actually, if we stick to training, then we can do our best here. And it's always the biggest challenge that an accident, emergency or a trauma nurse or doctor has is when you bite off the big one. Have you got what it takes? And I think we all felt that this was the biggest one ever and we didn't really know if we could function, you know, in these circumstances or not so there was a lot of personal reassurance going on.
Speaker 2:Some of the discussion was led by Colin Robertson, the consultant, and he was quite keen to focus us on our priorities of life-saving and whilst we had seen a lot of trauma between the lot of us and seen a lot of death, we'd never seen anything on this scale. I don't think there's anything to prepare you for that, except what Colin Robertson was rightly saying was remember the basics of resuscitation. Let's not change what we know because actually, more than ever, this is the time we need it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, basics.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that was all going on. When said driver missed the turn off for a while 100 miles an hour, and I'm not exaggerating saying that realised his mistake, jammed on the brakes and pulled the handbrake. What, what? Jammed on the brakes and pulled the handbrake, what? Put the car around very expertly, 180 degrees and then floored it and shot back up the wrong way up the motorway until he got back to the front.
Speaker 1:You know it was very exciting. You went adrenaline, you got your adrenaline.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Coming out our ears, you know Jeez. And so we were passing a minibus full of coppers, full of police officers who had been scrambled from Glasgow and were heading down the M74 in a minivan, and so our guy wound his window down. The passenger side front window got wound down, said Freddy, pulled the Range Rover over right beside the police van and the driver of the van had wound his window down. And we got an updated account of what was going on by two police officers shouting at each other at 100 miles an hour going down two lanes of a motorway.
Speaker 1:I thought you'd stopped. You were still driving 100 miles an hour, shouting each other into the window.
Speaker 2:What's going on? It's bad. Hundreds of people fires, you know. So we generally got the gist of it.
Speaker 1:So you were building a pretty clear picture of what you were heading into by this point. This is bad.
Speaker 2:Really bad, and when we arrived at Lockerbie we could actually see, from a wee distance away, fires burning. Like a few miles out kind of thing and of course, in the course of the journey we'd already had this discussion that our biggest danger is going to be a aircraft fuel, because it's going to be a pretty full load of of great fuel or would have been involved for anyone who doesn't know it.
Speaker 1:The lock could be. Flight was taking off from lond London and going to. New York is that right? So it'd only been in the air for about 40 minutes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it took off at 25 past six that evening from Heathrow and it went missing from the radar at two minutes past seven that evening, so that's how long it had been in the air.
Speaker 1:So it was filled almost to the brim with jet fuel, Fuel and people as it turned out and people.
Speaker 2:And so we'd already had this discussion of a highly dangerous situation of having all this fuel. This time they didn't really know if the plane had crashed intact, if you like, or a crash landing that had gone wrong, or what it was. So we're trying to suppose where all the dangers were coming from, but that was certainly one of them we actually arrived at. If you look up other accounts of this, you'll see that an engine and a wing I think a wing as well landed on some houses, I think at Sherwood Crescent in Lockerbie, and two or three houses completely disappeared. There was a massive crater, houses were on fire, crater houses were on fire, cars were on fire on the motorway, there was debris everywhere, and this is what we arrived at and it was almost apocalyptic. It was something I actually couldn't have imagined. It looked like a film set, you know, and there was firemen were trying to put out some of the fires couldn't have imagined.
Speaker 2:It looked like a film set, yeah, you know, and there was. Firemen were trying to prepare some of the fires. There was no casualties to be seen, which was really our only interest that and staying alive and a fire officer came over and said there's nothing here for you If you go back up into Lockerbie. The police had set up a headquarters, you know, like a mobile headquarters, yeah, and so go back into Lockerbie and find that. That's the only advice I can give you. But that wasn't before. We had pulled a very quick stop and we'd all jumped out with our cases, our Medic, one cases, and I don't mind telling you, I was terrified, I absolutely bottled it, and then I realised that everybody else had as well, because it was a scene that I can't imagine.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So we said right, okay. So we gathered ourselves and got back in the car and were taken into Lockerbie town itself and by this time there was some order starting to emerge. There was a smell of fuel. It was running down the gutters.
Speaker 2:Oh really it was insane. There was wreckage lying around, there were some bodies to be seen, you know. So like we knew that from where the houses had been flattened. If there wasn't any casualties in these houses they'd be so, so lucky. But in fact you also knew there'd be nothing to be found of them, just crushed yeah.
Speaker 1:So is it. The first casualties you saw were not the locals.
Speaker 2:Well, my recollection is there are some forms to be seen lying on the ground which we took to be bodies, but we didn't look at those because others had, you know, the local ambulance man at a place and everybody would start to man up. Don't get me wrong. This wasn't a limited response in any way whatsoever. Every response within a radius of 50 miles was legging it towards Lockerbie. No doubt about that. It was a massive response and a massive response was required. But there was complete chaos.
Speaker 2:The ambulance service didn't, I think at that point, have a centre set up. The police did and the fire brigade did, but I don't think they were talking to each other meaningfully at that point. Everybody's absolutely doing their best in the most palatable circumstances. Bedlam, absolute bedlam, and all you could really do is react to what you were told with the capacity that you had. You know. So we were going to set up emergency ward 10 somewhere, you know. So you're just reacting to what was going on. So we were standing outside the range which was outside the police the police, I think, emergency van or whatever it was they had when a car pulled up and it was a local GP and he said he had just driven over the hill and he said that he saw some white debris on top of the hill, which we now know as Thundergarth Hill. And he saw some white debris up there and Colin Robertson, who was in charge of us, made the decision to say right, okay, you get back in your car and take us there.
Speaker 2:Because, if there's debris up there, there's going to be passengers. Other things yeah passengers.
Speaker 2:And that's what happened. The GP jumped in his car, started heading back up this narrow wee road, going up a hill just outside Lockerbie, with us behind him and a couple of ambulances who had tumbled onto the fact that we were the medic one team and that we were doing something. They thought having a bit of that, and that's how it happened. And it was more. It wasn't any more complex than that. People just were looking to see what they could meaningfully do and that was no more sophisticated than that. We had no idea what we were going to, no idea.
Speaker 2:Anyway, we got to the top of this hill and the GP stopped his car and he pointed over this dry-stained dike into this field and sure enough, we could pick out some debris there. So the field gate was opened and our vehicle was the first in, and it was a Range Rover which was perfectly suited to the terrain. It was absolutely fine. Headlights were on full beam.
Speaker 2:As we turned into this field and what we saw was in the arc of light imagine, a wide arc of a full beam Range Rover, green grass. It hadn't been snowing, the grass was green and there were sheep, lots of sheep. And as the vehicle turned round and the light, and this was the only light that we had, because there was no street lights or anything. We were on a hill and, as it turned round, what I saw was was grass and sheep, grass and sheep cockpit of a jumbo jet and sheep and grass and sheep Cockpit of a jumbo jet Lying on its side in the field right in front of us All right, that is where we're going to leave it for part one of this episode.
Speaker 1:Part two will be available next Monday, so please subscribe now so you don't miss out. And in that episode, tony takes us through the rest of his Lockerbie experience and his later career shift into criminal law and some of the amazing and grisly murder cases he was working on. He also reflects on his many jobs and shares some great advice for anyone interested in similar paths. A huge thanks to Tony for taking the time to share his story with us and a huge thanks to you for listening. For photos, links and more about this episode, head to knowordinarymondaycom and look for the episodes page.
Speaker 1:You can also find us on our socials Facebook, instagram, LinkedIn and more. You can find all them at no Ordinary Monday on Linktree. Come and join the conversation and if you enjoyed this episode, please do two really quick things Give us a five-star rating review and tell a friend. That's it. It really helps us grow the show, attract more amazing guests and inspire new listeners. This episode was produced, hosted and edited by me, chris Barron. Thank you all for listening. Hope you enjoyed the episode and have a great Monday everyone.