I survived 7/7, but still see suicidal attackers everywhere

Two decades have passed since the 2005 London attacks, but the face of the main suicide bomber, Mohammad Sidik Khan, never left the memory of Dan Bidl.

It seems as real today as they saw in each other’s eyes.

“I can be in the kitchen and he stands in the garden,” says Dan, who has a complex post-tract stress disorder.

“He is there, dressed as that day, holding Ruksack, just with his hand, about exploding it again.”

Even if Dan looks away, the bombers are still when he looks back.

“I saw that this man really separates himself in front of me, and now I am watching him again.”

Warning: In this article some readers may know crisis

Dan was on 7 July 2005 at a distance to touch the distance of the mine in a rush-hour London underground circle line train. How he survived is beyond rational explanation.

“As we took out of the Edgware Road station, I could feel that someone was staring at me. I was just about to roam and used to say, ‘What are you looking at?’

“And then there was a luxurious white, bright flash – like summer as I never experienced before.”

Khan had a homemade bomb blast – an al -Qaeda -Diwani was made using a chemical recipe – that he was carrying it in his rooksack.

The device killed both David Fallks, 22, Jennifer Nicolson, 24, Laura Web, 29, Jonathan Downey, 34, Colin Morley and Michael Bruster.

overall, 52 people were killed that dayFour bombs exploded by Islamist extremists. Another 770 injured.

Dan was blown out of the train, hit the tunnel wall and fell into a crawl space between the tunnel wall and the track.

His injuries were frightening. His left leg was blown. His right leg was dropped from the knee. He faced burning of second and third degrees on his arms, hands and face. He lost his left eye – and also hearing on that side.

He had to face a large -scale lacquer on his forehead. A pole went into her body from the internal fitting of the tube train and finished puncturing and breaking her kidneys, lungs, colon and bowel. Later he lost his spleen.

Dan was the most seriously injured victim of attacks to survive. And he was conscious.

He initially thought that white flash was an electric explosion.

The debris fell on him, and his hands and hands were dissolving. He could see the flames flickering.

“After the explosion, you could listen to a pin drop. It was almost the same as everyone had just breathed a big breath,” Dan, “and then it was like opening the doors of hell. I have never heard before.

Dan could see some of the dead. He tried to push himself down for the liver with the rubble. He felt how deep he was bleeding.

“The initial feeling was one of the total mistakes. It was definitely like God, it is just a bad dream.”

Dan’s mind immediately turned to his father, and how he could not do it for him.

“My father cannot be the person who walks in a morchary and goes, ‘Yes, this is my son’,” says Dan. “I couldn’t consider him.”

He did not believe that he would come out of the tunnel. But the will was kicked in the desire to survive easily and she shouted for help.

The first person to respond was the fellow passenger Adrian Heley, who served as a fighter medicine during the Kosovo war. If it was someone else, Dan believes he must have died.

“The first thing he said to me, ‘Don’t worry, I have been in this position first, and never lost anyone.”

“And I am thinking, ‘How can you go before?”

“And then he told me: ‘I am not going to lie to you. It is really going to hurt.”

Adrian implemented a tournicate and closed the artery in Dan’s thigh to kill him. Dan’s life was truly in the hands of Adrian until paramedics were not able to reach him after about half an hour.

Adrians helped many more in the following hours – and received the queen’s praise for bravery in 2009.

Dan’s trauma was over. He was rushed to a nearby St. Mary Hospital, where he repeatedly moved to cardiac arrest. At one point, a surgeon had to manually massage his heart to bring it back to life. He was given 87 units of blood.

“I think we all have something – that the fundamental desire to live.

“Very few people ever push up to the degree where it is required.

“My existence is below for adrion and unprecedented care and NHS and my wife’s only talent.”

Physical existence was one thing. But Dan had another toll on mental health.

After eight weeks in an induced coma, Dan began a year -old journey to leave the hospital – and he felt that he would have to navigate the world differently.

Their nights were consumed by mental torture.

He became dreadful to close his eyes and go to sleep, as he would find himself back in the tunnel.

“I woke up and [the bomber] Standing next to me, “Dan says.” I will drive – he is on the back seat of my car. I will look at the shop window and have a reflection – on the other side of the road. ,

Those flashbacks have described Dan as the crime of a survivor.

“I have repeated that moment again in my head a million times. Was there anything about me that did it to him? Should I be seen something about him and then tried to stop it?”

By 2013, Dan had reduced a dangerous. He tried to kill his life three times.

But he had also started a relationship with his wife’s gem – and it was a significant turn.

The next time he came close to suicide, it was Mani’s face when he closed his eyes, and realized that if he ends his life, he provokes the trauma on him.

Mani persuaded Dan to evaluate a mental health – and he began to achieve the need for experts.

In 2014 he agreed – as part of his medical and attempted to manage the situation – to do something that he would never do: return to Edgware Road.

When the day came, the Dan was experiencing a flashback outside the station and listening to the sound of 7/7 again: screaming, shouting and siren.

He and Mani pressed. As soon as he entered the ticket hall, there were more flashbacks.

The station managers and employees were expecting them and asked if he wanted to go on the stage. Dan said it was a “far -fetched bridge”. Mani insisted that they all go together.

When they reached the stage, a train was pulled inside. Dan began to feel ill. But the train left quietly without any incident – and by the time a third train arrived, it got the courage to ride in it.

“I really feel, really ill. I am sweating. She is crying. I am getting tight, waiting for an explosion. I am waiting for that big heat and that pressure.”

And then the train stopped at the point in the tunnel where the bomb was closed – an arrangement between the driver and the station manager.

“They used to stop the train at the exact place where I was lying. I remember that I was looking down on the floor and it was really a strange feeling – knowing that my life was really ended there.”

As soon as the train went away, some inside Dan urged him to land at the next station and move forward with his life.

“I am going to leave the station, whatever I am going to do today, I am going to do, and then I am going to marry this amazing, beautiful woman,” he says. The two tied the knot the next year.

Eleven years old, Dan feels inspired to do something positive with his life.

Now he helps his own company to disabled people in work – a professional journey that he would never have done was not for the bomb.

He still has flashbacks and bad days, but he is looking for ways to manage them – and has published a book of what he has done.

“I am still very lucky to survive. I have paid a huge, heavy price. I will just keep fighting every day to ensure that he and his tasks never win.”

A list of organizations in the UK offered support and information with some issues of this story BBC Action Line