The two team-mates helped the injured. Matt Busby, badly hurt, was taken away on a stretcher, Bobby Charlton had walked over to Gregg and Foulkes and was helped into a mini-bus, sitting alongside Dennis Viollet in the front seats as other survivors were picked up. They were taken to the Rechts de Isar Hospital in Munich. It was the following day before the true horror of the air crash became evident to Bill Foulkes and Harry Gregg:
"We went in and saw Matt in an oxygen tent, and Duncan Edwards, who seemed to be badly hurt. Bobby Charlton had a bandaged head, Jackie Blanchflower was nursing a badly gashed arm which had been strapped up by Harry Gregg in the snow of the night before. Albert Scanlon lay with his eyes closed, he had a fractured skull, and Dennis Viollet had a gashed head and facial injuries. Ray Wood's face was cut and he had concussion and Ken Morgans and Johnny Berry lay quite still in their beds. I spoke to a nurse and she told me that she thought Duncan had a better chance of making a full recovery than Johnny did....
We came across Frank Taylor in another bed; he was the only journalist around and he asked if we'd like to have a beer with him. Like us, he didn't know the full implications of what had happened the afternoon before. We were about to leave the hospital when I asked a nurse where we should go to see the other lads. She seemed puzzled so I asked her again: `Where are the other survivors?' ....
`Others? There are no others, they are all here.' It was only then that we knew the horror of Munich. The Busby Babes were no more."
Bobby Charlton, aged 20 at the time, sits at the bedside of goalkeeper Ray Wood in the Rechts der Isar hospital in Munich a few days after the crash. Charlton was able to return to play in the sixth round FA Cup tie on 1 March 1958, but Wood was to lose his place in the team to Harry Gregg in the following weeks.
Roger Byrne, Geoff Bent, Mark Jones, David Pegg, Liam Whelan, Eddie Colman and Tommy Taylor had been killed instantly. Club secretary Walter Crickmer had also died, along with the first team trainer, Tom Curry, and coach Bert Whalley.
Duncan Edwards and Johnny Berry were critically injured and fighting for their lives, Matt Busby had suffered extensive injuries and was the only club official to survive the crash.
Eight of the nine sportswriters on board the aircraft had also perished: Alf Clarke, Don Davies, George Follows, Tom Jackson, Archie Ledbrooke, Henry Rose, Eric Thompson and the gentle giant, Frank Swift. One of the aircrew had been killed, together with two other passengers: the travel agent who had arranged the flight de***ls, and a supporter who had flown out to watch the game. Nine players had survived, but two of them, Johnny Berry and Jackie Blanchflower - brother of Tottenham Hotspur's Danny - never played again.
Two photographers, the travel agent's wife, and two Yugoslav passengers, one with a young baby, had survived, together with Frank Taylor. On the afternoon of the crash 21 people had died, 18 had survived, of whom four were close to death.
Of those four, Duncan Edwards, Matt Busby, Johnny Berry and Cap***n Kenneth Rayment, two would survive. Three weeks after the aircrash which had become known simply as `Munich', Duncan Edwards and Kenneth Rayment had lost their battle to live.