Trigger warning: This story contains descriptions of the Grenfell Tower fire, traumatic experiences, death, mental health, and alcohol misuse.
After twenty years in the fire service surrounded by noise, urgency and chaos, being a train driver now means I find myself in a quiet cab, alone with my thoughts. It’s been a big change, but a welcome one.
I joined Southern Railway in August 2023, and I go to work every day with a smile on my face. I enjoy the peace and the clarity of the job. If I’m driving a train to East Grinstead and back, there’s a definitive start and end, something solid and certain. After years of unpredictability in the fire service, the reliable rhythm of train driving motivates me.
My childhood wasn’t easy, but hardship made me resilient. Imagine carrying rocks in your pockets, each one representing trauma. At first you want to get rid of them to feel lighter. But life doesn’t work like that. The rocks don’t disappear. Resilience is realising that the longer you carry the rocks, the stronger you become.
Becoming a firefighter had been my dream for as long as I can remember. My mum tells me that when I was three, I told her I wanted to be a firefighter. I tried for four years before joining the service in 2005, aged 24. When my application was finally accepted, there were 10,000 applicants for every one role. Getting into the fire service was the hardest thing I’d ever achieved, until the job itself demanded more than I thought I could give.
Grenfell was the heaviest rock of all
The night of the Grenfell fire started like any other. Then came the calls: six fire engines dispatched, then twelve, then twenty. Moments later, we learned at least 156 people were trapped inside the tower.
When we arrived, the building was ablaze. The first sight I saw was two teenage girls being carried out with black soot streaming from their nostrils and mouths. One of the firefighters coming out of the building made eye contact with me and said: “Be careful in there.” That is not something firefighters usually say to each other. He’d seen something in there that he’d never seen before.
My partner Leo and I were tasked with a rescue on the fifteenth floor. We each carried more than 50kg of equipment up smoke-filled stairwells where every safety system had failed: fire doors, smoke vents, emergency lighting. The heat was inhumane. Even through my fire kit, my neck and wrists burned as if being held over a boiling kettle.
The rescue
As I was walking up the stairs, I felt a sudden rush of sadness. I thought: “I’m not coming out of here”. I realised I’d be leaving behind my three-year-old son and my girlfriend. I was never going to see my dad again, or my mum, or my brothers. But after a split second of this thought, I focused on what I was doing and told myself: “Let’s get this job done and get out”.
All of the safety systems failing meant it took a lot longer than it should for us to get to the rescue site. By the time we got to the fifteenth floor, my radio cut out. The screaming and shouting faded into silence. Then, my oxygen alarm began whistling. I had less than ten minutes to get out. A thought pierced through the smoke: I’m going to die here.
People often expect this story to end with a dramatic rescue, but the truth is harder. I had to make a decision that night that no-one should ever have to make. Although I went back inside three times to successfully rescue people, it was that first failed rescue that haunted me. I felt like a failure, a coward. I felt weak.
Hitting rock bottom
After that night, my mental health fell off a ledge. I was angry and started drinking heavily to numb the pain. I became a terrible partner and a terrible dad. I lost my home, my relationship, and nearly my life.
Rock bottom came two years later on New Year’s Eve. I was at my dad’s in Hastings when I began vomiting thick black tar. I passed out three times, fell down the stairs, and my blood pressure crashed so low the paramedics couldn’t find a vein. I had been bleeding internally for a week. In that moment, as I hung between life and death, I realised how much I wanted to live.
Redemption
From then on, everything changed. I repaired my relationship with my son with the help of an extraordinary charity, Unlocking Potential. The parenting course I did with them is one of the best things I’ve ever done. My boy is twelve now and we’re closer than ever.
I began writing poetry, speaking on podcasts, sharing my story. A clip of me talking about mental health has been viewed more than twenty million times. My poetry was adapted into a short film which won an award at a small film festival. I went from being a man who never talked about his feelings to someone who now speaks in schools and businesses, urging others to open up. Vulnerability didn’t weaken me, it gave me strength.
That strength carries into the train driver’s cab with me now. I enjoy the quiet certainty of the journey ahead. After everything I’ve been through, peace has become my new resilience.
I’ll leave you with a quote from Charlie Mackesy’s “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse”. The boy says he can’t see a way forward, to which the horse replies: "Can you see your next step?" When the boy says he can, the horse says: "Then just take that".
That’s what I do now: one step, one journey, one track at a time.