A couple who helped police comb through evidence while surrounded by bodies in the wake of the 7/7 bombings, were forced to relive the trauma when they were impacted by a second terror attack 14 years later.
After witnessing first-hand the devastation of the UK’s first suicide bomb attack, former London Underground engineer workers Samantha and Mark Green relocated to Sri Lanka to set up a dog charity.
But the parents-of-one never thought they would have to live through a second terror attack so close to home, until they saw the horror of the Easter Sunday bombings in Colombo on April 21, last year.
Sam, 48, and Mark, 57, who are based in Negombo and run national charity Dogstar Foundation, said saving animals has helped them ‘heal’ and has given them the opportunity of an ‘amazing second chance’.
Speaking on the 15th anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings, Sam told Metro.co.uk: ‘We don’t want to be bitter people. We don’t want to be defined by what happened to us.
‘If we can spin it around and turn it into a positive thing, then that’s the only way to beat terrorism – to carry on, or do something better with your life afterwards.’
Thursday July 7, 2005 started the same as any other working day for the couple. Sam – who managed an Underground engineering control centre – was on her daily conference call.
At about 8.50am she received an urgent call from a colleague. She was told there had been a ‘large explosion’ in the tunnel at Liverpool Street.
But they had no idea that it was just one of a series of attacks targeting London commuters’ rush hour, which would kill 52 innocent people and injure more than 700.
The couple then got a call about a power cut, before receiving a third about a train derailment at Edgware Road. At this point, they knew something was ‘really wrong’.
Sam and Mark, who lived in Milton Keynes with their daughter at the time, mobilised their teams and rushed into London as the fire brigade declared a major incident.
After emergency crews finished rescuing those trapped underground, Sam and Mark led a team of specialist engineers working with counter terrorism police to recover evidence in the tunnels.
They worked among dead bodies underground until the early hours, helping officers identify and store evidence, while putting together a timeline of events.
‘The casualties were still there for four or five days… and not everybody was in one piece. Nothing could be moved until the coroner said,’ added Sam.
‘Obviously you see everything that’s there but you almost end up with tunnel vision, where your mind starts to block off all the surroundings,’ added Mark.
‘The police did it in such a sensitive way,’ added Sam. ‘They would warn you where things were, so you could try and avert your eye-line but obviously it’s not quite possible to do that.
‘They were very aware that these are people’s loved ones. They were absolutely outstanding with everything they did.’
The couple said finishing their shift at night and leaving the Tube station was one of the hardest parts of the operation.
Sam said: ‘You’d get out onto the street and that’s when you’d see the posters saying: “Have you seen my son?” or “have you seen my relative?”
‘And sometimes you would be fairly sure that you knew that person was, highly possibly, downstairs.’
One night at about 2am, when the mother was reading sympathy cards tucked into a wall of flowers left outside the station, she became aware of somebody standing behind her.
‘He kept looking at me and moving away, I finally turned around and he was standing with a bunch of flowers,’ said Sam.
‘He asked “do you mind if I come over?” I said no, of course. He walked over and said “I’m from the local mosque and I didn’t want to come in the day, I was frightened they wouldn’t let me”.
‘He then called his friends over… We hugged and cried.’
After nine days working in the tunnels with no contact with their family nor much with each other, Sam and Mark went home and had a week off. But the couple struggled to get back to normality and couldn’t stop thinking about the victims and their families.
Mark described that period as ‘tremendously surreal,’ spending most of his time ‘walking around in a trance’ and suffered nightmares, while Sam barely slept and became irritable.
They felt like they were ‘going mad’ but believed they didn’t have the ‘right’ to say they were struggling emotionally, as they weren’t on the Tube when the attack happened.
Sam said: ‘I kept thinking I’m so lucky I wasn’t on the train, what do I have to worry about? I didn’t lose anyone, I didn’t lose my leg, or suffer life-altering injuries.
‘We almost felt like we hadn’t experienced it as we were there after. No one wanted to hold their hand up and say I’m having a rough time.’
The couple did not realise until years later that they were suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Mark said: ‘It was all very practical and logical. No emotions. Everybody we know who were involved, struggled emotionally but we didn’t always connect the traumatic events of that with how we were feeling months after.’
Just six months after the attacks, Sam was unexpectedly made redundant leaving her ‘emotionally drained and bitter’. She booked an eight-week trip to Sri Lanka alone, while Mark stayed in the UK and ‘buried himself in work’.
‘I needed time and space to work out what the hell I was going to do now, it seemed quite simply like the end of everything. It was actually the beginning,’ she said.
Everything changed for Sam on September 28, 2008, when she was sitting on the steps of a Buddhist temple courtyard, when a group of flea and worm-ridden puppies bounded over to her.
The temple’s monk watched as she ran back to her room to get a flea treatment and helped the puppies, before asking her to help another dog riddled with mange and mites.
They found the dog ‘severely emaciated’ and almost bald from numerous skin conditions, causing gaping sores, with one leg bent at an alarming angle.
Sam tracked down a vet team who treated he dog, which she called Mango, and she became Dogstar Foundation’s first case. The project grew into a charity and the pair moved to the country in 2008.
Since then, they have sterilised and vaccinated tens of thousands of dogs, treating 11,199 animals last year alone.
But 14 years after the London bombings, the couple were dealt another blow when their phone rang at almost exactly the same time it had on July 7, 2005.
At 8.50am Sam received a call while they were having breakfast and were told there had been an explosion at St Sebastian’s church in Negombo, where they live.
A staff member said he was going to rescue his mother-in-law who was trapped in the building after the roof collapsed. The rest of the team soon ended up helping pull the wounded to safety.
It was one of a series of suicide bombings at three churches and three hotels, which would go on to kill 269 innocent people and injure at least 500 more.
As Sam and Mark rushed back to shut the charity’s premises, they witnessed paramedics helping severely injured children and families into ambulances, who had been caught in the explosion at the church.
They later discovered a former colleague and an employee’s cousin had also died in the bombings.
The parents said they ‘pulled very heavily’ on their experience in London to get through the tragedy and support their staff, who were in shock, to get them counselling straight away.
Mark said he ‘hugely’ struggled after the second terror attack, which triggered the PTSD he had ‘ignored’ for years and underwent therapy.
More than a year on, Sam and Mark said the obstacles they have overcome have made them understand the ‘fragility of life’ which drives them to keep helping others.
They refuse to let their traumas hold them back and remain excited about the charity’s future, despite times being tough during the pandemic.
Sam said: ‘Terrorists want fear. I refuse to let them tell me where I can and can’t go.
‘I’m fortunate I walked away from that Tube carriage with all of my limbs and a life to live. So, to respect the people who didn’t, I’m not going to let this scare me because that’s what they want.
‘We had an amazing second chance to re-brand our life. It healed us.’
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