The Reverend Salt, a small, bespectacled man, had come to Hungerford three years earlier, having previously been based at Checkendon. In fact both Hungerford and Checkendon are Anglican churches falling within the Diocese of Oxford. But the Reverend Salt's was the only Anglican church in Hungerford, and thus he was the community's only full-time Anglican minister.
'I was very happy to go to Hungerford,' the vicar would later recall. 'Before I took up my appointment I was invited to go along to see the church of St Lawrence and meet members of the community. I noticed straight away that many pews had been removed from the back of the church. This told me that they were a community church, and I liked that.'
The new vicar instinctively felt that the church, while active, was lacking in young people. There was an imbalance in the composition of the congregation, which he felt had to be redressed. And before long there was indeed movement in the air. One particularly committed parishioner, Mary Grayson, started a boys' choir almost from scratch. It was very successful, soon gaining a number of diocesan awards. The Reverend Salt also began to liaise with the schools in Hungerford and from the start found a warm welcome.
'I was very pleased with how things were coming along. I then got the girls to come in and do the serving at the altar in communion. Attendance began to creep up, and we eventually had three teams of six servers. And then we got a tiny tots' club going during the week.'
The Reverend Salt had been based at Checkendon for well over a decade when he first felt that the time was right for a change. But it was while working as chaplain at Borocourt Hospital, within the parish of Checkendon, that he had had his first contact with handicapped children, some of whom were triply afflicted, being deaf, dumb and mentally handicapped. As he explains, 'So you might say that I had some idea of tragedy already. Whatever you are faced with, you don't necessarily panic. Because you know that this is part of life.'
Unlike the majority of English clergy, the Reverend Salt also brought with him to Hungerford a wealth of experience from his time overseas. Having been based in the Pacific islands for eight years, he had served as a missionary in what is now the Church Province of Melanesia. Initially based on the island of Aoba, he had then moved to Pentecost Island, where two of his three children were born. From there it was to the Solomon Islands. It was an environment in which he had thrived, although there had been many moments when the vicar, his wife and their young children had found themselves truly alone.
'You would face cyclones and human tragedies with monotonous regularity,' the vicar recalls. 'Once a boat caught fire. People were badly burned. And, in the tropics, that hurts, believe you me. That time we were given medical help, but often were just not able to get any medical assistance at all. So all of this was background training if you like. Even within our own family there was often malaria and high fever. Again, we simply had to sort it out ourselves. So too with the rough seas. Death was very much a reality.'
The Reverend Salt's curriculum vitae might reveal a distinctly international flavour, but his roots were solidly English. He was born and brought up in Berkshire, in a family who were all closely associated with the Church. Both David Salt and his brother had themselves sung in the church choir, and his older sister went on to become a parish worker and a missionary for twenty-two years. He was only thirteen when he began to feel some sort of calling to the ministry, a feeling which matured as his academic career progressed. With national service out of the way - three years in the RAF - he went on to graduate from King's College, London, with a degree in theology. From there it was straight out to the exotic islands of the Pacific; with him went his wife, who had sung in the very same church choir of his childhood.
As the vicar drew up in Hungerford that Wednesday afternoon, there was a knocking on the window of his car. It was a journalist from the Daily Express who, having spotted his dog-collar, was eager to obtain the minister's reaction to the carnage and slaughter unfolding by the moment in the town. But since the minister was unaware of what had happened, naturally he had nothing to say. Their roles reversed, the journalist rattled out what information he had so far been able to gather.
'When I arrived in the High Street I realized that something had happened,' the vicar explains, 'Because there were still more ambulances, this time from Berkshire. I then met Neal Marney, an ambulanceman I knew, and he told me that the best thing to do was to go home and lock your doors, because nobody knew where this man was, and that the gunman was still on the loose.'
It was sound advice. Heading back towards his home with the car radio on, the Reverend Salt, like the rest of the town, was desperate for information. But hard news was a scarce commodity in Hungerford that afternoon. Back in the vicarage, having wisely locked himself in, he continued to monitor the news bulletins, listening to the radio and television simultaneously. Some facts did begin to emerge, but much of the information was wildly inaccurate. Because whatever atrocities the gunman might have committed, the vicar already knew that they had not taken place in the High Street. That much he had seen for himself. That was just as well, because the High Street had been packed with market-day shoppers.
At 4pm the Reverend Salt's son, Stephen, having heard on the radio what had happened, managed to get through to his father on the telephone. He had been extremely concerned about the safety of both of his parents. Yet the vicar felt that his place should be in the town, where, whatever else was happening, there was clearly great suffering. So he set off again towards the town centre. Perhaps, on the streets, he would be able to find out just what was going on. He was soon to discover, however, that it was simply not possible to get through, for the whole of Hungerford had been sealed off.
Undeterred, ninety minutes later the vicar left the vicarage once again. He explains: 'By this time people were coming home from work. It was almost as though we were waiting in the High Street for carnival day. I remember that this struck me most forcibly, because by this stage all the people were lining the streets. But it wasn't a carnival. Many people were terribly worried, not knowing what had happened to their relatives. This was one of the worst aspects of the tragedy, the husbands coming back from work and not knowing about their families. Shopkeepers were coming out bringing people cups of tea. It reminded me so much of the last war: newsflashes coming through, people coming out to their gates and talking. People wanting to share the news.'
Not until 10 o'clock that evening would the determined vicar succeed in getting through to the area of the town which had been affected. Many doctors had likewise been prohibited from entering the killing zone. By now the name of Michael Ryan was on everybody's lips. And not just in Hungerford, but across the whole country. Yet Ryan was a stranger to St Lawrence's, and the vicar could only recall nodding to him in the street. In fact, as the Reverend Salt was shortly to discover, Ryan was a stranger to everyone.
The vicar describes his reaction to what he discovered: 'I was just blank. All the time just trying to listen to people. At the same time a thousand things were going through my head. I felt numb, but also wanted to survey all the problems and keep an open mind-that is, not go round in circles, or panic. I also felt that though one was quite inadequate, as a vicar people expected you to act, and had faith in you to do the right thing - whatever your qualifications! I also remember thinking at the time that you go to church every morning to say your prayers. That you just keep this prayer machine ticking, so that it makes you ready to deal with a disaster when it happens. This gives you a sort of background of spiritual support. The vicar's role is finely balanced: you have to develop a hard skin whilst at the same time keeping a soft centre. If you are ever in a hard situation - what I do is to make what I call an arrow prayer - as though you are shooting a quick prayer up to God. This would be in terms of, say, the Psalms. You must get that phrase: 'Be still, and know that I am God'. That's a good arrow prayer from the Psalms. It is important to remember that God has looked on this situation maybe a million times before. In order to help p
eople you have to be empty, so as to be receptive to what people are saying. Only then can you really think out the problem and try to give whatever help you can. Tragedies do happen all over the world. I know that this is a bad part of life's diet, but I have to say that it didn't come as a great shock to me. That's why, I think, I wasn't overwhelmed. I felt that there was the work waiting to be done -and that now you just go and get on with it.'
Part of getting on with it, the vicar decided, was to take a measure of responsibility in dealing with the press. Once again, the able minister had had some experience in this role. Not that he had welcomed it at the time. For at Checkendon a person associated with the church had been accused of being a paedophile, and it was not long before the salacious Sunday press, most notably the News of the World, was beating hard at the cleric's door, eager for a reaction.
It was fortunate, too, that Ron Tarry and the Reverend Salt were already well known to one another, the mayor being a regular churchgoer. Mayor and vicar agreed that if they could deflect the media from hounding the bereaved, if only to a certain extent, that was a role which they could usefully perform. It was to be an allocation of labour which was to serve the town extremely well. The vicar also concluded that his priority was a pastoral one, visiting the injured and bereaved: 'The most important thing I could do was just be there. Maybe just to hold a hand, or to give a hug.'
What the Reverend Salt was not used to, however, was the notion of murder. Never before had he buried the victims of murder, or counselled those thus bereaved. He was also to be obliged to remind himself repeatedly that each bereaved or injured person was an individual, not a statistic. He knew full well that there would be little point in reminding people that they were not alone.
Quite apart from the work which was about to come his way in the aftermath of the tragedy, the vicar also had to perform his usual duties. Part of this work included ministering to those who had lost loved ones through natural causes. Therefore he also had to remind himself that their loss was as real and personal to them as that of those whose loved ones had been gunned down by Michael Ryan.
It was no surprise, then, that the Reverend Salt got little sleep in the weeks and months that followed the massacre. Yet he did not seem to need it; it was as if he was being carried through by a tidal wave of love and prayer. Nor was there a great deal of time to prepare sermons, even though they were clearly going to be monitored closely by the national press, quite apart from by his superiors. Yet sermons flowed from him with the greatest of ease.
'I wanted to sleep,' the vicar explains, 'but there seemed so much information in my head that had to be sorted out, and jobs to be done for the following day. It was as well that I had kept my spiritual dynamo ticking over. Because when a great surge of power was needed it seemed to be there. And God's strength was sufficient for me. The congregation of St Lawrence's was really magnificent, and I quite simply could not have coped without their support. They didn't have to be asked - they just got on with it. I now realize that we are, all of us, constantly "in training" as Christians. But I never dreamed that I would myself end up in the front line.'
TEN
'Hungerford must be a bit of a mess'
As soon as his pager had sounded, Sergeant Paul Brightwell knew that it was his duty to make immediate contact with Thames Valley Police HQ at Kidlington. So too did other members of the Support Group, who, like Brightwell, had been training at the army firing range at Otmoor. The message was simple enough: the Tactical Firearms Team was now required in Hungerford. But no member of that élite group had any idea of the scale of the slaughter which was being inflicted on the people of that town and which the specialist police unit was now about to witness at the very closest of quarters.
'All we heard to begin with was that there had been "a shooting incident in Hungerford",' Sergeant Brightwell recalls. 'Details were scant, so no particular adrenalin was going - well, no more than usual, that is. You have to remember that a lot of the incidents that we hear about turn out to be false alarms. I immediately set off with two or three other members of my party in one of our unmarked cars, a blue Vauxhall Cavalier, one equipped with a blue light and two-tone horns. On the way down there, lots was going on on the radio. I didn't want to interrupt, so I was just listening. I then began to get a bit keyed up because we heard that there was someone on the loose shooting people and that at least three people had been killed. And also that a PC had been shot. Then I realized the type of incident I might be going to. All we were lacking was weapons. We had our overalls and body armour with us. The firearms instructors, with whom we had been training, took the weapons, and we were all heading for the same rendezvous point. This was changed, en route, from Newbury to Hungerford police station. But this was still quite some distance to travel.'
It was a Newbury-based policeman, PC Jeremy Wood, who had been the first to radio to activate the system for calling out the armed police. He was normally PC Roger Brereton's partner, but on this occasion his colleague had left a little before him in a separate car. PC Wood's car had been the second police car to arrive on Hungerford Common, the officers from the first having taken cover after coming under fire from Ryan. He recalls that he came perilously close to losing his own life: 'He was firing numerous rounds from the hip at us - and we could hear the bullets passing by.'
Like Roger Brereton, PC Wood was a father of two in his late thirties. It was he, having seen the body of Ken Clements lying in an alleyway, who sounded the alarm and informed his superiors that a major shooting incident was taking place. Together with Robert Clements, whose father had been shot, PC Wood withdrew to a copse across the Common, the nearest safe location. Immediately he set about clearing the area of the many families picnicking there, who, until that moment, had been enjoying the summer sunshine. He then set up a temporary HQ on the Common for the back-up he had requested, established a roadblock and, most crucial of all, continued to call for the police sharpshooters. It was there too that Wood had heard on his radio PC Brereton's desperate last message: 'Ten-nine, ten-nine, ten-nine. I've been shot' a few moments before he died.
However, the assistance requested by PC Wood was to be some time in arriving. For while the order to send the Tactical Firearms Team to Hungerford was given at eight minutes past one, it would be another one hour and twelve minutes before the whole team had arrived and was ready to go into action.
But Chief Inspector Glyn Lambert's specialist squad, then speeding towards Hungerford, was only one part of a two-tiered arms strategy employed by the Thames Valley Police. In fact, for a whole hour, as the Tactical Firearms Team was preparing to confront its biggest-ever challenge, the first-tier response had already been successfully activated. This had involved bringing in officers able to draw weapons from local armouries. In such circumstances their brief is invariably the same: to contain the situation until the arrival of the more specialized teams, which are more highly trained and have the know-how to confront a gunman on the loose.
By 1.18pm the first locally armed officer had arrived in the town. However, he simply went to PC Wood's rendezvous point on the Common and stayed there, waiting for the helicopter to arrive. A member of the Diplomatic Protection squad, he was more used to looking after VIPs. All the time, though, the chance to contain Ryan was slipping away. At 1.20pm the police had their last sighting of Ryan.
At 1.28pm a second locally armed officer arrived. He too was from the Diplomatic Protection squad and these officers would in turn be joined by four more from that unit before the arrival of the Tactical Firearms Team. It was fortunate that they had been training only some twenty minutes away, and had thus been able to mobilize rapidly. They did show more than a little hesitation, however, in moving forward in an attempt to find their man. In any event, as members of the Diplomatic Protection squad assembled around the Common, Ryan was all the time moving away from the police, across the playing field. In fact the police were not to see Ryan for another four hours. But this did not mean tha
t the gunman had suddenly become inactive. On the contrary, seeking out another victim, he soon spotted seventy-year-old Betty Tolladay in her back garden.
'I heard this banging,' she recalls. 'I thought it was children with fireworks or something. A bit early, I know, but they do find all manner of things that make noises. So I went into the garden and said, "For God's sake, stop that noise - it's getting me down." '
Unlike Dorothy Smith, who had earlier called Ryan a 'stupid bugger' without drawing the gunman's fire, Betty Tolladay was immediately shot. The bullet entered her groin, exiting via her back and smashing the top of her hip, part of the pelvis and the sciatic nerve en route. At the back of her home in Clarks Gardens, she realized straight away that she was now battling for her life:
'I immediately fell to the ground. One leg was absolutely useless. But I sat up and dragged myself to my back door, got over the step somehow, don't ask me how, and along to the hall, and got the telephone off the table and dialled 999. I've only two words to describe what happened: "pure agony".'
The emergency services were by now well aware of the scale of the disaster, if not yet of the plight of Betty Tolladay. During the twenty-four hours around the period of the shootings, the Newbury telephone exchange was to handle almost a quarter of a million more calls than its usual daily total, which inevitably hampered both police and ambulance personnel in their work. So when a kindly voice from the ambulance services assured the severely injured Betty Tolladay that 'Somebody will be along with you soon', it was no doubt promised in good faith. But soon' was to be almost five hours later. The speed and scale of the slaughter had brought with it confusion and chaos.
As Betty Tolladay began her long wait for medical help, Ryan was continuing to claim more victims. Francis Butler, a twenty-six-year-old accounts clerk, was out walking his dog on a path in Hungerford's Memorial Gardens. Hit three times by Ryan's Kalashnikov, he sustained injuries to his groin and leg. Letting go of the lead, the young man turned and appeared to slip, holding his leg as he fell. The bullet travelled up through his body, leaving a gaping wound in his back.
Hungerford: One Man's Massacre Page 9