Scots journalists reveal their Lockerbie memories

In day three of our week long series, ANGELA McMANUS and RUSSELL LEADBETTER spoke to two of the journalists who reported on the tragic events of ­December 21 1988.

'Even in the dark you could tell it was a scene of utter devastation'

THE kindness and compassion shown by ordinary people when hell descended on the small town of Lockerbie will never be forgotten by former Evening Times journalist Sheila Hamilton.

She was working for the Aberdeen Evening Express at the time and enjoying a few days off on holiday before Christmas when she took a call from her features editor at 10pm, asking her to drive to Lockerbie that night.

By the time she arrived in the early hours, a great ball of black smoke had spread across the town and the air was filled with the acrid smell of aviation fuel.

Despite the sleet and rain, Sherwood Crescent was still a raging inferno with roofs ablaze, paths and hedgerows alight as jets of gas hissed from broken pipes.

"What I most remember is the kindness of local people," she reflects. "We were lucky because we were among the first to arrive. The place was flooded with reporters the following day.

"The people were extraordinarily kind: they let us into their homes, the shops were open in the middle of the night to serve hot drinks to families and rescuers, they were just so kind and warm and welcoming despite the terrible shock they'd had."

She adds: "Going back for the 10th anniversary you got a much better picture of what had happened. A lot of things were hidden from us on that first night.

"The night would have cloaked all the horrors, the bodies in the trees and at Tundergarth Hill.

"I couldn't get on a plane for a couple of years after that night in Lockerbie."

She says her abiding memory of the night was the giant wasteland that looked like the surface of the moon where family homes had stood just a few hours before. And the Town Hall, decorated for Christmas parties, that was quickly turned into a makeshift mortuary.

"Sir Hector Munro, who was the Conservative MP for the area, took part in a press conference in the middle of the night and I just remember his face was ashen and his eyes were red. There was such humanity and compassion in his face. He must have seen so much of the horror," she says.

Going back after 10 years was shocking, she explains. "Then I realised what people had endured and it confirmed in me how I was right that they were incredibly kind.

"They had done so much for each other and for the American families."

The drive to Lockerbie from Aberdeen was fraught with worry for Sheila, her brother lived in the Borders and in the days before mobile phones she hadn't been able to reach him at home before she set off.

She later learned he had been at his father-in-law's at nearby Lochmaben, they had heard the bang and just assumed it was the wind on the cow shed roof.

"Years later he said he and his wife had actually been looking at a house for sale in Sherwood Crescent that summer."

'The scene was like the aftermath of a riot'

BARCLAY McBain, now deputy editor of our sister paper, The Herald, was one of the first journalists to visit Lockerbie in the immediate aftermath of the disaster.

"I was The Herald's late-shift reporter that week, starting at 7pm. I was sitting on the news desk and I took a call from someone who said that a light aircraft had crashed into the petrol station in Lockerbie.

"I put some calls in and it was clear that something major had happened.

"A photographer and I drove down there. I remember walking past a garage: the scene was like the aftermath of a riot. There was paper everywhere, bits of metal.

"There was nothing that was recognisably from an aeroplane but there was a lot of damage.

"One of the fire crews who had responded to the emergency had commandeered a milk-float, which they had filled with water to try to extinguish some of the fires.

"I walked around the town, talking to people and asking them for their first-hand accounts.

"All the phone lines were down but I had one of the very early mobile phones and I sent my copy into the office, and updated it whenever I could.

"We managed to get to Sherwood Crescent, which had been devastated with loss of life.

"Even in the dark you could tell it was a scene of utter devastation.

"We did more interviews and sent more words and photographs back to the office.

"At that time we still weren't clear about what exactly had happened at Lockerbie, although it did become clear over the course of the evening that a plane had dropped out of the sky and had landed in and around Lockerbie.

"At about 3am we managed to find a hotel and we slept on the floor.

"We got up first thing and because it was daylight we were able to see the extent of the devastation.

"That first full day, we went round the town again, and we went to the makeshift morgue.

"I remember Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister at the time, visited Lockerbie that day, too.

"The townspeople were obviously deeply shocked but at the same time they were very dignified.

"People were congregating in bars and other places, and I was able to speak to someone whose aunt had lived in Sherwood Crescent. They'd been trying to phone her but the line had just gone dead.

"They were going to try to make their way there to find out if she was alright.

"One of the most moving aspects of that day was talking to a farmer at Tundergarth, a couple of miles away.

"He was very eloquent in describing what he had seen.

"There, I saw the image that everyone associates with Lockerbie - the fuselage lying on its side.

"There were mounds covered in black sheeting, next to sticks placed in the ground, marking the location of bodies.

"I think seeing the aftermath of Lockerbie did have an impact on me.

"I remember the sense of shock on the night, and the full impact the next day.

"I was conscious that I had a job to do, however, and I did the best I could."