Herald of Free Enterprise – Jim Andrews

Wow, 35 years since that awful newsflash the Herald of Free Enterprise rolled over on departure from Zeebrugge. I was in JHQ Rheindahlen at the time, and following the awful news, we were making rapid response trips to Belgium because there was a lot of military personnel or their families involved. There was an awful lot of tragic stories that came out of that disaster. So many lives needlessly lost. One of my memories was of a neighbour a couple of doors away from me had his brother over, the brother had survived the disaster and been complicit in the rescue of others, he went home,to Hungerford, received as a hero then became a victim of the Hungerford massacre later that year. Some time later that same month the IRA bombed my camp, a mere 100 metres from my married quarter, my children were asleep when the bomb went off. The windows were blown in and the window frames and glass landed on top of the boys beds, they didn’t even wake up. Janice, my wife at the time was carrying a tray with cups of tea with some biscuits across the living room floor, she was toppled but happily uninjured, but our nightcap was destroyed, I was on the phone to my sister Christine, when the bomb went off. I will never forget the fear and confusion in that moment. My sister said something like “what the #*# was that, then I put the phone down on her., Janice was quite cool and said I’m OK. I checked the children, Hayley was crying, not hurt just frightened, Nick and James were asleep and wondered what the fuss was about. My neighbour who’s name has been long forgotten, knocked my door and said, come on mate we need to go and help. So off we went to E mess where the car bomb containing around 300lb of explosive had exploded. The bomb destroyed EMess, which was a multi national officers mess. Sadly two German waitresses were killed, the building was flattened but the damage was only half as bad as it might have been. Because the sleeping unit of the IRA had parked the Volvo 460 the wrong way around so the blast was directed away from, and not toward the building. Aren’t memories of your working life quite boring?