The year, 1948; the date, 21 November; the time, 7.45am; the weather, freezing fog; the place, the (then) winding Balsham road, half a mile or so out of Fulbourn, Cambridge.

I was a builder in those days, and among other jobs was the building of Airey Houses (from precast pebble-dashed concrete slabs) for Chesterton RDC at Fulbourn and Abington. The Fulbourn contract was well under way; I had just dropped half a dozen workmen on that site and was on my way to Abington, where I was setting out the foundations for our next contract. My car was a big old prewar 30hp Ford V8, which I had converted to carry nine men. Since I had not been allocated sufficient petrol coupons to run all the sites, I had an engineer friend convert it to run on paraffin, having designed my own vaporiser. Alone in it now, I was following a lorry piled high with large bags of chaff and resigned to staying behind it, since visibility was too poor to attempt passing.

Suddenly, I saw one of those huge bags fall off and roll under my car; it got jammed under the steering and slewed me off the road onto the opposite (right-hand) grass verge. Only a couple of feet of the car remained on the tarmac and it still faced Balsham. The lorry driver carried on, unaware of his loss. I was about to take out my pocket knife to cut the bag open and let its contents out when I heard a car approaching from the direction of Balsham.

Looking up, I saw a Hillman Minx approaching rather fast for the conditions. As it got closer, the driver apparently making no effort to give me a wide berth, I took my eyes off it at the last moment to see if it was going to scrape the side of my Ford.

The next thing I remember was finding myself lying on the ground in front of my car. When I attempted to get on my feet, I fell straight down again. It was only then that I saw the spikes of splintered bone sticking out through both legs of my trousers. All I could do then was to lie down on the road and wait for help.

As I was to discover days later, the Hillman was being driven by a seventeen-year-old youth, accompanied by several younger passengers. Having no windscreen defroster, he had lowered his side window and was driving by judging his distance from the grass verge. The first he knew of my car being in front of him was when he hit it.

Twenty minutes later, two young men from Balsham drove up in an old Austin 7 and found the youngsters from the Hillman still being ill in an adjacent hedge, it was assumed from the shock of the accident and then seeing the gory mess that was me. Neither of the newcomers knew anything of first aid, so they lifted me onto the narrow back seat of their tiny car just as I was. There I remained propped up for the two hours it took them to get me to the old Addenbrookes Hospital in Trumpington Street, arriving there some time after 10.00am. It had taken them so long because, having no defroster on their car either, they had to stop and scrape their windscreen every 100 yards or so.

I never lost consciousness, but my whole world from then on consisted of trying to breathe, knowing that once I gave up it would be the end. As I strove for air, my throat kept closing up with a snort. Having arrived at the hospital, I was placed on a stretcher in the emergency/accident department, which was then in a single-storey addition in front of the hospital. I seemed to lie there for hours, fighting for breath, unexamined and unattended, except that every now and then the sister would come to me and yell in my ear to stop making that noise, as it would only make me worse and I was disturbing the others. This episode remains one of my most vivid memories of that awful day.

Eventually I was moved into a ward and after a brief examination a wire cage was put over the lower half of my body and a blanket laid over it to conceal the mess. All this time I could see and hear, but make no other sound than my continuous fight for breath. I distinctly recall two young nurses walking by the foot of my bed; one of them lifted the corner of my blanket for them to peep inside. I saw their shocked expressions and heard the 'Ughs'.

So much for my own recollections of those first few hours. What follows was partly gathered from others.

In the meantime the police had found the two cars, the Minx, a write-off, having bounced off and slithered to rest forty or so yards further along the road. They found the blood and bits of bone on the road in front of the slightly damaged Ford. Eventually, although unable to make out what had happened, they tied the accident up with the person under the cage in hospital. After identifying me, they called up my mother, father and sister (my brothers being out of the area then). Arriving at my bedside during the late morning, they were given to understand there was no hope.

So my family were still there waiting for me to die some hour or so into the afternoon. Then another young doctor, who may just have come on duty, stopped to examine me. I was still lying there with my one object in life the fight for breath, having no intention of dying. It was probably being so fit that had kept me alive me until then. In addition to working a 12-hour day, I was in full training and had played rugger for my county only a few days before. Until this time, remember, I'd had no oxygen, saline, wound dressing - absolutely no attention whatsoever. They had not even bothered to ascertain my blood group.

Now, I understand, things began to happen: remonstrations, nurses running around rigging up equipment to give me an interim four-pint plasma transfusion. Perhaps a couple of hours later, with my blood group identified, I was switched over to whole blood, and soon there came the greatest blessing of all; I could breathe in freely as much beautiful air as I liked. As I began to be able to talk to my family, a policeman with the inevitable pencil and notebook appeared at the bedside; he must have been waiting in the wings somewhere, awaiting permission to interview me. I remember how surprised he seemed to be when he heard what had actually happened that morning. It seemed that the police must have been under the impression that both cars had been moving at the time of the crash, with mine on its wrong side. Later they found the driver who had dropped the chaff and charged him; he was fined £5. The lad who had been driving the Minx was also eventually charged and fined £50. As for me, while I was still not fully recovered from the shock and therefore unable to judge the justice of it, the insurance companies agreed my compensation £2,000. It was to cost me much more than that during the first year.

The doctor told my family I was going to live after all and they must have left late that afternoon. I carried on taking in blood until round about midnight, when I was moved into the operating theatre. I learned afterwards that because of the shock my heart had suffered through the sudden loss of all that blood, they decided that it might not withstand a general anaesthetic. So they had to do a rush job as a temporary measure, taking my left leg off where it had been crushed and setting, suturing and setting in plaster the compound fracture of my right leg — all needing to be carried out in as little time as possible.

It seems that when I tried to stand after the accident, I had managed to get the wounds contaminated with horse-muck (lots of horses still about on the farms then), so I had to stay in hospital for another fortnight, having four penicillin injections a day. Then I was sent home for three months to recover, which meant that I went back into hospital on my 30th birthday, 5 February, 1949, to have a proper amputation job done on my left leg in order to enable me to wear an artificial leg.

—

For nearly 48 years I had been giving my right leg the work meant to be shared by two, up and down ladders and stairs. For about fifteen years my knee had been becoming ever more painful when I walked. Since replacement knees were not always satisfactory, I had been told it would be wise for me to put off having the necessary surgery until the last moment. A few weeks earlier, I'd decided that time had arrived and saw my GP, who made an appointment for me to see an orthopaedic consultant at Hinchingbrooke Hospital at 3.25pm.

I was not kept waiting but x-rayed immediately before seeing the young surgeon, who treated me as though I was an honoured patient. After a thorough examination, he told me that although my knee was in a bad way, he had never before replaced one when the other leg had an above-knee amputation. He said he was attending a conference of his specialty in a month or so's time, when he could obtain the advice of those with more experience, if I was prepared to wait. I was prepared.

Again I had an appointment to see the consultant at Hinchingbrooke. This time it was for 3.50pm and again I was not kept waiting. Because of the condition mine was in, the advice had been to go ahead with a whole knee replacement. The delay would be at least six months, 'because they were being "messed about" by the authorities'.

I was to present myself at Hinchingbrooke for a comprehensive examination, to make quite sure this 'old man of 77 years' was able to withstand several hours of surgery. After further x-rays, an ECG and much more, I was pronounced fit.

I was booked in for surgery the next day. I saw my prosthesis — it was nothing like I had expected, comprising three separate pieces, two of heavy stainless steel and the other of a plastic material. The anaesthetist and consultant both come along to reassure me and to tell me what to expect on the morrow.

'Tis done. I woke up wearing an oxygen mask with a few tubes in and out of various places and weighing, I assume, a pound or two more with my new knee. I was kept in hospital for a fortnight, during which time I was waited on (and bullied) by two beautiful young physiotherapists, an array of nurses and a gentle young Indian orthopedic assistant.

I could not have had better treatment were I Her Majesty herself. So I say 'three cheers for The National Health Service', warts and all.

First-Person Stories Archive

Len Baynes

23.03.06 Front Page

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