[David_Hayward (RIP)]

I was born in Hampton Court, just round the corner from the Palace back in 1955. However I lived until 1981 in west London and used to work in the area covered by the bomb explosions. I used to use the Underground all the time to get to work and was an editor of UndergrounD magazine devoted to the railway. Back in 1974 I missed being blown up by the IRA by 30 minutes when they set of a bomb in an arcade just off Old Bond Street, and despite the IRA setting off explosions in the Underground, shops, etc we still carried on, as we had to.

Our prayers go to those bereaved and injured. However we have to keep going. My father recants how a V-1 had him in his sights back in 1944 in the local park in west London where he lived. It missed him in the end by a few hundred yards but he thought that he was going to get blown up until the last few seconds. Dad was in Heavy Rescue in the war and dug people out of bombed houses...he has seen what H.E. can do to people and buildings. He is stoically resoluteful and said so on the phone last night. My mother's father, a WW1 veteran and post-WW1 veteran of Ireland, worked on the Underground in the war on the permanent way. His job involved dealing with bomb casulaties at Underground stations such as Balham. However he had seen too much in the first conflict and after a while he had had too much of the new carnage and resigned. So, damage to the transport infrastructure is nothing new, but we just carry on. However it is easy to say that and the present day rescue workers will no doubt feel as Grandad Baker did and be haunted forever.