A COMMEMORATIVE service at Crewe Station today will remember the lives of local men who died after being assaulted during the Great Train Robbery.

It is 50 years since Jack Mills of Crewe was clubbed over the head with an axe handle while driving the ill-fated Royal Mail train on August 8, 1963.

Jack’s family have attributed his deterioration in health and subsequent death eight years later to the trauma he was subjected to during the vicious assault.

Fellow Crewe cab member, David Whitby, was just 25-years-old at the time of the robbery. He later died of a heart attack, aged 34.

Richard Cook, 55, has been a railwayman for his whole career, currently working as the official railway chaplain for the north west.

He will lead a service on platform 12 to celebrate the lives of the two Crewe men.

“This is quite a unique event in Britain – in most crimes the sympathy lies with the victims, but the train robbers have almost been turned into Robin Hood figures, while the two victims of a very violent crime have not been given a second thought,” he said.

“I’ve always worked with guards and drivers from the Crewe area; guys that would have been around when Jack and Dave were there.

“The railway family are a unique breed. It’s a family that plays together, eats together and prays together. We support each other.”

Jack’s train left Glasgow at 6.40pm on Wednesday, August 7.

Aboard were 72 mail workers, earnestly sorting post throughout the night so it was ready to be distributed on arrival at London Euston.

Because of the bank holiday in Scotland, the £300,000 in used bank notes usually transported by the night mail had accumulated to £2.6 million– equivalent to £43 million today.

At 3am, Jack stopped his class 40 diesel locomotive before a red light at Sears Crossing, on the border between Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire.

But the light had been tampered with by a gang led by career criminal Bruce Reynolds.

David disembarked to locate a trackside telephone, only to find the cables had been cut.

Returning to the cab, he was thrown down the embankment by one of the gang, who struck Jack on the head and forced him to drive the locomotive half a mile down the track to Bridego Bridge, where the robbers transferred the loot into a van.

Jack suffered trauma headaches for the rest of his life and died in 1970 of leukaemia.

David was traumatised by the robbery. He died from a heart attack in January 1972.

Many believe the crime has been inappropriately glamorised in books, films and newspaper articles since – its violence and its victims overlooked, fuelled by the notoriety of Reynolds gang member, Ronnie Biggs, who evaded justice for years after escaping prison and fleeing abroad.

While today’s service will remember the oft-forgotten victims, Richard said the event also had an important role to play in moving forward with the pain left by The Great Train Robbery.

“Even though Jack and Dave were a part of our family, we cannot let bitterness keep us captive to the robbers,” he said.

“We must never forget that we have to be able to try and forgive, or else those robbers still hold us captive.”