“This is RAF Edinburgh. A plane has crashed north of Carlisle … a helicopter has been dispatched for you and your team.” I put the phone down, mobilised my medical colleagues and found my kit; already the blue lights of an ambulance car were flashing outside my home. We saw the search and rescue helicopter gliding down alongside us as we approached the airport.
We landed by the side of a deep crater, still smouldering with small bursts of flame. I would learn later this marked the landing of the wings of Pan Am 103. After I jumped out, a police officer asked me to look at a twisted, charred, branch-like figure lying there beside him and confirm its once-human nature.
Although I was an established A&E consultant, nothing could have prepared me for the hours that were to follow. We combed the fields in a bright moonlight that shone upon bodies and aircraft wherever they’d fallen.
As daylight came the scene was colder, harsher and crueller still. The images of passengers and their Christmas presents strewn across houses and gardens are as vivid to me now as when I first saw them.
By the evening our work was done and we were ready to go home. Pre-hospital care was in its infancy in those days, and although we all worked in the NHS, this work was additional, voluntary and funded by charity. No one was charged with getting us home and we had no money in our specialised clothing. Having fruitlessly asked various authorities for help, we were advised by the police to declare ourselves “homeless and penniless” in Scotland in order to receive cash from Scottish social services for the rail fare home.
It took me a long time to revisit Lockerbie, but I did eventually. It took longer for the nightmares to stop. But they did.
This experience, so soon after working in the rubble of an earthquake in Armenia from which I’d only just returned, had a profound effect on me emotionally and professionally, and reshaped my life. I combined my clinical and academic work with humanitarian work and established a charity, UK-Med, to deploy well-trained teams, mainly from the NHS, to a range of disasters and humanitarian emergencies.
I worked in many earthquakes, refugee camps and wars. My time going in and out of the siege of Sarajevo produced another set of nightmares, but they too eventually stopped.
Over the years we have been at the heart of a range of national and international initiatives that have seen the response to disasters improve enormously. The NHS has been generous in seconding its people to us for this work, but equally has gained a growing cadre of healthcare workers trained and experienced in the management of disasters and outbreaks of dangerous diseases.
I worked on the frontline until the physical costs (lead/uranium poisoning from the war in the Balkans and serious spinal fractures in Typhoon Haiyan) combined to tie me to a desk. Mobilising colleagues into danger but no longer being in the team brought its own moral dilemmas and stresses, but showed me that the spirit that led NHS workers 30 years ago to volunteer for Lockerbie and Armenia is alive and thriving. There was no shortage of new volunteers for my first desk-based mission, Ebola in West Africa, even when one of our colleagues became so unwell.
The compassion and altruism on display was exemplified by another nurse who, at the same time, fell ill on her return. While waiting for the test results that would seal her fate (they were ultimately negative), she begged me not to worry. “Whatever happens, it was worth it,” she said.
Looking back it was such a bizarre journey home from Lockerbie, standing up in a train in a fireproof suit, holding bags of medical equipment. We didn’t protest then and don’t now. Like everyone else caught up in it we were tired and numb. And after all, we still got home.
The victims didn’t.
If you would like to contribute to our Blood, sweat and tears series about experiences in healthcare, read our guidelines and get in touch by emailing sarah.johnson@theguardian.com
