The Liverpool FC Forum > Hillsborough Memorial Board
Survivors: Talk about it, share it, we'll try to help
Glorious Future:
Survivors,
Never too late, all.
Have a look at this website.
http://www.hsa-us.co.uk
See you soon?
Speedy Molby:
To Chris, Gary, Simon and 93 I didn't know
Seven hours: a survivor's account
We arrived in pen three at about 2.30pm. It was packed. That didn't bother me, I'd stood on many away ends. Always best to be behind the goal. Over the next 20 minutes, all the usual consequences of overcrowding occurred. Bumping, swaying, being knocked from one side to another. The Leppings Lane terrace had been uncomfortable the previous year, but I wasn't alarmed. When the players ran out, I applauded.
Then I was flung forwards. After a usual sway, space would come back to you. This time I was stuck tight. I was four to five feet away from the gate in the perimeter fence, which was slightly to my left. The pressure quickly increased, it was like being in a vice. Soon, I couldn't breathe.
Others shouted at the police officers on the perimeter track to open the narrow gate in the fence. They were ignored. Unable to breathe, I was frightened. A minute earlier I'd been looking foward to the match. Now my life was being squeezed out of me. My eyes fixed on the gate, the only potential escape. I had no idea it was possible to feel so afraid, but worse than the fear was the helplessness. I was effectively paralysed from the neck downwards. I couldn't struggle. I couldn't fight for my life. Survival instinct is primal, irresistible, but I couldn't act on it. As I couldn't breathe, I couldn't scream or shout. There was no outlet to relieve any fear.
My hearing was unaffected. I was dying to the sound of the crowd responding to the match.
Then the gate sprang open. Hope. Evacuation would lessen the pressure, if I could hold on. Policemen quickly stepped forward to slam the gate shut.
I thought that was the end of me. I began to slip away. I saw the gate open again and the evacuation finally begin – I saw one of my friends escape – but I was too far gone, there were too many people between me and the gate. I gave up. I thought of my family and friends, how I wouldn't get to say goodbye. Before the end, the fear and helplessness left me. Everything seemed unreal. I fell unconscious.
An oxygen-starved brain retains some activity, in my mind I was travelling down a road. Reach the end of the road and I'll wake up, but the road kept extending. There was a whirring, staccato noise like helicopter rotors, in my left ear. Definitely my left ear.
Again, I was flung forwards. I resumed consciousness suddenly, as a television tunes in. I was hanging out of the gate, trapped below the waist, but free above it. Now able to breathe, to struggle, to act on my survival instinct. A policeman was trying to pull me out.
"Get your legs free," he shouted. "I know it's difficult."
I wriggled my legs frantically against the heavy but shifting weight behind them. Eventually I made enough space to lift my right knee out of the pen and on to pitch level. Once the knee was out, the lower half of my right leg followed relatively easily, though my shoe was prised off. With my right leg free, I had most of my bodyweight to haul my left leg out – again I lost the shoe. Once I had both feet on the perimeter track all that was holding me to the pen, to the crush, was the tail of my jacket. I shook myself out of it.
Someone picked me up and carried me a few yards on to the pitch. I lay down on my back, eyes up to the clear blue sky. Soon, relief at my escape gave way to panic at my dehydration. Weak and unsteady on my feet, I got up in search of a drink.
I staggered towards a cordon of police officers, near to the halfway line. As I reached them, one stopped me and said:
"You can't come past here."
I gasped: "I need a drink."
He replied: "Go in there," and gestured to his left, my right.
I made my way into the South Stand. I spotted a steward up a short column of steps. As I climbed the steps, the Nottingham Forest suppporters I walked past turned their heads, uncomprehending, as they saw my face. I overheard a man say: "There must be 200 in there without tickets."
The steward was little older than I was (17). I told him I needed a drink. He said:
"Have you got any money?"
I said no.
He looked at me more closely: "Don't worry mate, I'll buy it."
Then a kind lady who had children with her poured a carton of orange juice down my throat. She shouted to another steward, told him I needed treatment, and he led me across the pitch to a gymnasium underneath the North Stand.
There was a curtain partitioning the gym, injured people were being treated in a small portion at the Kop end. I lay on the floor for a while, as more urgent casualties were seen to. I was told to lie on my side in case I vomited. Suited doctors examined me, their lack of alarm was a relief. In time a fireman got around to me with an oxygen cylinder.
"Get your breathing in rhythm, it comes in bursts," he told me, placing the mask over my nose and mouth.
The oxygen made me feel stronger. I understood that I would be OK. I stopped feeling afraid.
And then something occurred to me.
"Has anyone died?" I asked the fireman.
"Don't worry about that," he said. But a radio crackled: "There are 50-60 confirmed dead."
The doctors wanted me to go for X-rays, but the Sheffield hospitals were full and I would have to go to Barnsley or Rotherham. I decided I would rather go home. I was helped to my feet and was able to walk with difficulty. A policeman led me to a police van in a yard between the North Stand and the Kop. I sat on my own for about 15 minutes, then got out of the van and sat on the rear step of an ambulance parked nearby. A reporter with a notepad asked me for a quote. I told him to fuck off.
I asked a policeman for directions to the coaches. I left the ground at the opposite end to which I'd entered and within a few seconds realised I hadn't taken in the instructions. Rather than get lost in stockinged feet, I went back into the ground. I sat in the North Stand. Few supporters were left in the ground. Police officers carried armfuls of clothing across the pitch in bright sunshine.
I boarded a police bus. One of my friends was on the bus. I asked him for a cigarette, then we sat in silence as the bus crawled to a social services building, a boys' club.
I asked for a pair of shoes, but no one could find any. I was assigned a social worker called Bill, who drove me to a phone box on a quiet street. Bill dialled my home number, pushed in the coin, then handed me the phone. My mum answered.
"It's me."
"Oh thank God."
Bill gave my mum directions to a social services centre called Meade House. I sat in a basement room, waiting for my parents. There were a few others there. Social workers offered us pizza and cigarettes. One young woman received some bad news and began wailing. A deep, resonant wail. The social workers tried to console her. The rest of us stared at the walls, the floor. My parents arrived about 9.30pm.
Glorious Future:
Hello mate.
Can't find anything to say, just wanted to acknowledge.
Millie:
It's amazing, 32 years later, that I can still remember everything I did that day, from around 6 in the morning to well gone midnight. I can play it, like a movie in my head. Not just that day, but the following days too.
Thepooloflife:
--- Quote from: The Scouseologist on April 16, 2018, 02:14:38 pm ---A poem I wrote last year about my experiences surviving Hillsborough as an 8 year old.
(snip)
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: Speedy Molby on April 15, 2021, 01:45:26 am ---To Chris, Gary, Simon and 93 I didn't know
Seven hours: a survivor's account
(snip)
--- End quote ---
Powerful and very descriptive reads guys - take care.
My own experience is one I've never really had the courage to share. Maybe I feel it's not so relevant as I was in Pen 2 where there was no crush, no pain, no suffering (at least physical anyway). I had been in Pen 3 earlier on but came out for some reason - there by the grace of God. The over-riding emotions I felt at the time and since are anger and helplessness. I could see what was happening and was shocked and felt numb to my bones - but, with the lack of response from the police and authorities I felt completely helpless and unable to do anything being hemmed in by the fences.....even though I could see fellow fans dying in the other pens and on the pitch side. They were being helped instinctively by our fellow fans (not the police or anyone else !) and with the fence gates locked I was unable to go and assist them. Feelings then turned to anger and I vented it full throttle at a police sergeant - who had the gall to shout '..leave in an orderly fashion..' Twat. I then heard that a 6 year old had died (wrongly of course) - after that I left, still numb.
Like Millie says, 32 years and each anniversary brings it all back so vividly - and for me that feeling of helplessness persists.
God bless the 96 & their families......God bless the survivors.........Justice for the 96
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