There was never an instinct to try to put Munich out of mind, to say that it was something terribly sad but had to be relegated to the past because how else could you deal with the present and the future? Munich was just too big, too overpowering, to permit that kind of reaction. It was something that you knew, right from the start, you had to learn to live with. It was a reality that was reinforced with every account of a funeral, every description by Jimmy Murphy of how it was at Old Trafford with the people milling around the ground.
Jimmy, typically, was the strongest presence in those days when the Old Man was surviving only with the help of an oxygen tent. He said that we had to fight for our existence – and the memory of the team-mates we had lost. He had been through a war when men had to live with the loss of so many comrades, had to fight on through the suffering and live with what was left to them. It was the same now at Manchester United, Jimmy insisted. But then later I heard that it was just a front that Jimmy put on. One day he was discovered in a back corridor of the hospital, sobbing his heart out in pain at the loss of so many young players he had adored for their talent and who he loved like sons.
Very soon it was clear that Jimmy Murphy, and everyone else at the club, needed one thing to happen more than anything. They needed another match, some sense of continuity, some belief that, however haltingly, the club was moving forward from the worst of the grief. For several days I had pushed away the idea of returning to Manchester, of picking up again the challenge of playing football, but now I felt a few stirrings, partly inspired by the courage of Harry Gregg and Bill Foulkes, partly by the fact that before I left the hospital I was able to walk up the stairs and see both Duncan and the Old Man. Both of them were so ill that it was obvious we were in danger of losing them. To lose one would be the most terrible blow; to lose both, unthinkable. Something had to be done. Their work could not be allowed just to slide away – though saying that seemed a lot easier than dredging up the effort and the will to begin the job.
When my mother and Jack collected me at the docks in Harwich, I certainly felt a sense of relief that they were taking me not to Manchester but to the North East, where I could have respite, however brief, from the challenge of facing all the new realities of United’s life and my own. Once home, I saw friends, I took some walks, and one day a photographer caught me kicking a ball in the street with some of the local kids. The worst moment was when my mother came into my room and said, ‘Duncan Edwards died, son.’
I could hardly bear it. When I’d first arrived in Manchester I’d been helped so much by my fellow players. Two of them, Eddie Colman and David Pegg, were now gone, but it had been Duncan, everyone’s great young hero, who had made a point of looking after me. In the army he had made that effort to find me a comfortable mattress, and that was just the opening statement of his friendship. One day he gave me one of his shirts, saying it fitted him a little tightly, but I suspect he had noted what passed for my wardrobe. Most important of all for a young lad who in many ways off the field wasn’t as sure of himself as he tried to pretend, he gave me his attention.
He was fantastic and I loved him.
At the time of the accident he was just beginning to think of settling down with his girlfriend, Molly Leech. There was talk of marriage and I’m sure it would have happened quite quickly.
I went to see Duncan’s mother Sarah a few years ago, shortly before she died. She was a fine, tough lady. She had known tragedy before she lost Duncan: a baby daughter had died at fourteen weeks. There was a report that she had suffered a burglary at her house in Dudley, in Worcester-shire, and when I drove down there I was amazed to see how strong she was. She told me how she had found a strange man in her house and was so incensed that she wanted to fight him. I could see Duncan in her as her eyes blazed with anger as she told me the story. Years earlier I had stood with her when they unveiled a statue to Duncan in Dudley, and the local vicar declared, ‘Talent and genius we will see again, but there will only ever be one Duncan Edwards.’ I could only murmur, ‘Amen.’
I took it so hard when my mother broke the news that he had died because, even though he was in terrible pain in Munich, and the doctors were not optimistic, I had had a sense that he might just make it. All the sadness flooded back when, many years after the accident, a surgeon told me that with modern technology, coupled with his fighting heart, there was no doubt that his life would have been saved.
Down the years I have tried to keep in touch with the relatives
