Neville McCardy (80), of Mosgiel, is believed to be the first New Zealander to have worked for the LAS. While London has had ambulance services of some kind since the 1880s, the current iteration, the LAS, was founded in 1965.
Mr McCardy was in near the start, switching from work as anaesthetic technician to ambulance crewman in 1967.
"The reason I changed was that I felt like doing the operations myself."
After arriving home Mr McCardy worked in the Dunedin ambulance service for some years before joining Dunedin Transport as its pay officer.
By that time, Jim Sands, who Mr McCardy had met through the Dunedin branch of St John, had been encouraged by his friend’s London tales to have a crack at working for LAS himself.
"He was telling me about how great the service he had just come from was, [and] I found that I could get British citizenship from my father, so we headed off around four days after we got married," Mr Sands said.
He started with the LAS in 1973, and found his New Zealand training did not meet its standards: "I had to start again from scratch — the training was well on top of what I had done here, but the job was still the same."
Reunion organiser Gavin Marriott had long believed he was the first New Zealander to work for LAS — possibly because many of the Londoners wrongly believed Messrs McCardy and Sands were Australian.
By the time Mr Marriott arrived in London in 1980, the work of the LAS was changing — as well as regular medical emergencies, the IRA bombing campaign meant the service was now having to deal with the aftermath of terror attacks.
"I was posted to Chelsea, at the time of the Iranian embassy siege and the IRA bombings, so I copped all that," he said.
"You couldn’t use your radio because it could trigger off another bomb, although I did use the radio after I got to Harrods — I remember quite clearly ‘Gulf Mike, ambulances, 20’.
"I did get to meet some of the rich and famous, putting a splint on Barbara Streisand’s leg — things like that — which was pretty amazing."
