Dennis

I just thought i'd put a few words on here about my good friend and colleague, Dennis, who's recently had a major operation and is quiet seriously ill. Den is Divisional superintendent of City of Coventry division and is someone i've had the honor of knowing and working with for many years now, ever since i've been in St. John for that matter. Being an ex RAF mechanic, Den always had a vast array of anecdotes about his time in the force, and would readily relay these to anyone who was within earshot. I can remember one duty that I was on with him, think it was the Town and Country festival, he was over the moon when a Wing commander from the RAF gave Den his pen.

There were many occasions when I crewed the ambulance with Dennis, but there will always be one occasion that sticks out. It was the day of the Caribbean festival in Coventry's War Memorial park. I was crewing with Dennis when we got a call asking if we could help out the Ambulance service that evening. We agreed and at the end of the duty we duly set off for an evening shift transporting the usual bog standard cases into hospital. It got to around 11pm and we'd just finished a job and phoned in for the next. The controller gave us details of an immediate job, which was very unusual as we only normally did urgents. So off we set on this immediate job. We hadn't gone half a mile and the phone rang again. it was control saying "Cancel your immediate for a 999 case" Now this was very unusual, in fact it was my first 999 ever. So off we set, racing round Coventry answering 999's for the rest of the evening. Our final job was passed as a collapse, however when we turned up our casualty was in quite a bad way. It was bad enough that we took one look and both said para's. I went back to the ambulance to phone control, who of course had nothing to send us. I went back into the house, and sure enough the casualty had gone into respiratory arrest. The situation was bleak, with no sign of help, we decided to transport. Just as we were loading our casualty, an ambulance service ambo turned up. The paramedic who jumped out was well known to us, so we said with a sigh of relief "Thanks for bailing us out" to which he replied "Nope, YOU'VE bailed us out, we've got no oxygen".

The Para jumped into the back of our ambulance, and we set off for hospital, with me bagging the patient en route. The casualty made a recovery, and self discharged later.

It was that shared experience that brought us closer together, and since then we've had a lot of respect for each other.

So in short, Get well soon Dennis. We're all thinking of you.