AS WE accelerated down the runway, something told me we were not going to make it. My last memory is of pushing a pack of cards into my pocket. Just when we should have been getting off the ground, there was the first of three sickening bumps. The first must have been the aircraft hitting a fence, the second when the pilot pulled up his wheels, and the third, and loudest, when we hit a house. Then there was darkness.

The next thing I knew, there was a knocking on the window. Albert Scanlon had disappeared from in front of me, but I seemed to be all right. There was nothing where the right side of the aircraft should have been. The fuselage had been sliced diagonally. I must have missed the break by inches. A man at the window was yelling. “What the hell are you doing in there? Get out.” I know now that was Captain James Thain.

I scrambled out through a jagged hole and ran. When I looked around I could not believe my eyes. The aircraft was cut in half; it was just a mass of jagged metal. Bodies were strewn in the slush where the snow had melted. As I walked back, I could see Matt Busby trying to sit up. I spotted Roger Byrne, and although there wasn’t a mark on him, I was sure from the unnatural way that he was sitting that he must be dead. Others I saw were Jackie Blanchflower, Dennis Viollet and Bobby Charlton, who was still strapped into his seat but was unconscious. At that point it crossed my mind that Roger might be the only fatality. If only that had been the case.

I remember kneeling beside Matt. He kept saying, “It’s my side, it’s my side” in a horrible moan. Suddenly, almost surreally, Bobby woke up, just as if he had been enjoying a nap, and without a word he walked over to us, took off his jacket and put it under Matt. Then Viollet regained consciousness. By this time Harry Gregg was kneeling alongside Blanchflower, who was groaning.

We helped to get the boss into a makeshift ambulance. Then we bounced away over the snow, going much too fast. I was trying to hold Matt’s stretcher steady, but the driver put his foot down and we were skidding all over the road. I shouted at him to slow down and remember hitting him on the head as hard as I could, but he didn’t stop. Dennis and Bobby, in deep shock, just sat there as though they were going for a pleasant drive.

At the hospital, a posse of nurses brandishing needles got hold of Bobby, who was the most distracted of us, and gave him a jab. Before he knew what had happened, he was out. Harry and I would not have it. Instead, a girl from BEA took us to a hotel. From that point, Harry and I were inseparable. We even went to the toilet together. During those next few days, nothing seemed to matter any more.

I recall going back to the hospital, where I found a list of people who were in there. I asked where the rest of the team had been taken. And it was when they finally impressed upon me that there was no other hospital that the truth dawned. I asked a doctor for Bert Whalley, trainer Tom Curry and Walter Crickmer, and she shook her head. Then I mentioned Eddie Colman, Tommy Taylor, David Pegg, Billy Whelan, Mark Jones, Geoff Bent – and again came that agonising negative.

The next time we went back, Matt was in an oxygen tent. We approached Duncan Edwards and he was shouting: “Let’s have some bloody attention!” The doctor said: “He’s a very strong boy.” She reckoned he had a 50-50 chance of survival. When I heard that, I believed firmly that Duncan would recover. After all, he had never lost a 50-50 challenge in his life. But how tragically wrong that doctor turned out to be.

When we finally returned to the scene of the accident, I got back into the part of the plane where I had been sitting. To my amazement I found a bottle of gin given to me in Belgrade. I also found a presentation cap with Eddie Colman’s name on it. This upset me so much, I could stand it no longer. An official took us back into the airport building.

My strangest souvenir was the pack of playing cards. I had not the slightest bruise on me, and my pocket was not ripped, yet the top quarter-inch of those cards had been sliced off and had disappeared. The cut was so clean. How they came to be like that was a total mystery.

Excerpt from Bill Foulkes: United In Triumph And Tragedy (Know the Score Books)