Cannock hero's role after terror attack that rocked the nation - a look back at the West Midlands in the 2000s

It was a sunny Thursday morning in July, and Paul Dadge was on his way to work.

The former retained firefighter from Cannock had recently started a new IT job in London, and boarded the Tube on the way to the office. He didn’t think too much of it when passengers were instructed to disembark at Baker Street due to a ‘power fault’. What happened next would have a profound impact on his life.

Within hours, the 28-year-old from Heath Hayes would see his picture beamed all around the world as one of the most recognised heroes of one of the worst terror attacks seen on UK soil.

The image of him aiding ‘The Girl in the Mask’ – 24-year-old barrister Davina Turrell – in the wake of what would become known as the 7/7 terror attack, even made the cover of the world-famous Time magazine. 

The ‘power fault’ was not some routine problem with the electricity supply. The train immediately in front had been blown up by suicide bomber Mohammed Sidique Khan at Edgware Road Tube, killing six people plus himself.

The attack, at 8.50am, was the second of four suicide attacks carried out on July 7, 2005, unlike anything that had happened in the UK before. Just under four years earlier, the world watched in horror as 2,977 perished in the attacks of September 11, 2001, when 19 members of the terror group al-Qaeda hijacked a number of airliners, and crashed two of them into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York. The response from the West was swift, with the UK quickly joining US-led operations to invade Afghanistan, thought to be the base of al-Qaeda and its leader Osama bin Laden. The UK also played a prominent supporting role in the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Our country had been on a state of high alert ever since the September 11 attack, but the events of July 7, 2005 were the first time a suicide attack on this scale occurred on UK soil.

Mr Dadge later told an inquest how he found Miss Turrell clutching the mask to her face, after suffering horrific facial injuries. He described coming across the shocked and injured survivors of the attack and setting up a casualty station in the Marks & Spencer near the station.

“The medical resources on the scene were limited to the two paramedics and the small number of staff from the London helicopter emergency medical service team,” he said in a statement read to the inquests.

“We had run out of oxygen and dressings and had become reliant on first aid supplies from Marks & Spencer and Hilton Metropole Hotel. Nurses, consultants and even a NHS priest arrived at the hotel, although I think it is worth mentioning at this point that it was great, but without the medical supplies there was not much they could do.”