Episode 9 Real Lives Reunited

-United by disaster, never to see each other again.

-I thought I'd lost him.

Without you, I wouldn't be here now.

They shaped history together but lost touch.

We were pioneers. We were starting to

stand up for ourselves and believe in ourselves.

And that makes me feel proud.

And unsung heroes meet those they saved.

You see someone in trouble, you go and help.

You saved my daughter's life.

It will be a real pleasure to meet him in person

and to say thank you for saving my life.

SHE SQUEALS

We went through all that and then just lost each other.

Brought together by fate, separated by life. Real Lives Reunited.

Today, survivors of a crashed airliner reunite to share

stories of how they escaped with their lives.

And then you realise that... whoa, I'm alive.

The lifeboat crew who had to use their skills on dry land to

rescue the crash survivors.

The doors flew open and it was just, "Let's go.

"Let's see what we can do to help."

On that night it was running towards the unknown. It's as simple as that.

And the women of Doncaster who made footballing history,

come together for the first time in over 40 years.

To see them all together, it's not tears of sadness,

it's tears of joy.

In the '80s, airlines started competing for domestic routes.

Lower fares and frequent flights were great news for passengers.

In January 1989,

one such flight departed Heathrow bound for Belfast.

There were 118 passengers and 8 crew on board.

But less than one hour into the flight, the unthinkable happened.

The 8th of January, 1989, changed my life for ever.

It's the most scary thing I think I've ever seen.

It was pretty...bad.

You think it will never happen to you.

But it happened to me.

Good evening.

The experts say the chances of both engines on a brand-new

airliner failing at the same time, are 100 million to 1.

But that seems to be what happened last night.

If the Boeing's remaining engine had delivered its power for just

another 30 seconds,

it would've reached the runway half a mile beyond the motorway.

Tragically 47 people lost their lives. But incredibly 79 survived.

Chris Thompson sat in seat 1E and Dominica McGowan 17 rows back.

They were two of 126 people on board that night.

I remember it was a cold night. It was dark - January.

I kind of remember looking out and thinking,

"That's a miserable night to be flying."

We took off and within 15 minutes they'd started

to serve the evening meal.

Alan Johnston was sitting just behind the right wing.

There was this incredible shuddering

and a noise as if

someone had thrown heavy gravel into a washing machine.

The plane started to shake about a bit.

And as soon as this happened, I just looked to the other guy

and said, "That's an engine. It can't be anything else."

SHUDDERING AND CLUNKING

The left engine had failed.

Seconds later, the pilot announced he was diverting the plane to

East Midlands Airport for an emergency landing.

I saw out of the window a church spire on my right,

which looked surprisingly close.

We looked surprisingly low in relation to it.

People were screaming. Other people were crying.

You could even hear the luggage coming down. You could hear stuff falling.

We were told to prepare for crash landing.

And you were just getting chills and the hairs on the back

of your neck stand up and it's absolutely horrifying.

But you can't go anywhere.

And...shortly after that, there was what I have described as noisy,

black chaos.

After skimming rooftops over the village of Kegworth,

the plane was less that a mile from the safety of the runway

but it didn't make it.

The jet slammed into the embankment of the M1.

The crash ripped the plane into three.

Emergency services were alerted immediately.

Paramedic Maurice Foster was first on the scene.

By the time I'd got across the motorway,

it had only been on the ground a matter of minutes.

I picked the radio up and said, "Send everything."

I mean, what else do you need to know?

Send everything.

I remember this...

..shock and disbelief really.

And I still have that picture of looking round that plane and seeing...

the dishevelment - the bags, the bodies, the brokenness...

You know, it was like a frozen picture.

I tried to move my limbs about. I could move my arms.

I couldn't move my legs. And I thought, "Oh, dear, I am trapped.

"And I'm not quite sure which way up I am."

Trapped in their seats, Alan and Chris were seriously injured but

Dominica unbuckled her seat belt and crawled through the wrecked plane.

I broke practically everything, you know?

Femur, ribs, pelvis, shoulder, fractured skull.

So I don't know how I crawled out, but I did.

I stood up and looked up the motorway

and it's just blue lights. A total sea of blue lights.

There must have been hundreds

and hundreds of people pouring into the scene.

Despite the incredible efforts of all involved,

39 died at the scene, and another 8 in hospital later.

But 79 survivors were pulled from the plane and rushed to hospital.

When I came round, I was lying in a hospital.

Then the reality gradually starts to come back.

Oh, there was a plane crash, I was on it.

And then you realise that...

whoa, I'm alive.

Chris and Dominica were strangers on that flight.

Both share an incredible bond of survival few of us can understand.

It's been almost 25 years since they've spoken.

-Yeah, I wasn't sure whether I had.

-It's good to see you.

-Indeed. It's very nice to see you too.

So have you been doing plenty of talking about all of this?

The whole talk process I think is like therapy.

Well, I'm a psychotherapist.

So I knew from my training as a counsellor that it was good

to talk about it.

A seating plan used in the air accident report is a stark

reminder of how lucky survivors were.

The black dots basically are all the people that died.

-Were they?!

-And the green dots are the survivors.

-Oh, are they?

-And you didn't realise that.

-No, I didn't know that.

-Yes.

-Goodness.

These people here were identified by their dentures.

-So they were...

-I didn't know that.

-..five feet away from me.

Really? I didn't know that.

When you see all those black dots it's really shocking, isn't it?

It's surprising when you see them like that.

Later, the remarkable story of how an off-duty lifeboat crew saved

Alan from the wrecked plane.

To actually meet somebody,

especially after all these years, unbelievable.

And Chris and Dominica meet the surgeon who

treated their horrific injuries.

-He gave me the ability to walk properly again.

-As far as I'm concerned, he saved my life.

Today, the England Women's Football Team are serious

contenders in the international game,

they rank seventh in the world and reached

the quarterfinals in the 2011 Women's World Cup.

To get there, women footballers have had to overcome sexism

and opposition at EVERY level.

This must be one of the only places in the country where girls

chase after boys and don't mind admitting it.

They train hard and they play exceedingly well,

it seems to me, but I just can't kind of live with

the idea of girls playing football.

But a group of teenage girls from Doncaster played a major

part in changing the male-dominated world of football for ever.

# We're magic we're Doncaster Belle Vue. #

They used to say it was a man's game and, you know,

we women shouldn't be playing. They're not good enough.

Oh, lassies shouldn't be playing football.

You want to get back and get the pots washed.

Get back and do the washing. Look after the kids.

Definitely shouldn't be in shorts running around

kicking a bag of air.

But Sheila and her friends had other ideas.

Seven - nil!

We were determined.

We still wanted to play football, whether men wanted us to or not.

Whether they wanted to watch us or not. We wanted to play.

I was 14 and I had a friend.

I just said to her one day, "What are you doing tonight?

"Do you fancy coming out?" She said, "Do you know?

"I go to football at Cantley - a ladies' team."

And I just said, "Can anybody go?" And she says, "Well, yeah.

"Do you want to come?" And that's how it all started.

At first, there were only enough girls for games of five-a-side.

But news of the team spread and within two years there was a squad.

By 1969 the Belle Vue Belles had been formed.

The women that had played football at my time, were

playing in friendly games, charity games, just playing for a bit of fun.

But after 20 years on the pitch, their efforts paid off when

they were invited to join the first ever Women's National Division.

To actually go and play

and play in a proper team, in a proper match,

in a proper league was brilliant.

They were team-mates on the pitch and the best of friends off it.

I made a lot of friends through the Belles.

All the girls were very close as a team.

We used to, some of us, go on holiday together.

And we were there for each other.

Win or lose, we'd sort of, you know, support each other

and get each other going again.

And win they did.

And we found success by winning our first cup, which I believe

was the Red Cross trophy.

And that then leads to wanting a bit more.

So you become hungry for a bit more.

And the Belles went from strength to strength winning their first

Women's FA Cup in 1983.

WHISTLE BLOWS

They reached the final on another seven occasions,

winning the cup six times in total.

And they're one of only two non-London teams to have

won the FA Women's Premier League.

They never stop running from whistle to whistle.

THEY CHEER

But as time passed, life got in the way.

Things change and people want to go in different directions.

One of the hardest things is finding your centreforward's pregnant

and she won't be available for the cup final.

I loved with a passion the Belles and I loved what we went through.

Pioneers for the women's game.

They haven't played together as a team for more than 35 years

but thanks to their achievements the Doncaster Rovers' ground

is now home to the Belles.

A fitting site for Sheila to meet up with

1969 midfielder Sue Horsefield.

-Have you brought some souvenirs.

-Oh, just a couple.

And right-winger Sue Greaves.

THEY CHUCKLE

Thanks a lot!

LAUGHTER

Oh, my God! It don't get any better than that!

Doncaster Belles. We all had those, didn't we?

-We all bought one of them.

-Yeah.

We looked the part and we were the part.

-Yes, we were. And then we had red for a change of kit.

-Yes, we did.

-And then, '76, we changed to that.

-Yeah.

-Because we loved Brazil.

-Yeah. Happy memories.

-Yeah.

Later, after three decades apart, some of the Belles who formed

the closest bonds are brought back together.

Just to see them, it will be brilliant.

On a cold night in January 1989, a Boeing 737 bound for Belfast

crashed into the embankment of the M1.

47 people lost their lives but, incredibly, 79 passengers survived.

It's now more than five hours since the Boeing 737 came

down on the embankment behind me splitting into three sections.

And incredibly survivors are still being pulled from the wreckage.

Travelling on the motorway that night, was Barrie Brigham

and his lifeboat crew from Withernsea near Hull.

One of the lads in the actual bus, shouting, "Look at that.

"Look at all them sparks coming out the back of the aeroplane!"

But little did the men know they'd just witnessed the plane's engine explode.

And they were about to drive into a scene of utter devastation.

Paramedic Maurice Foster was already there

tending to the severely injured.

Unless you're actually there and see something like that,

you're actually part of it and it's real,

it's hard to imagine just how terrifying it can actually be.

In the minibus with Barrie was lifeboatman Andrew Shakesby.

That's when doors flew open and it was just, "Let's go.

"Let's see what we can do to help."

On that night we was running towards the unknown. It's as simple as that.

I looked up and out of nowhere there's the RNLI there.

I thought, "RNLI? What are they doing here?!"

We didn't know anything about aeroplanes.

All we knew was that there were a load of people in trouble.

And them people need help.

Emergency services were quick to arrive

but Barrie had already led his crew to the tail of the plane.

I said, "The best thing we can do is make a double path down the side

"and what we'll do is we'll, pass the bodies, survivors, down between us."

The embankment was really, really steep

and we were all forming the chain to try and help people down.

They were coming out with broken legs.

We had to use our belts and what we could

to strap them. That's where our lifeboat training came in.

Trapped in his seat, and unable to move his legs,

63-year-old Alan Johnston was slipping in

and out of consciousness when the RNLI came to his recue.

I remember being gently handled out of an aperture.

I didn't know whether it was a hole in the fuselage,

or one of the doors in the fuselage, or what is was.

I can remember him coming out because he was one of them

which I think is dead.

I just saw his eyes flicker.

And I said, "He's alive this one.

"We'll get him down as quick as we can. If we get the ladder back up."

And we got the ladder up pretty sharpish and got him down onto the motorway.

I think he was taken away inside a few minutes to one of the ambulances.

I owe my life to Barrie and his colleagues,

and the firemen who were involved in trying to remove

living people from that tangled wreckage.

The Withernsea Lifeboat crew continued to tend to injured

survivors for over four hours.

Not long after midnight, physically and emotionally drained,

Barrie managed to give an eyewitness account.

When we got up there, the ambulance men got up

and started the passing people out of the aircraft as best we could.

Really surprising how many people came out alive from that back section

behind us there. Just unbelievable.

Years later, Alan tracked down Barrie

and the two have since become good friends.

Andrew, however, has never met any survivors from that fateful night.

Since the accident, I got quite friendly with Alan,

we got quite a good friendship, friendship born on the fact

that we were thrown into something that we didn't want to be in.

He's obviously a tremendous, solid Yorkshireman

and I want to see him again very much

and to meet his colleague, Andrew.

Kegworth did affect me and, to be honest,

I wanted to shut it all out of my life,

and this is the first time I've talked about it.

I feel I can finally cope with what's gone on.

-Alan! Hello there, my friend. How are you?

-Great to see you.

Could I introduce you to Andrew? He's another one of the rescuers.

-Andrew.

-Hi there. Nice to meet you.

-Hello. Lovely to meet you, too. Gosh!

Two of you...to whom I owe my existence.

It's quite a meeting.

For Alan, there's still much he'd like to know about his rescue.

In that small doorway, and that's where we were taking people out.

How long was it from when the plane crashed

-until you got in that doorway?

-Oh, I should think it was...

Well, to get to it in the first instance

-was probably about ten minutes...

-Mm-hm.

-..by the time we got up there and we got ourselves organised.

-Goodness.

Now, this is the bit I remember the most,

is looking at the wreckage when I was actually climbing up there.

-Seeing how thin the aircraft was.

-All the bits and pieces, yeah.

You expect an air plane to be a nice, big, solid piece of steel.

But, up to that point, I never realised how fragile aircraft were.

I've never seen these photos. Needless to say, that's amazing.

I think after Kegworth, I realised that I had to do things...

..that meant something to me,

and actually achieved something in my life.

Soon after the crash, Andrew quit his job in IT.

Overwhelmed by what he'd witnessed at Kegworth,

he decided he too wanted to work for the Ambulance Service.

You became a paramedic?

I did. I had an office job beforehand,

I saw the other emergency services that day and I thought,

"I want to do something with my life that makes a difference."

-How wonderful.

-And it has done.

-Well, one bonus of...

..the awful accident was that we have made some lasting friendships.

We were really glad we could help somebody,

and to actually meet somebody,

especially after all these years, unbelievable. Thank you.

You were meant to be there, put it that way.

I think the moral of the story is that the RNLI do produce good teams

that no matter where the situation is,

we turn our hand to whatever we can do

and we work together really well as a team.

Later, the surgeon who rebuilt many of the severely injured

meets two former patients.

Because Professor Wallace made me who I am.

He made me... He gave me the ability to walk properly again.

The success of any team is all down to the right people,

being in the right place at the right time.

One of the country's most successful women's football teams,

the Doncaster Belles, were formed in 1969.

But their achievements have been hard-earned,

with women struggling to be taken seriously as footballers.

They're committed and they train hard and they play exceedingly well,

it seems to me,

but I just can't kind of live with the ideas of girls playing football.

But today the Belles are major players

in the semi-professional women's league.

Without the likes of the Belles

and some of the other teams that were starting around that time,

we probably wouldn't have that women's game.

Now, some of the other Belles

who helped change the face of women's football

are back at the club that means so much to them.

-Jill! Are you OK?

-Still got your name on your shirt, do you?

THEY LAUGH

Oh, my God! Look at the state of these!

We're dragging them in now, girls, we're dragging them in!

Little Jill!

Jill Betts joined the Belles in 1969, aged just 11.

She played for over ten years and was the team's best penalty taker.

Just getting here this morning,

I had this funny feeling inside that it's all...

it's great - just seeing Janet and Jill and Lynda and Sue.

That's been so good.

And just seeing everyone together, it's absolutely...

-It's not tears of sadness, it's tears of joy.

-That's right.

Getting everybody back together and...

-That's what the Belles do to you. You never forget.

-No. No, you don't.

We were a rare bunch.

And it's fabulous to see everybody.

For the Belles, the 1983 FA Cup Final match

was their crowning glory.

Go on! Go on, Sheila!

For keeper Janet Milner, being injured

and unable to play the game was heartbreaking.

But, with the score 1-1 at half-time,

the Belles needed something extra to help them to victory.

Janet walked into the dressing room.

Listen, we've not played yet.

They're done! They've showed you, they've showed you their mettle,

and we've not started! All right?

I desperately, desperately wanted to play, it was a dream and...

That was your contribution, Janet.

-You were great, Jan.

-Thanks. Yeah.

Don't let's blow it today.

We've got the team we need, let's show them.

The Belles went on to win their first-ever FA Cup.

Through the '70s and '80s, the Donny Belles' biggest rivals

were the ladies of Rotherham's Kilnhurst Shooting Stars.

They were tough. It was usually 2-1, 3-2 - very, very close games.

It was always a grudge match.

But in a friendly type of way, but we knew there were on our heels

and, I tell you what, they knew we were on theirs, as well.

Local derbies, yes, there were some crunching tackles going in.

There were some really hard-fought battles.

But, at the end of the day, we came off the pitch, we shook hands,

and we were still all friends,

even though we played for different teams.

44 years since the team was formed,

Janet and the rest of the Belles have a unique opportunity

to play their old rivals, the Kilnhurst Shooting Stars,

one last time.

I don't really care if we can't run fast or what we can do.

To put the boots on and have one last game

with us all together, I think it will be absolutely brilliant.

Gordon Bennett!

I think we can still show them, Lynda, can't we?

-Even at this age.

-Yeah.

Oh, well done.

The game's finished,

Doncaster Belles, nil, Kilnhurst Shooting Stars, one.

There were always a handshake and a cuddle at the end of the game,

irrespective of who won.

-Wonderful, nice to see some old foes.

-Well played, mate.

-Well done.

-Well done.

-Well done.

We were pioneers, we were starting to stand up for ourselves

and believe in ourselves

and we kick-started women's football from the '60s up to the present day.

And that makes me feel proud.

In January 1989, a Boeing 737 was flying from Heathrow to Belfast,

when an engine failed.

Crew mistakenly shut down the remaining good engine.

The airliner fell out of the sky and smashed into the M1 embankment.

NEWSREADER: The Boeing 737 almost made it to the East Midland Airport runway.

47 passengers lost their lives.

Earlier, two survivors, Chris Thompson and Dominica McGowan,

were reunited.

On the night of the crash, both were rushed to Queen's Medical Centre

in Nottingham with life-threatening injuries.

NEWSREADER: Overnight, surgeons here completed the 23rd operation

in 24 hours on some of the most seriously injured.

It's incredible that people can survive that.

-That's me.

-Is that you?

-Yeah.

There was a lot of noise out of the other engine and at that point

it sounded as if the other engine was doing what the first engine had done.

So, first, we poured another glass of wine and crossed my fingers, you know?

-NEWSREADER:

-Within seconds, the plane crashed.

I can remember opening my eyes...

in intensive care and seeing my daughter...

..and thinking, "God, I got through that."

I didn't realise... I didn't think I would get through it,

so I remember seeing her at the end of the bed and saying, "Mhairi?"

And she smiled and she was crying and she smiled and I said, "God, Mhairi,"

"can't believe that happen to me."

On duty in hospital that night was Professor Angus Wallace,

one of the country's leading orthopaedic surgeons.

The severity of the injuries were horrific.

I mean, people were literally scooped off the plane, put...

thrown...put in an ambulance, brought here and brought onto a trolley.

Mr Wallace made me who I am.

Made me...gave me the ability to walk properly again.

As far as I'm concerned, he saved my life and I wouldn't be here today,

so it would be a real pleasure to meet him in person

and to say to him, "Thank you for saving my life."

-Hello there.

-Well, well, well.

-Dominica McGowan.

-Nice to see you.

-It's so lovely to see you.

-Lovely to have you back here.

-Professor Wallace.

-Hello. Very nice to see you. I do remember you.

I struggle a little bit with you, Dominica,

-because you were so bruised and battered.

-That's right.

-Slightly different circumstances this time.

-Very different...

Just let me see you walking, I couldn't believe that,

because you had smashed-up legs.

-Yeah, and you did a brilliant job on them.

-Come and have a seat.

Thank you.

Thanks to your extreme skill and time, patience and ability...

Well, it was very much a team effort,

because when you went to the operating theatre,

it wasn't one surgeon working on you, it was a number of surgeons.

Well, he had severe leg fractures.

And he had a very nasty fracture round about his tibia and fibula,

again between the knee and the ankle.

-That's your leg.

-That's my leg, is it?

-Right, and that's the smashed-up bone there...

-My goodness.

..down, just above the ankle.

That's your foot, cos you had quite a nasty foot injury.

-It was crushed, as well, I believe.

-That's right, it was crushed, yeah.

-That's the fractures there.

-Gosh.

-Wow. That's amazing.

-Now, I understand that you crawled out of the aeroplane.

-I did.

But you had a fracture of your shoulder,

you had a fracture of your thighbone,

you had an injury to your spine - you shouldn't have been able to do that.

-Was it not painful?

-I have no memory of pain.

I have a very clear memory of, "I have to get out of here."

So, that's the survival instinct, isn't it?

The legacy of the Kegworth tragedy is safer air travel for us all.

Based on research into what happened on the plane,

Professor Wallace's team developed a new brace position

to reduce injuries and increase chances of survival

in future crashes.

We presented that to the Civil Aviation Authority,

and the CAA finally agreed that as a standard brace position

for the UK and it remains so today.

Very proud of that.

I am so pleased to have this opportunity to thank you,

because I often thought about you and talked about you over the years

and it's been a real pleasure to have this opportunity to come along.

It's really nice to actually have a face-to-face,

to say thank you very much.

And for my family to say thank you, as well,

because without you they wouldn't have me either.

It's a real pleasure to see people that you've treated

who've done well, who are back to near normal and...

..I'm absolutely delighted that you have done so well.

Next time, the civilians who found themselves

in the middle of a warzone.

I prayed really hard, face down on the...on the deck.

I thought, "Someone is trying to kill me."

And ten years after she was pulled

from the rubble of a factory explosion,

a woman meets the fireman who saved her life.

I can't find the words to express how grateful I am to him for what he did.