Falling Skies & Irish Wit: Blood, Wreckage, and a One-Legged Proposal

The night Flight 92 crashed—and the beautiful survivor who flirted with me after they sawed off her leg.

After my wee stint in the Royal Navy, cut short by a spinal injury courtesy of an overzealous donkey of a survival instructor, I found myself back on dry land, flat on my back and wondering what on earth to do next.

For a while, walking was a distant dream. Doctors offered sympathy and painkillers. Navy Physiotherapists scratched their heads and did their best, offering free sessions and trying to ensure I wouldn’t resort to the legal remedy of a lawsuit.

In desperation, I paid a visit to a so-called “bone cruncher”—a young, female osteopath recommended by someone who swore she could fix anything short of death. One terrifying SUPER-CLICK later, the pain vanished like a bad dream. It felt almost biblical. I walked out of that office like I’d been resurrected.

Fit again but careerless, I swapped one uniform for another and joined the ‘Ello Ello” Leicestershire Police. The leap from naval aviation to street policing might seem odd, but at the time, it felt like momentum. Structure. Purpose. Additionally, the uniform fit was a nice aspect, and Loughborough was a pleasant place to live and be a ‘Bobby.’

I didn’t so much ease into the role as get thrown headfirst into chaos. Car chases, nightclub brawls, firearms robberies, domestic madness—I got the full sampler in record time. But none of it compared to what happened a few months in, on one seemingly uneventful, bleak winter weekend.

It was a quiet Sunday night in Leicestershire—until it wasn’t.

My colleague and I were finishing up the tail end of our shift, cruising back to HQ in the police van, when the call came through: plane crash.

We glanced at each other. Must be an exercise, we thought. They pulled these drills sometimes. A bit of training theatre to keep us sharp. But on a Sunday night? End of shift? We were not impressed. “Bloody typical,” we moaned.

We rolled our eyes, collected the emergency kit from HQ, and headed back out. As we approached the scene near the M1, I had to give credit to whoever designed this “mock” disaster. It looked real. Two separate chunks of an airliner, fake passengers screaming, limbs dangling, blood everywhere.

A woman sprinted toward me, shrieking, “Help me, help me!” I thought, “Steady on, Geena Davis, you’ll get your Academy Award; just calm the flip down.”

Then I stopped. Looked closer. Smelled the smoke. Heard the screams.

It wasn’t a drill. It wasn’t fake blood. It was real.

Kegworth Air Disaster

I’m at the bottom of the image, next to the taller cop with a cap on. I wasn’t wearing one and got verbally reprimanded by an idiot of a senior officer. I ignored him, as I would have had to journey back to the police van to retrieve it.

British Midland Flight 92 had crashed onto the motorway. Dozens were dead. Many more were injured.

I shifted into first-aid mode, helping a few survivors. Most would live. Then I headed to the broken fuselage. Fire crews were already cutting through metal. A line had formed—cops, medics, firefighters—ready to carry out whoever was inside.

One woman needed to be freed from the wreck. They amputated part of her leg right there, inside the mangled fuselage. I helped carry her stretcher. She looked at me, smiled through the morphine haze, and said in a soft Belfast accent, “I guess I won’t get the chance to date you, you wee handsome policeman.”

I blinked. “Why not?”

She smiled, “You wee eejut. Wouldn’t want to be seen out with a one-legged lass, now would you’s? I mean, how would we dance like Travolta and Olivia Newton-John? You’s with your two legs and me with my peg leg.”

I grinned awkwardly. “Hell, why not? We’d wing it!”

She laughed, then disappeared into a blur of flashing lights and ambulances. The Irish sense of humour is legendary.

By the time we were relieved from duty, my fluorescent jacket was soaked in blood. A senior officer barked at us to put our helmets on or face discipline. That’s what he was worried about. Not the trauma. Not the dead. Just the helmets.

Classic bloody knobhead.

The Mortuary

I slept two hours before being called back the next morning.

“You’re in charge of the temporary mortuary,” they said.

My job? Keep the press and families out of the mortuary/aircraft hangar and organize food for the coroners and morticians.

And try not to lose it.

I was very stressed.

I walked in and saw row after row of bodies. There were forty-odd. Hard to say. I’ve blanked most of it out. But I remember the brothers, little lads. Two children are lying peacefully side by side. Like the Irish lassie, that image still visits me from time to time.

The coroners got to work, unfazed. They’d come from Lockerbie, where they’d retrieved hands and legs from rooftops—a hardened bunch. One peeled back a face and began sawing open a skull to retrieve, examine and weigh a brain.

I stepped forward with a clipboard.

“What would you like for lunch?” I asked.

He looked up, grinning. “Sweetbreads aren’t on the menu, are they?”

I smirked. “Chicken curry or veggie pizza.”

Dark humour. Can’t get enough of it.

It helped. It created distance. Made the body bags feel a little less personal.

Later, the morticians (also known as embalmers) took over. The formaldehyde stung the air. I did my rounds. Tick boxes. Lock doors. Make another drinks round. 

Pretend I was okay

Business as Usual

No one asked how I was, there was no debrief, no check-in. That was policing in the ‘80s. Man up, show up, shut up, and get on with it.

Three weeks later, they held a mass trauma meeting. About thirty cops were in a room with a counsellor and two senior officers.

“Is anyone struggling with what you saw?” they asked.

“Is anyone traumatized?” 

Not one hand went up.

Not one. Not a flicker. Not a murmur.

Real men and tough women don’t, you see. 

However, I still see that Irish girl’s smile.

I still see the children in body bags.

I smell the jet fuel.

And I still hear the moans and screams.

But back then, I stuffed it down—because feeling made you weak. And weakness got mocked. It was like being back at school, where silence was a matter of survival.

Screaming in the silence. That’s what I learned to do.

And some days, I still do.