Hell on earth

There were 1,500 punters in the audience when Eagles of Death Metal played their fatal gig at the Bataclan theatre in Paris in November 2015. By midnight, every one of those fans would either be dead, bereaved, in hospital with gunshot wounds or so traumatised that the horror would haunt the rest of their lives.

But obviously none of them knew this when they woke up on that sunny autumn morning (though it was a Friday 13th). One remembers that his first thought that day was to make sure he wore some nice trousers. Another recalls being puzzled when his father — ‘a typical Chilean dad’ — embraced him, asked him anxiously where he was going that night (‘I’m 23!’) and then said what now sounds eerily prophetic: ‘No one can steal your soul.’ The son replied: ‘I’ll be careful.’

Actually, though, whether you lived or died was entirely a matter of luck. The band had just launched into one of their up-tempo crowd-pleasers ‘Kiss the Devil’ when in burst four Islamic terrorists and began spraying the packed audience with their AK-47s. As reality dawned and the band fled the stage, the crowd collapsed like dominos — some because they’d been hit, the rest because it seemed like their only chance of survival.

What everyone remembers was how loud and relentless the gunfire was. And also the intense smell — ‘iron blood and gunpowder’ — that stuck in your throat. No one dared move, except to hug themselves closer to their loved ones and, for self-protection, to bury themselves deeper into the growing mass of dead bodies.

Then the firing stopped — and for a moment, in the silence, it seemed as though there might be hope. But then there was a click, as one of the gunmen slotted another magazine into his automatic rifle.