Manchester United Air Disaster (Flight BE609)

Manchester United (Old Trafford)

You’ve heard similar phrases before “Where were you when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon?”, “where were you the day Kennedy was shot?” I recall another event that raises a similar question, “where were you the night Flight BE609 went down? The night of Manchester United’s plane crashed in Munich?” It was February 6th 1958 and I was only fourteen years old at that time...

I was at the Stretford Youth Club on stage for my debut performance; we had formed a Skiffle Group for the weekend dance but had no instruments, making us one of the very first performers to lip sink to a recording, Lonny Donagan (The King Of Skiffle) as I remember. Mouthing the words and jumping all round the stage to such great songs as "Cumberland Gap", "My Old Man’s A Dustman", "Rock Island Line" and the longest song title of them all, "Does Your Chewing Gum Loose it’s flavour On the Bedpost Over Night". I’m sure we all looked like proper idiots but everyone was having so much fun it didn’t really matter, who cared; we had no cares...

I’ll never forget the horrific news, it left the football world reeling from the loss of its most talented young players, and it marked the end of the Busby Babes. Tommy Taylor, Roger Byrne, Liam Whelan just to mention a few of the players to loose their lives that night, Duncan Edwards (Pictured Above) fought for his life for fifteen days but finally succumbed to his injuries on the 21st February 1958.

Someone had pushed through the doors of our youth club yelling erratically, I couldn’t hear at first but it didn’t take long for this news to travel all around the room. There was total disbelief, girls crying, boys crying, I was close to tears myself after I heard it but I held them back for some reason, it was like Flight BE609 had crashed right into the building we were in.

The dance was over immediately, we all kind of wandered off, like zombies with no direction. This was the most shocking thing for me in my short carefree sheltered lifetime, innocence was shattered like glass into a million sharp splinters; a kid with no cares suddenly had one, a big one. I would never see my favourite team play ever again, I would never cheer for Duncan Edwards or hear the crowd roar, it was a sad sad time and I will never shake those painfull images. I used to be able to hear the crowd roar (every time they scored a goal) from my house on Blenheim Rd in Firswood, only a stones throw from Old Trafford. I never went back to United's grounds after that and later that year we immigrated to Canada.

I can never forget that night, every time I watch a soccer game I think of it. The memory of this tragedy has faded in and out over time but never altogether and when I do stop to remember, it all comes flooding back like it were only yesterday…

Written By: John Ellis February 6th 2006

Photograph: Duncan Edwards

Posted By: Music Borders
www.musicborders.com