ON MONDAY July 11 - four days after Britain's
worst terrorist attack - the largest army in the world confirmed its
troops and personnel had been ordered out of London.
That same morning a 14-year-old boy from Hockley
travelled to the City by train to complete his work experience.
In daring to take a journey the American military
believed too dangerous, Jack Linton, from Uplands Road, is perhaps
remarkable.
All the more so, because only a few days earlier
he lay trapped and injured on the floor of a tube train carriage
between Liverpool Street and Aldgate stations, where at least eight
people were killed and more than 100 wounded.
"I thought I was going to die," he says.
"There was smoke everywhere and people were screaming. It was
frightening. But I wanted to go back."
Jack had travelled to London on Thursday morning
with his sister Sarah, 22, before making the final stretch of his
journey alone on the tube.
A pupil at Greensward School, in Hockley, he
secured a work placement at the Orient Express offices in
Blackfriars and was working his fourth day.
He arrives too early at Liverpool Street for his
9.30am start. Ignoring the next few trains, Jack stops at a burger
bar for hash browns before finally boarding the fateful Circle Line
train.
At 8.51am, the second of four explosions that
morning rips open the third carriage. The force is so strong it
blows open the windows two cars away, showering Jack in glass and
cutting his face.
Fire, fumes and the acrid smell of chemicals fill
the train. Jack and the other passengers left standing fall to the
ground gasping for air.
"I couldn't breathe," he explains. "There was
black smoke everywhere and it was very hot. I put my tie in my mouth
'cause I'd seen that done in films, and laid on the ground.
"Then people began shouting for any doctors or
nurses on the train."
For 25 minutes he waits in the dark while
underground staff and firefighters evacuate carriages one by one.
The most seriously injured are brought out first. Jack is finally
led away, bloodied and blackened by the blast. Dead bodies and limbs
lay across the track.
"Before we left someone said it was the train
engine that had exploded," he says. "But as we passed the carriage I
knew it was a bomb. It was ripped open like a tin can."
After being guided to the surface and giving his
details to police, Jack is left wandering up and down Aldgate in a
virtual daze while the more seriously injured are treated. He
finally rings his sister and she rushes to
