Market town's rugby team killed in plane crash 50 years ago given amazing honour
Gordon Ellis was full of excitement on March 3, 1974 because it was his eighth birthday. But recalling how happiness turned to despair, he says: “Then there was a knock at the door.”
He adds: “I remember seeing the police, and my mum tried to tell me that my dad wasn’t coming home.” The terrible news was his 34-year-old father Bryan had been killed. He died in what was at the time the world’s worst ever plane crash.
Almost 180 of the 346 fatalities in the disaster near Paris 50 years ago tomorrow were from the UK, and the crash was particularly devastating for one market town and its rugby club.
Bryan – nicknamed No One – was the chairman and former captain. In all, 18 men on the rugby club trip were killed, including businessman Lawrence Cornish, 39.
His son Austin, who was only three at the time, recalls: “For months after, when the phone rang at home, apparently I always asked, ‘Is that Daddy?’.”
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A party of 21 from Bury St Edmunds Rugby Club in Suffolk made the trip to Paris to watch the France vs England match in the Five Nations. The men from East Anglia were also due to play a game over there but it was called off. Three of the men decided to stay on in the French capital but 18 ended up on an earlier flight home.
Austin Cornish (L),and Gordon Ellis pictured at Bury St Edmunds Rugby Union Football Club memorial (PHILIP COBURN)Shortly after take-off, the Turkish Airlines DC-10 crashed in Ermenonville Forest on the way to Heathrow. Everyone on board was killed. Fifty years on, the Mirror met Gordon and Austin in a special part of the rugby club. The memorial room is called “18” in honour of those who died.
On the wall, all 18 men have coat pegs with their names on. Gordon says: “The rugby club was our second family. They helped save us. “The club arranged for a member to be like a liaison officer for each of the [grieving] families.”
The wreckage of Turkish Airlines Flight 981 in the Ermenonville Forest outside Paris in France, 4th March 1974 (Getty Images)We showed Gordon and Austin the Mirror from just after the crash. On seeing a photo of his dad in one edition, Gordon says: “I hadn’t seen this before.”
The rugby club deaths left 19 children without a father. Most of the “kids” are still friends. Four played in the same Bury St Edmunds rugby team in the 1990s. Austin, 53, a quantity surveyor from the nearby village of Buxhall, was a winger who played until he was 30. His mum Margaret, 86, is still alive.
Bryan Ellis front row second leftGordon, 57, a commercial property surveyor who still lives in the town, played as a hooker then inside centre before hanging up his boots aged 37. His mum Sue, 83, is still alive.
Neither of the mums ever spoke much about the tragedy. Gordon says: “I guess they came from a different era. There was no counselling then.
“When I come down here to the club, I see Austin and the others. That’s where I kind of get my counselling.”
There was no DNA analysis in 1974 so very few body parts were identified. Like most of the rugby club victims, neither Gordon’s dad nor Austin’s has a grave. Body parts were collected and placed in a mass grave in Paris. The plane crashed because of a cargo door failure. It later emerged the plane manufacturers were aware of the fault.
Players of the French Rugby team (AFP via Getty Images)Austin says: “It took years for the legal situation to be sorted. There was a very long battle to get them to admit there were design flaws.” He adds: “There was an event for the 40th anniversary and a man I didn’t know said to me, ‘I gave your dad my ticket for that match’. I hadn’t known that.”
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Stories about the tragedy still emerge. Gordon got a surprise email a year ago from New Zealand. He says: “This woman said she was the sister of John McClinton who died.
“It turns out my dad invited him on the trip. John had no connections with Bury apart from my dad who was his friend. When John’s sister came back to the UK last year she couldn’t believe her brother is still being remembered. We showed her his coat peg. It was a very emotional moment.”
From the left: Gordon Ellis and Austin Cornish pictured in a special room at Bury St Edmunds Rugby Union Football Club (PHILIP COBURN)And a day before meeting the Mirror, Gordon received a call from a man in Worthing, West Sussex, whose dad died in the crash. Gordon says: “He’d never spoken about it before.”
Austin was shortlisted for a Daily Mirror Pride of Britain award in 2014 after raising £157,000 by organising a charity bike ride on the 40th anniversary of the crash. He’s doing the same in September when over 65 people will go to France and ride from the crash site back to Bury. Austin says: “I don’t get angry about the crash, it’s just so sad it happened.
“I try to use the tragedy to spur me on in various areas of life.”
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