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999 memories
Retired ambulance chief Gordon Enstone looks back on decades of his work with the emergency service in his newly published book.
Life with the 999 crews in Berkhamsted and Hemel Hempstead are featured as Mr Enstone tells of his 34 years with the Hertfordshire service.
We all think our ambulance personnel are wonderful but this book shows just how much goes on behind the scenes which we often take for granted and how much we don't know about its innermost workings.
Bells, Two Tones and Sirens is a book full of stories that can amaze and amuse, horrify or hearten.
His book looks at the day-to-day operation of an ambulance service, from the start of his basic training in 1964 to the emergency ambulance.
This involves attending incidents ranging from murders and suicides to delivering babies, the trauma of train and plane crashes and multiple road accidents.
Mr Enstone joined the Hertfordshire Fire & Ambulance Brigade in December 1964.
He was too young then to drive the emergency ambulance and was put to "sitting cars", now called the Patients' Transport Service (PTS).
Eventually he became Divisional Officer responsible for seven stations - Borehamwood, Garston, Watford, Rickmansworth, Berkhamsted, Hemel Hempstead and St Albans - with a total of 179 staff.
Later came the amalgamation with Bedfordshire ambulance service, to become Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Ambulance and Paramedic Service with the two Divisional Commanders each taking half of each county; then Gordon became Assistant Director of Operations, for his last seven months in service, responsible for running the resources unit.
So in all those 34 years he had been with six different employers yet never moved outside the county.
He writes: "The biggest difference to the ambulance service was when it became an NHS Trust and that's when the whole of the National Health Service became a business. Everything was then led by money. No patient moved unless we knew where the money was coming from to pay for the journey. That led to some soul searching for the paymasters! That's the ambulance service for you. The only thing that is constant in the ambulance service is change."
On leaving school, Gordon had started work at De Havilland at Leavesden, as a pre-apprentice.
He had always wanted to be an aero engine fitter and had an interest in aeroplanes, but only being offered a job as a sheet metal worker he left, not knowing where to go next.
He began working for a printing company near his home in St Albans, run by the Salvation Army and printing the War Cry. He was deemed bright enough for accounts.
But office work and exams palled and he decided to take a year off with the ambulance service. That one year stretched to 34 years.
"I enjoyed every minute of it and would recommend this job to anybody who enjoys dealing with people and the excitement of no two jobs being the same or never knowing what is coming next," he said.
This book is illustrated with breath-taking occasions - including accidents on motorways, a bank raid in Hemel Hempstead, the Watford train crash, and storm clearance where ambulance personnel worked without pay.
It would not have been complete of course without reference to Buncefield.
He was on watch as the cortege from Princess Diana's funeral passed near Hemel Hempstead along the M1 on its way to Northamptonshire.
He was also privileged to visit Buckingham Palace with his wife Valerie.
The book is published by Authorhouse and available for 7.99.
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Weather for Hemel Hempstead
Tuesday 07 February 2012
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