That I was able to take the latter course is a matter for gratitude that can never be adequately expressed, though I will do my best as my story unfolds. As the weeks and months extended into years there were so many points of support and inspiration. My team-mates and fellow survivors Harry Gregg and Bill Foulkes were the first to meet the challenge and show the way. They did it with courage and determination and their example taught me one of the greatest lessons I would learn. Then there were so many others. They ranged from my family in the North East, who reclaimed me from the hospital in Germany when I was still stunned and so dislocated, to Jimmy Murphy, Busby’s ferociously committed assistant, and my dear friend Nobby Stiles, who would share the supreme moments of my football life at the finals of the World Cup and European Cup. Most importantly, my wife Norma and our daughters, Suzanne and Andrea, gave true meaning to the rest of my life.
Beyond such key figures, the cast which shaped my world – gave me my values and my guidance – is so vast that it touches every moment of my account of the days that were moulded by the first important discovery I made as a boy: that I would never do anything more naturally, or so well, as play football. That was the gift which was retained only miraculously in the horror of that Bavarian night.
I need to go back before Munich now if I am to provide any insight into what was the central drama of my life, something which informed, inevitably, all that came after. I need to try to recreate the sheer, uncomplicated thrill that came with being a member of this young team. A team which, perhaps more than any other in the history of the game, was filled not only with talent but with what seemed a grace which came from some unchartable source, something beyond even the planning and the vision of the great Busby.
We felt nothing was beyond us as we talked so animatedly and laughed on that journey home from Belgrade, where we had played with great maturity to reach the semi-finals of the European Cup. In two days we were to face Wolves in another game of vital importance, one which could well prove decisive in our pursuit of a third straight league title. The sky was low and filled with snow as we landed in Munich for refuelling, but we saw little or no reason to doubt that our own horizons stretched out quite seamlessly.
It was a mood which so cheerfully overcame a long and irksome journey, as most of our travelling was in those days. In less optimistic circumstances I might have been more conscious of my dislike for this particular aircraft bearing us down through the low clouds, a chartered British European Airways Elizabethan. Since the first time I had flown in one, I had been made uneasy by the length of time it took to get airborne. The plane seemed to need an age to get off the ground. The Elizabethan felt like a heavy aircraft, one that needed a long runway and plenty of time to produce sufficient speed. It was all right after you had completed the ascent. You were reassured then by the steady throb of the engines. The first time I experienced a take-off in the plane I found myself saying, under my breath, ‘This is a long one.’
When we put down in Munich you couldn’t help noticing all the slushy snow on the runway, and as we had coffee in the terminal I imagined they would be clearing it away. Today, I suppose, it would take just a few minutes. There was no tension as we talked eagerly about the days ahead. We were, after all, the team who could apparently do anything. In the last few days we had beaten Arsenal in what some said was the most spectacular game ever seen at Highbury, and in Belgrade we had been equal to anything thrown at us by the tough and skilful players of Red Star. Now we were in the hands of an airline which surely knew, just as we did in our own world, what they were doing.
Even after two aborted take-offs, and a second visit to the terminal for another coffee, as far as I was concerned the spell was scarcely broken. Some players had changed seats, moved to places which they considered safer, but doing that never occurred to me or my companion on the leg from Belgrade, Dennis Viollet. Later, though, when I stood on the cold field in a state of disbelief and shock, I was glad that I had decided to keep on my overcoat. Why did I do that, why was it that I was able to remove the coat and place it on Busby as he waited on the wet tarmac desperately in need of medical assistance?
By the third attempt at take-off, conversation had dwindled almost to nothing. Dennis and I no longer talked about the growth of the team and the possibilities offered by the Wolves game. I looked out of the window and as I did so I was suddenly conscious of the silence inside the plane. Outside, the snowy field flew by, but not quickly enough it seemed. I knew it was too long when I saw the fence and then we were on the house. There was an awful noise, the grind of metal on metal. Then there was the void.
When I came to, I was on the ground, outside the wrecked plane, but still strapped into my seat. Dennis had been pulled
