I was born in Durham in 1947, but at 14 years of age my family moved to Nottinghamshire when the mines closed. I left school at 15 and went straight into the British Army. In March 1968, I married my wife and remain so to this day.

On April 9, 1968, I was posted to El Adem, Libya. Shortly afterwards, on May 7, an RAF Armstrong Whitworth AW.650 Argosy plane crashed while approaching Got El Afrag Airstrip. The crew had requested permission to complete a low pass to confirm if their landing gear was down. At low height, the pilot misjudged the distance with the ground, and while executing a turn to the right, the wing struck the ground causing the aircraft to crash and burn. All 11 occupants, four crew members and seven passengers, were killed. I was one of many who were sent to the incident. I was 20 years old at that time, and my experiences there may well have prepared me for what I was required to do at Lockerbie and influenced my ability to cope.

Due to that horrible experience, I decided to join the Desert Rescue Team. To do so a candidate was required to complete a 10-mile hike in the desert in full kit, spend the night without shelter, and carry out another 10-mile hike back to the pick-up point. The temperature during the day was over 45 degrees Celsius, and we had no food or water. I lost 16 lbs in weight in the two days. I passed the required course in July 1968 and joined the team being young, fit and somewhat mad.

In 1969, I left the desert and spent three years in Germany with my wife. I left there in February 1972 and was posted to the UK. However after only a few months, I was posted again, this time to Northern Ireland where I spent six months. During this posting, I decided that I wished to leave the Army and wanted to join the police.

I sat and passed the entrance examination plus medical for Ayrshire Constabulary while serving in Northern Ireland. I left the Army in December 1972 and immediately started as Police Constable 439 (PC 439) in Kilmarnock. My first day involved being on night shift duty from 6:00 pm until 2:00 am Christmas Day. 

On December 21, 1988, I was at a police dinner with members of my shift from Kilbirnie station when we were told by hotel staff of an air disaster over Lockerbie. Several friends came back to my home and we watched with horror the news on the television about the incident. At around 10:00 pm that night, I was contacted via telephone by the duty police chief Inspector. I was told that all police rest days were cancelled, that I had to collect my uniform from Kilbirnie Police station and would need to report to Kilmarnock Police office at 6:00 am on December 23 for onward duties at Lockerbie.

On December 23, along with about 20 other Kilmarnock Police officers, I travelled to Lockerbie. Once there, I was instructed to work within Dexstar, a warehouse that had been requisitioned by the police to become the property store, among other functions. My job was to receive and record the large amount of items recovered from the various search sectors.

I remained working 12-hour shifts within Dexstar all over Christmas, luckily being fed and looked after by the Salvation Army which had taken over a Lockerbie school kitchen and dining hall. On one of the days (I do not remember which), evidence was discovered that would change the course of the investigation from an air accident to a deliberate bomb explosion and murder inquiry.

Dexstar, a medium size building, became far too small to accommodate the number of items being brought in; plus, the police section was having to deal with the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB), the FBI, other police forces and officials from all over the world. It was therefore decided by those in charge that we and all the productions would be moved to the Ministry of Defence’s Central Ammunition Depot, CAD Longtown, in Cumbria. During my Army service with the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC), I had asked to be posted to this location without success, so it was my police work that finally took me there! By this time, my police section working on the production side had been reduced to four officers.

The hangar allocated to us at CAD Longtown was massive, so big that we were supplied with bicycles to get about locating and recording the numerous items (several thousand) that were being brought in daily. I assisted the AAIB team in assembling luggage container AVE4041, where the bomb explosion took place. In all, I think I recorded and signed about 500 production labels attached to items which had a bearing on the investigation.

Other tasks which my colleagues and I had to undertake included checking every seat or part of seat which had been found for explosive fragments and searching all the bags of debris to separate the items into clothing, personal items, human remains and evidential items.

The searches that resulted in so much wreckage being found were so thorough that some of it wasn’t even from Pan Am flight 103. Pieces recovered from Kielder Forest, east of Lockerbie, eventually turned out to be from an RAF bomber which crashed there during the Second World War!

After about six weeks, we were stood down and returned to our stations. 

On behalf of my section colleagues, I prepared statements for the Procurator Fiscal (PF) Dumfries and the Crown Office. Over the next three years, I attended the PF's office in Dumfries on about three or four occasions to sign and update production items. I was cited for the trial of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi in Holland (May 2000) but was not called as the defence did not challenge my statement.