Ambulance chief haunted by fateful day

The devastating day left 16 pupils dead along with teacher Gwenne Mayor, who was shot trying to protect the youngsters.

The events contr ibuted to anguished John leaving the Scottish Ambulance Service three years later.

“I never functioned as well afterwards,” he said. “I had no patience for the administrative side of the job because it all seemed so trivial. I just couldn’t do it any more.”

John saw so much death in his 22- year career, including leading rescue efforts at the Lockerbie bombing, that he was asked to lecture at several universities – but said his experiences took their toll.

“Disasters seemed to follow me around,” he said.

“You only have so much petrol in the tank and when the only people you see are bleeding, sick and dying, the cumulative stress eventually brings you to the end of your tether.”

The attack inspired him to work with people suffering post- traumatic stress disorder and he later opened a hypnotherapy clinic with wife Kate to help those like the Dunblane survivors.

Former Dunblane pupil Steven Hopper was 11 when Hamilton turned his guns on his classroom next door to the gym.

For what seemed like hours, Steven huddled on the floor fearing he and his friends would be the next to be targeted.

“I was thinking about how I could escape if he came in, choosing between the main door and the fire escape,” he said.

“After someone told us it was over I started worrying about my friends and eight-year-old brother Andrew because I didn’t know who was in the gym at the time.

“It was two hours before Andrew and my dad came to get me and I knew he was all right.”

Steven, 31, who still lives in Dunblane with his brother and works at a nursery, played football for Hamilton in the years before the massacre and remembers him as an inflexible, authoritarian coach, but he never thought he was a killer.

“He used to make us run around without shirts on which looking back was strange, but as kids we didn’t know his history.

“I guess you don’t often notice these things until it’s too late,” he said.

In a BBC documentary to mark the anniversary, former head teacher Ron Taylor, 63, describes how he is still consumed with guilt by the tragedy.

“It was unimaginably horrible to see children dying in front of you. I felt enormous guilt – more than a survivor’s guilt. It was my school, I felt violated,” he said.

“As a headteacher what happened to me that day was the worst experience any headteacher could have. People have to cope in their own way.

“One of the things I have at home is a box full of newspaper articles.

“And it includes my own written version of the events of the day and I did that to help. I locked it away and thankfully I have never looked at it again.”