Thirty five years on from the Lockerbie disaster the town remembers and moves forward

Clues such as the wooden plaque hanging in the main hall naming all the pupils who have visited Syracuse University in New York state through the Lockerbie Syracuse Scholarship Trust on an exchange scheme honouring the 35 students killed in the explosion, while the library hosts an exhibition of photographs of the town taken by Lawrence Mason Jr, a Syracuse professor, on his many visits. At the entrance to the school stands a cairn, quarried from the same stone as the one erected in Arlington cemetery while across town at Dryfesdale Cemetery a Christmas wreath has joined the flowers and mementos on the granite memorial to all the victims and a thick hoar frost clings to memorials in Rosebank and Sherwood Crescent where parts of the plane landed.

Down in the High Street as the afternoon light fades, Christmas decorations strung in trees shine brightly over a flock of concrete sheep and the colours of the flags represented in the Town Hall’s stained glass window commemorating the 20 nationalities of the dead glow into the darkness. Thirty five years ago Christmas was cancelled in the town of around 4,000 people as they struggled with the aftermath of the disaster and for a decade after no festive lights shone. But today they light up the streets symbolising how Lockerbie has rebuilt and come to terms with what happened, and in remembering made new connections that have helped it take steps towards healing and ultimately embracing the town motto of ‘Forward’.

Gillian Moffat, 44, midwife and Lockerbie resident was nine years old in December 1988 and had just moved from Sherwood Crescent, where homes were destroyed and residents killed and injured, to a new home just around the corner.

In 1988 I had just turned nine and my sister Lesley was 12, and we lived with my mum and dad in Douglas Terrace which is the road that runs to Sherwood Crescent until September 1988 when we moved around the corner.

That night my sister and dad were in the living room watching the telly and my mum and I were up the stairs where my mum was wallpapering the bedroom. We were talking and then there was like a rumble of thunder and my mum turned to me and gave me a cuddle. I said ‘mum is that thunder?’ and she said ‘I don’t think so’ because it just carried on and carried on. It was probably only about three and a half seconds but it felt as if it was prolonged thumping. We didn’t feel an explosion, there wasn’t a bang, there wasn’t anything. It was just like all the air got sucked out the world.

Mum and I ran down the stairs and my sister and my dad were coming out of the living room at the same time. You could see plaster and dust coming down from the ceiling and we ran out of the back door. Everywhere was orange, this really bizarre orange colour, and ash was falling from the sky. When you looked towards Sherwood it was like a wall of thick black smoke.

I remember feeling like I was going to be sick and it was just shock, total shock. We didn’t know what was going on. We went to my nana and papa’s house in the middle of the town where all you could see back to our area was an orange glow.

We knew everybody, literally, they were our neighbours and we didn’t know where anybody was. There were no mobiles then. It was days before we had any idea.

We went back home next day and it was kind of a grey, nothingness day. It was strange, and the silence was eerie. We had no electricity, no water, the phone lines were down. There were bits of aircraft in the garden…

It’s really strange because you don’t remember then have flashes of things and everything in between is just nothing.

We went and looked at our old house and the roof was off and the thought that we could have been in it, our bedrooms were up the stairs... I remember standing… and the sight was… it was just hell, it was just awful.

People would say ‘did you see anything?’ and I’d say ‘no, there were no bodies’, because as a nine-year-old it was easier in my brain, but as an adult you look back and I remember sitting and seeing the coffins being taken away and looking over the hill at the back of the house and seeing the lines of searchers combing the landscape. I remember a procession of bodies being taken away and my sister and myself and two friends sat in the front porch with the lights off playing with our toys as the coffins were going past one after the other.

When we talk about moving on, I think there’s a legacy that isn’t talked about. You have generations affected by it in different ways, and it’s not just what happened that day. I think it’s almost like we can’t work it out. You have people who want to forget and move on and others who are more yes, move on but you cannot forget about it, it’s not possible.

I think you need to talk about it because that’s part of grief, it’s part of the healing process, and I do feel an awful lot better knowing what I know now because the truth is actually easier to deal with than what I had in my mind.

I like to think that I have a bit more compassion than I would have, and also think I cannot be the only person that has struggled over the years. If by talking about it I can possibly make somebody think it’s OK to feel like that, I think that’s a positive thing to come out of it.

Having children changes your perspective. My older son’s 17 now and wants to know. They talked about it in school and the time comes when you do have to tell your children the biggest thing that’s really ever happened and it has been very hard. But I want them to know how to express things. And it’s part of their history too.

Brian Asher, 48, Headteacher Lockerbie Academy, has been at the school for ten years and with succeeding generations of pupils who weren’t born at the time of the disaster, is keen to promote the links with Syracuse university as a positive way of remembering the past. In 1989 the Syracuse Trust was set up using money given to relatives of the victims and donated by the public as a disaster relief donation in the immediate aftermath of the plane crash and has paid for two students a year to study at the American university.

I’m from the Isle of Bute and was 13 at the time and can distinctly remember the news footage. I’ve tried to be as respectful as possible, to enable others to have their input into what happened. I’ve tried to strengthen and cement the links that we have with Syracuse in New York and London and that’s really helpful. I think it’s about understanding the legacy and importance it has for the town. It’s not just running a school, I’m sort of caretaker at the moment of this relationship that a lot of people talk about, a positive that came out of a night of tragedy.

People have given voice to the fact that they saw the very best of humanity expressed in Lockerbie just as a reflex reaction so I think whenever the anniversary comes round it’s important to celebrate the best of what Lockerbie did, not because they wanted somebody to come along and built a monument to it, just because that was the right thing to do, because that’s who they are.

None of the pupils have recollection, some of the parents don’t, so they learn about the what and why. In terms of remembering there are different camps in the town and they’re all equally valid. There are people for whom there is very real post traumatic stress and it is too difficult a topic, and for others it’s cathartic to talk about it. For some it’s important to keep the memory alive of loved ones lost and all of those responses have a place.

Every December 21st we offer the opportunity for pupils to reflect and then there’s an act of remembrance with someone coming from Syracuse to join us and we go to the garden of remembrance at Dryfesdale Cemetery and lay a tribute on behalf of the school.

Ian Rutherford - 68, is a retired photographer who in 1988 was based in Hawick where he worked for Scottish Water and had ambitions to be a sports photographer, covering mainly rugby games freelance in his spare time and doing occasional shifts for Scotland on Sunday. He was one of the first members of the press to arrive in Lockerbie on the evening of 21st of December, taking the first pictures of the cockpit in a field in the dark. He went on to work as an award-winning press photographer, taking photographs in Afghanistan, Kosovo and of the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

That night I was in the house working on photographs and my wife came in and said ‘have you seen the television, there’s been a really bad air plane crash in the Borders’ so I phoned the picture editor at the Scotsman, and they said just go.

It was a windy, wet night and I was driving on the road from Langholm over the hills to Lockerbie and saw a blue light flashing and when I got closer there was an ambulance at the side of the road at Tundergarth Church. I got out of the car and looked over the dyke and there’s the cockpit lying in the field. I could hardly believe what I was seeing.

There were a couple of policemen and a police car in the field with its headlights shining on the cockpit so I did some shots. Certainly I’d be one of the first journalists that was there. There are images of the cockpit taken the next day, but this was in the dark very early on, just not longer after it had happened.

Being naive I thought I’ll just go into Lockerbie but it was like The Blitz, fire hoses everywhere, chaos, ambulances, police and there was a bit of aeroplane engine lying in the middle of a road.

Driving back the same way a few miles outside Langholm I saw something in the field. By this time it was really clear with a full moon. I jumped over the fence and it was the escape shute lying up the field with all the mangled tubes at the end.

You’re thinking plane crash - we didn’t know anything about a terrorist attack - and I couldn’t understand why this was so far away from Lockerbie. I got spooked because I saw a piece of luggage lying and that personalised it and I didn’t know what I might find so I got back across the fence and got into my car.

I processed and developed my film in the coal shed and hung it up to dry in the kitchen and that was it. I didn’t realise where the cockpit was there were bodies lying everywhere in the field because it was dark. I was always grateful I never found any bodies or anything.

I was just a naive guy that had a camera. It’s when you get back and develop your film, you see in the cold light of day what you’ve just taken.

Lockerbie’s been a sort of thread through my career because years later I got sent to Libya to photograph one of the Lockerbie suspects, Fhima [Lamen Khalifa Fhimah], then I photographed al-Megrahi walking up the steps of the aeroplane to go back to Tripoli, so that was the last connection I had.

I haven’t been back but I’m planning to go, because that lonely road from Langholm to Lockerbie, that’s the bit that sticks in my mind, driving down that road and seeing that blue light flashing in the distance.

David Wilson, 80, from Lockerbie was a teacher at Lockerbie Academy and District Councillor and is now Treasurer at Dryfesdale Lodge Visitors Centre, where the memorial to the victims of the disaster are commemorated. He was heavily involved in a lot of the decision making in the community in the immediate aftermath of the plane crash.

The essence of Lockerbie hasn’t changed althought there are newer housing developments and newer industries but the ways in which the disaster is recognised probably have. The remembrance is lower key - nearer the beginning there would be politicians turn up but now people lay wreaths and go home. For the 35th anniversary there will be wreaths laid and the Lodge is open with people here to greet and welcome visitors. The Lodge has had over 100,000 visitors from every state in America ten times over, Australia, New Zealand… every country in the world has been to that Lodge, and sometimes it’s still very, very emotional.

You have some images and they don’t go away. I remember the aircraft engine buried in the road and an aircraft seat jammed in one of the house windows and I remember the town hall was a staging post for coffins that were going back to the US. There was one of a very small child and that kind of thing just stays with you. And I think we all saw bodies.

Lockerbie decided it wasn’t going to be able to influence anything on a geopolitical level so it may as well get on with stuff that helped people. That’s where the famous story about the women washing the clothes and the WRVS making scones for the soldiers and the policemen came in, things of practical usefulness on the ground.

There was never any demand for revenge but there was a feeling justice should be done. It’s bubbling away because there’s another trial in the United States, but the full story of the whole background will never be told.

It’s the biggest event in Lockerbie’s history and forgetting isn’t an option. When people like me have moved on the next generation will need to decide what they want to do. But as long as there’s a great big stained glass window in the town hall right and a big memorial with the names on, it’s not possible.

Kerry Currie, 45, Depute Head Teacher Lockerbie Academy, was a child at the time of the disaster and later became a Syracuse Scholar when she attended the school. She now has responsibility for the programme at the school.

I was ten in 1998 so I have vivid memories of that night and I’m just delighted to be back here as part of a unique programme and partnership with Syracuse University.

We lived about six miles north in a cottage backed onto the railway and my dad ran out because he thought a train had come off. He came back in and said ‘there’s something no’ right, the sky’s red at Lockerbie’.

Coming to Lockerbie and seeing my grandparents in the days that followed there was a burning smell about the town, I can still smell it now, and obviously the wreckage was about. I remember my other granny lived two fields away and we weren’t allowed to walk there in case there were any bodies or luggage lying.

I came to Lockerbie Academy as a pupil in 1990, the year the first two scholars went to Syracuse University and remember hearing about the girls that went to represent the town. Also I ended up being friends with young people who were friends with the pupils who had died, so that connection is there.

For us it’s about sharing our experiences of Lockerbie because Americans want to know what it’s like here. More come to visit now and we’ve got a really close link, and students from Syracuse London visit and in Syracuse we’re part of their annual commemorative rose laying ceremony. I think the American families wanted that wee bit of connection with somebody that’s from the town where they’ve either lost a member of their community or a member of their family.

Obviously we will always remember what happened but I think for us we talk about the town moving on. The motto the Syracuse University Remembrance Scholars came up with was ‘look back, act forward’ and that’s something we talk about, because the motto of the town is ‘Forward Lockerbie’ and that’s our school vision: ‘Forward Lockerbie, a caring, learning community’, so it’s about tying all of that in and really looking forward.

Colin Dorrance 53, is a former police officer who at the time of the disaster was 18 and the youngest officer on duty. Now retired he is on the Trust of the Dryfesdale Visitor Centre and organised the Cycle to Syracuse memorial charity bike ride that remembered those lost by cycling from Lockerbie to Syracuse University and raised £25,000 in order to assist with funding a youth counsellor at Lockerbie Academy. His involvement with the Lockerbie/Syracuse Remembrance Scholarship program, on which his two children were Syracuse Scholars, saw him visit many victims’ relatives in the US and meeting visitors to Lockerbie who wanted to see where a family member fell. It also saw him discovering decades on the identity of the two year old whose body he was handed by a farmer who disappeared into the darkness.

We went up to Halldykes Farm and the farmer explained he was the son of the deceased farmer and had been with his dad that night, as a 16 year old. Before I knew it I’m with this lawyer and his wife in the back of a pickup bouncing through this field. He said, ‘aye, there were folk scattered in the field in the dark and dad took a kid in to the town hall because she was so small and he was scared she would get picked up by foxes’ and the hairs on the back of my neck went up. I said ‘well he handed the kid to me’, so there was a wee moment there, and I said do you know who that was because I’d never known, and he said yes it was a young girl from Wales who was with her mum on the flight. It was Yvonne and Bryony Owen. It’s a connection thing, that little bond, you wanted to know.

For two and half decades the disaster was something in my past and it was my daughter going to Syracuse that brought some understanding and context to the names on the walls of the memorial. Over the past ten years I’ve got to know many of the families and that’s been valuable for them and it’s been valuable for us in the town to meet many of them. The bonds are as strong as ever and if anything they’re widening and getting stronger and I think that’s a good thing.

It’s more about the healing now and the connections and the friendships that have come out of it. People here really did pull together, thousands of people at the time carried out acts of kindness and generosity and selflessness and I think they should be proud of that and people should celebrate that kindness and compassion.

It’s about not only looking back but looking forward to the future and constructing something better so something like that never happens again and we understand each other much better. I think Lockerbie is very much a part of that which is a good thing.