7.7: One Day In London Page #4

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could I release him from whatever

was keeping him trapped in there.

'And what I found was

the lower half of Stan's body

'was no longer attached to

the top half.'

And his torso

had been severed in that way,

by being blasted into the floor

from his seated position,

and obviously, it acted in

a very sort of knife-like way.

Very soon, and I don't think

I can even give you

a measure of 30 seconds,

a minute and a half, I don't know,

a very short space of time, um...

his life ended.

He stopped breathing,

and as you do that,

and the brain starts to shut down

and your muscles relax,

and I was able to lower Stan

to the track.

I did it for...

partly selfish reasons

for my own comfort,

that I'd done what I could

and he wasn't left

in that foul position,

and also, because, um...

I just felt it would be, er,

the right thing to do.

I noted also that

his eyes were still open,

and I do remember actually

closing his eyelids, because...

For one real positive reason,

it felt wrong to me, incongruous,

to be still looking at a world

that he was no longer part of.

I said a short prayer for Stan,

whether he was a man

of a religious following or not,

that I felt I wished him

a safe journey to wherever it was

that he believed he was going next,

as I closed his eyes.

A very...

A very hard moment,

very hard moment indeed.

"Stan Brewster, 1953-2005."

"Construction of this unique walkway

was led by Stan Brewster,

"chartered civil engineer

of Derbyshire county council,

"tragically lost his life in the

London bombings of July 7th, 2005.

"Stan took a special pride

in this project,

"and the walkway now stands

as a permanent reminder of his

professional life and work."

Half site, half was built on,

like, stilts. As you can see.

And then this part...

This part was, like,

cantilevered off this wall.

I couldn't, I couldn't build

something like this!

When you're young, I don't think

you appreciate your dad, like,

you know what I mean?

Until you grow older.

And that's what,

that's what I kind of miss now.

I kind of miss when you're that age

and your dad says,

"Let's go out and do something

together," and it's like...

at that age, you don't really

feel like doing it with him,

do you know what I mean?

And that's what I kind of miss now.

I'd love to go and play golf

with him,

love to go and have a pint with him,

it's things like that...

Oh! How you doing?

I'm all right, yeah.

I think it's easier when you, like,

I don't know.

I think it's easier

when you ask me questions.

It's hard, it all messes up in your

head, it's hard to get it out.

'The day after we knew

what had happened to Stan, '

'Mark, he was just 17,

and he'd got his driving test.'

And I can remember

sitting on the back lawn,

and there was loads of people here,

and I said,

"Mark, I don't think you're up

for this, to do your driving test."

And he walked up the garden and said,

"Mum, I'm going to do it

"cos I want to do it

to make you smile again."

And off he went and did his driving

test, and he came back and passed.

He ran up the garden, crying.

And I was crying as well,

and he said, "I've done it, Mum."

And I said to him,

"Dad would have been proud of you."

But he said, "I've done it

to make you smile again.

"I just want you to smile again."

People always said, like,

you've got to be strong for your mum

and your sister and that.

It's happened now. It's the way

you deal with it, I think.

You got to get on with life, like...

There'd be no point living if you...

You've just got to enjoy

what you've got.

I mean, my dad wouldn't want me

to just curl up in a ball, no way.

It'd be wrong to do that.

Hello, Pic. Hello there.

We heard a loud bang

in the region of Russell Square

on Russell Square westbound platform.

Then our TT tripped. I've had

the DSM go down at Russell Square.

He could find no damage to the

platform area but there's something,

I can't get in contact

with anyone at King's Cross

but customers are detraining

themselves from West 311

which is over the crossover

just west of King's Cross. Yeah.

They're walking east

and detraining themselves

onto the westbound platform.

All right, look after

whatever you can

and I'm going to get a decision now

on what we're going to do.

All right,

I'll come back to you, Gary.

We need ambulances and water

to Russell... To King's Cross.

I understand what you're saying.

And Russell Square.

Yeah, we'll get what we can to you.

At Russell Square,

it's one of the deepest parts

of the Piccadilly Line

and it's quite a way down.

I believe there's about 179 steps

on the emergency stairs

at Russell Square.

I went down to have a look to see

if there was anything untoward.

It's a single-track tunnel and

it's very dusty, it's quite humid

and it's very compact.

Once the train's in there

and moving,

there's not no space

for anything else.

Throughout this,

you read the stories of people

who acted in a heroic way that day,

but I can't count myself

amongst them

because the only thought in my mind

was to get off that train

and get home to my family.

My daughter would have been... six...

five-and-a-half or six years old

so I certainly didn't, you know,

I didn't want to let my daughter

grow up without a father

so my only, my only aim

was to get off that train

and get home safely to my family.

All of a sudden I heard this

very commanding voice that said...

The driver said that once he's

checked that the power is off,

I want all those who can

to walk to the front of the carriage.

There wasn't many of us...

that walked, that, you know...

listened to the train driver

or that was able

to leave the... the carriage.

Everybody was

quite polite, surprisingly.

So there was a line of people

in front of me,

just people walking quite slowly

in front of me

and I had my hand

on the person in front of me

because I was bleeding

quite a lot from my head

and I was worried about fainting

and we didn't know

if the tracks were going to be live

so I didn't want to,

I didn't want to fall over.

There was a guy that had been

screaming for some considerable time

and he was immediately behind me,

but he kept falling over,

so I turned around

and said to this guy,

"Hold onto the back of my jacket,

when you're going to fall,"

which he did, and occasionally...

It took about 10, 12 minutes

to walk to Russell Square,

he fell and the guy behind him

picked him up

and he held the back

of my coat again.

And we walked

towards Russell Square.

When I was walking round

checking the track,

I noticed a light

in the westbound tunnel

by the east end of the platform

and the light got closer and closer

and whilst this was happening, I

realised there was something wrong.

When the light got to me,

it was the driver of train 311

with about 12 to 15 seriously,

some seriously injured customers

bleeding very heavily,

very traumatised.

We helped them up onto the platform.

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