The IRA Bombing in Hyde Park

The IRA Bombing in Hyde Park

Whilst the 11th September 2001 holds an indescribable place in the psyche of New Yorkers, the 20th July 1982 is similarly stamped on the hearts of thousands of Londoners.

It was a typical summer's day in London, and I was a young engineer who had spent six of the previous nine years working in offices where I could get a good view each morning of the Horse Guards trotting along Carriage Road on the south side of Hyde Park. I was just one of hundreds of office workers who would congregate around their park side windows to admire the daily spectacle of plumes on high helmets bobbing up and down in perfect unison. Mirror polished breast plates reflecting the sun in blinding flashes and black leather thigh boots burnished to a patent gloss atop perfect black mounts whose clinking harnesses provided a triangle like backing to the rhythmic thudding of hooves on tarmac.

That July morning I was busy on a sales enquiry and could only glance across the six heavily trafficked lanes of Hyde Park Corner to see the Blues and Royals passing by. I saw the usual mixture of locals and tourists strolling along the pavement, cameras clicking, fingers pointing. As I lowered my head below the nondescript partitions of my cubicle I heard a sound like thunder, louder even than the intense concussion you get when lightning flashes directly over head. The next sound was a crack and a glass window just a few yards from me split diagonally from top to bottom as it failed to resist the pressure wave of the explosion.

I looked up again knowing that something was badly wrong, and saw a guardsman crawling along the road on all fours behind the remains of a car that was on fire. The previously animated spectators were now horizontal, scattered all over the pavement by the blast, and large dark shapes that were the dead or injured horse lay in the road. Two small family cars that had been parked one behind the other were now burned out shells, one shattered carcass on top of the other, perfectly placed as though they had been lifted into position by a crane following the instructions of a movie director making a war film. I spent much of the rest of that day wondering how those two cars could have ended up so perfectly placed by an IRA bomb. Two guardsmen killed, seven horses killed or destroyed, with seventeen passers by injured and there was I puzzling over those two cars - I've heard that shock can affect people in strange ways, and that was my reaction.

Then the screaming started, distant sounds of people hurt and panicked by an experience that hadn't been seen in London since 1944. From that point until the emergency services arrived it was total confusion, people running in every direction, some of them dashing across the still busy roadway braving the cars, trucks, buses and taxis to bring relief to whatever would greet them on the other side. I saw the owner of a neighbouring hairdresser dash out with his arms full of white towels. One of my colleagues, a man of great sensitivity and warmth, rushed across the road to do whatever he could - when he came back he sat down in the room where we kept the stationery and slept all afternoon, within a year he had died of a stroke.

I had a young family at that time so decided to stay behind in the relative safety of my office building, because I had read somewhere that terrorists sometimes conceal a second bomb to catch the police and rescue services when they arrive to pick up the pieces from the first one. I was almost right, a second bomb did go off two hours later under the bandstand in Regent's Park where the Royal Green Jackets were playing - six soldiers killed, twenty four injured. I still wonder if I did the right thing staying behind instead of piling in to help as so many other office workers did. But how would I have felt if there was a second bomb in Hyde Park? My death would have devastated my wife and young daughters - one 3½, the other 1½ - or worse still what if I had been rendered a cripple and become a burden at a time when my family needed me most to support them both emotionally and financially? I agonise over that decision even now, eleven years later when the shock of that day creeps up on me in my vulnerable moments. You never recover from events like that, you just learn to handle them a little better each time the memories come to the fore and the tears burn in your eyes.

Once the emergency services arrived we had the opportunity to try and come to terms with what had just happened. The weather was good - the only positive aspect of that day - and hundreds of office workers lined the buildings along the now silent part of Knightsbridge that runs along the southeast side of Hyde Park. To try and describe how we felt seeing that part of London empty and silent would be like trying to describe two parallel lines converging at right angles. I was born and grew up in London, but I had never seen Knightsbridge so completely devoid of pedestrian and vehicle movement, even late at night.

As we stood outside watching the police, fire and ambulance crews carrying out their various duties, we talked about what had happened, how we felt, and what each of us had been doing when the IRA bomb went off. Two of my colleagues who worked in an office with two particularly large plate glass windows had a narrow escape. They heard the boom as I did, then dived under their desks when they saw a large crack racing across one of the panes which then blew in, scattering razor like shards of glass over the chairs and desktops where they had been working a second or two before.

Others just stood there not knowing what to say or do, trying to take in the horror of the situation, trying to work out how people could impose such devastation on their fellow human beings. Someone next to me told us that we should get our acts together, that this was no big deal, that we could read all about it in tomorrow's newspapers, so why didn't we get back to work? I am not a violent person but that was the closest I have ever come to performing plastic surgery with my fists.

We did eventually go back inside but little work was done that afternoon, we were just not in the mood, emotionally numbed by what had happened, brains for the most part spinning in neutral. I called my wife to let her know that I was all right and her reaction was along the lines of 'okay, fine' because she had no concept of the reality of what had just transpired. She hadn't heard the explosion, seen the flames, watched the guardsman crawling on the roadway, or heard the screams. To her, and anyone else who has not been in a similar situation, it is an abstract concept, just words and a husband who occasionally bursts into tears for no apparent reason.

We had no counselling to help us get through the trauma - such things came along much later - and so we had to get the shock, emotions and flashbacks under control ourselves. For me it took years before I could think or read about what had happened that day without my throat tightening and my eyes filling up. Even what happened in New York on 9/11 resurrected many of the feelings that I had been successfully repressing until then, and on hearing the news I had to find a place where I could be alone to avoid embarrassing myself in front of my client and colleagues.

So New York, in London some of us feel your pain - literally - and for those of you still suffering the trauma of 9/11, trust me, there is light at the end of that long tunnel. And if it gets bad, just remember that there are other people all over the world who are going through the same nightmare every day - you are not alone.



	Whilst the 11th September 2001 holds an indescribable place in the psyche of New Yorkers, the 20th July 1982 is similarly stamped on the hearts of thousands of Londoners. It was a typical summer's day in London, and I was a young engineer who had spent six of the previous nine years working in offices where I could get a good view each morning of the Horse Guards trotting along Carriage Road on the south side of Hyde Park. I was just one of hundreds of office workers who would congregate around their park side windows to admire the daily spectacle of plumes on high helmets bobbing up and down in perfect unison. Mirror polished breast plates reflecting the sun in blinding flashes and black leather thigh boots burnished to a patent gloss atop perfect black mounts whose clinking harnesses provided a triangle like backing to the rhythmic thudding of hooves on tarmac. That July morning I was busy on a sales enquiry and could only glance across the six heavily trafficked lanes of Hyde Park Corner to see the Blues and Royals passing by. I saw the usual mixture of locals and tourists strolling along the pavement, cameras clicking, fingers pointing. As I lowered my head below the nondescript partitions of my cubicle I heard a sound like thunder, louder even than the intense concussion you get when lightning flashes directly over head. The next sound was a crack and a glass window just a few yards from me split diagonally from top to bottom as it failed to resist the pressure wave of the explosion. I looked up again knowing that something was badly wrong, and saw a guardsman crawling along the road on all fours behind the remains of a car that was on fire. The previously animated spectators were now horizontal, scattered all over the pavement by the blast, and large dark shapes that were the dead or injured horse lay in the road. Two small family cars that had been parked one behind the other were now burned out shells, one shattered carcass on top of the other, perfectly placed as though they had been lifted into position by a crane following the instructions of a movie director making a war film. I spent much of the rest of that day wondering how those two cars could have ended up so perfectly placed by an IRA bomb. Two guardsmen killed, seven horses killed or destroyed, with seventeen passers by injured and there was I puzzling over those two cars - I've heard that shock can affect people in strange ways, and that was my reaction. Then the screaming started, distant sounds of people hurt and panicked by an experience that hadn't been seen in London since 1944. From that point until the emergency services arrived it was total confusion, people running in every direction, some of them dashing across the still busy roadway braving the cars, trucks, buses and taxis to bring relief to whatever would greet them on the other side. I saw the owner of a neighbouring hairdresser dash out with his arms full of white towels. One of my colleagues, a man of great sensitivity and warmth, rushed across the road to do whatever he could - when he came back he sat down in the room where we kept the stationery and slept all afternoon, within a year he had died of a stroke. I had a young family at that time so decided to stay behind in the relative safety of my office building, because I had read somewhere that terrorists sometimes conceal a second bomb to catch the police and rescue services when they arrive to pick up the pieces from the first one. I was almost right, a second bomb did go off two hours later under the bandstand in Regent's Park where the Royal Green Jackets were playing - six soldiers killed, twenty four injured. I still wonder if I did the right thing staying behind instead of piling in to help as so many other office workers did. But how would I have felt if there was a second bomb in Hyde Park? My death would have devastated my wife and young daughters - one 3½, the other 1½ - or worse still what if I had been rendered a cripple and become a burden at a time when my family needed me most to support them both emotionally and financially? I agonise over that decision even now, eleven years later when the shock of that day creeps up on me in my vulnerable moments. You never recover from events like that, you just learn to handle them a little better each time the memories come to the fore and the tears burn in your eyes. Once the emergency services arrived we had the opportunity to try and come to terms with what had just happened. The weather was good - the only positive aspect of that day - and hundreds of office workers lined the buildings along the now silent part of Knightsbridge that runs along the southeast side of Hyde Park. To try and describe how we felt seeing that part of London empty and silent would be like trying to describe two parallel lines converging at right angles. I was born and grew up in London, but I had never seen Knightsbridge so completely devoid of pedestrian and vehicle movement, even late at night. As we stood outside watching the police, fire and ambulance crews carrying out their various duties, we talked about what had happened, how we felt, and what each of us had been doing when the IRA bomb went off. Two of my colleagues who worked in an office with two particularly large plate glass windows had a narrow escape. They heard the boom as I did, then dived under their desks when they saw a large crack racing across one of the panes which then blew in, scattering razor like shards of glass over the chairs and desktops where they had been working a second or two before. Others just stood there not knowing what to say or do, trying to take in the horror of the situation, trying to work out how people could impose such devastation on their fellow human beings. Someone next to me told us that we should get our acts together, that this was no big deal, that we could read all about it in tomorrow's newspapers, so why didn't we get back to work? I am not a violent person but that was the closest I have ever come to performing plastic surgery with my fists. We did eventually go back inside but little work was done that afternoon, we were just not in the mood, emotionally numbed by what had happened, brains for the most part spinning in neutral. I called my wife to let her know that I was all right and her reaction was along the lines of 'okay, fine' because she had no concept of the reality of what had just transpired. She hadn't heard the explosion, seen the flames, watched the guardsman crawling on the roadway, or heard the screams. To her, and anyone else who has not been in a similar situation, it is an abstract concept, just words and a husband who occasionally bursts into tears for no apparent reason. We had no counselling to help us get through the trauma - such things came along much later - and so we had to get the shock, emotions and flashbacks under control ourselves. For me it took years before I could think or read about what had happened that day without my throat tightening and my eyes filling up. Even what happened in New York on 9/11 resurrected many of the feelings that I had been successfully repressing until then, and on hearing the news I had to find a place where I could be alone to avoid embarrassing myself in front of my client and colleagues. So New York, in London some of us feel your pain - literally - and for those of you still suffering the trauma of 9/11, trust me, there is light at the end of that long tunnel. And if it gets bad, just remember that there are other people all over the world who are going through the same nightmare every day - you are not alone.