A sickening jolt... then blood gushed from my face
LIKE millions of Britons, I have driven along the featureless road leading to the Calais ferry port so many times over the years it has become a familiar final glimpse of France before heading home.
For a few sickening moments early on Friday, I feared it might be the last thing I ever saw.
But the most chilling aspect of the crash in which my car was written off and my two passengers and I narrowly escaped death, was that it was not an accident at all – but the result of a deliberate, cold-blooded act.
The tree trunk hurled at our car which caused the near-fatal swerve could have been thrown at any family travelling back to the UK. And the next victims may not be so lucky.
I was with photographers John McLellan and Steve Burton after investigating the increasing menace that migrant gangs pose for motorists around Calais. We were about to find out only too clearly.
We were on the autoroute to the ferry port, travelling at about 50mph, when three migrants suddenly appeared on the right side of the road. I saw one of them was carrying a thick log. With both hands he hurled it at the windscreen and I instinctively jerked the steering wheel to the left. I felt a sickening jolt as the car was hit by an articulated lorry and we spun out of control. Then we were pushed sideways at speed along the road by the 38-ton truck.
I expected to hit another vehicle at any moment. I stabbed at the brake pedal furiously but we were at the mercy of the larger vehicle.
My face cracked against the steering wheel and John let out a moan as his face smashed into his camera. After about 50 yards, we came to a halt.
I asked Steve and John if they were OK, but neither could speak. One let out a groan. I could feel blood gushing out of my own face.
I was not sure whether it was safer to stay in the car and risk getting hit by an oncoming vehicle, or to walk on to the carriageway.
I also didn’t know whether the migrants might want to attack us again. I stumbled from the car on to a carpet of smashed
glass. The lorry was blocking John’s door and he scrambled out of mine.
My adrenaline was surging and I staggered to the side of the road. After about 30 seconds the police arrived. I motioned for them to get Steve out of the car.
Paramedics turned up within minutes and I saw Steve being loaded on to a stretcher in a neck brace. The lorry driver, a Hungarian called Ferenc, ran up to John and gave him a hug.
He started apologising but John told him it wasn’t his fault. Ferenc had seen the migrants, too, and there was nothing he could do.
I got into the ambulance and a paramedic told me I would have to have stitches as bone was visible under a deep gash.
One medic said he thought British volunteers were helping the migrants with equipment such as chainsaws to create blockades.
At the hospital I was told of a tourist treated for injuries after a migrant threw something at their car. As one doctor put eight stitches in my face, another came in and said two migrants had just been admitted with knife wounds inflicted during a fight. One was critical having been stabbed in the neck, and the other’s lungs had been punctured. My CT scan was delayed as they were given priority. The doctor said: ‘This happens every day.’
The next day I went to the Commissariat de Police in Calais to find out what had happened to my car and was told by an officer that these sort of attacks were happening ‘tous les jours.’
At the recovery compound I shuddered at the sight of my caved-in car and the thought of how lucky we were to survive.
Would a young family have come out alive from the same attack? I am not at all sure that they would.