Inspiring stories of courage amid the carnage

Coroner Lady Justice was frequently moved to pay tribute to survivors and rescuers who were giving evidence, including investment banker Philip Duckworth who was standing close to bomber Shehzad Tanweer when the Aldgate explosion threw him out of the carriage. He survived but was blinded in his left eye.

“You have reduced us to silence,” she told him. “It is an astonishing story. The idea that you could be so close to the bomb, be blown out of the carriage and still be here to tell your story is just amazing.”

Off-duty police officer Elizabeth Kenworthy, who was on the Aldgate train, made a makeshift tourniquet to help commuter Martine Wright, who lost both legs in the blast.

Miss Wright has since married and become a mother.

After nine months of operations and learning to walk, she now hopes to compete in the 2012 London Paralympics as a member of Great Britain’s sitting volleyball team. The coroner told her: “Your story is truly inspirational, the triumph of human spirit over dreadful adversity.”

The most seriously injured 7/7 survivor, Daniel Biddle, lost both legs, left eye, spleen and 87 pints of blood after he was blown out of a Tube train in the Edgware Road bombing. The former construction manager spent five weeks in a coma with fiancée Lisa Flint at his side. The couple married in 2007.

Survivor Jason Rennie ignored his own injuries, tore off his shirt and tied it around the leg of David Gardner, a fellow passenger on the Edgware Road train.

King’s Cross bombing victim Gill Hicks spoke in harrowing detail about the moment she realised she was seriously injured.

“I could see I had very much almost lost both my legs,” she said. “They were literally hanging by sinew and skin.”

Rookie police officer Pc Helen Skeggs had only been in the service for five weeks when she went into the smoking Piccadilly Line tunnel.

Despite assurances from a senior officer that she did not have to, Pc Skeggs helped survivors and carried an injured man to safety before returning to the carriages, where she tried unsuccessfully to save victim Shelley Mather.