‘I survived the Tunisia terror attack by swimming out to sea’

Colin Bidwell was never a religious man, but he prayed three times on June 26, 2015.

It had taken him a few days to settle into his sunshine break in Sousse, Tunisia, with his wife Chris, but as he sprawled on a sun lounger in front of the ocean on his penultimate day, he finally felt thoroughly relaxed.

Then, at around noon, terrorist Seifeddine Rezgui stormed the beach armed with an automatic rifle that he’d hidden in a beach umbrella and opened fire. 

‘I remember vividly an hour before it happened, I looked out directly at the ocean and thought to myself: “This is the life. This is wonderful.” I’m a bit of a fidgety person; I’m not the best at lying down and relaxing, but I was trying hard that holiday to zone out,’ the painter and decorator from Windlesham, Surrey, tells Metro. 

‘You’d never think it was going to happen.’

At first, Colin thought the ‘pops’ he heard were fireworks, until he saw his terrified wife heading towards the hotel, urging him to run. He felt the bullets ricochet off the sand as he sprinted to hide behind an upturned boat. 

‘It was pure shock, right to the core. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. There was the gunfire going on, and I thought that was it. That he was coming down, finishing everybody off. I prayed for my life, and then I looked up and saw the sea in front of me.

‘I thought: “I could die here, or I could die running”. So I ran down the beach and swam out as far as I could,’ Colin, 60, recalls. 

When he thought it was safe, he stopped and started to tread water. ‘Then I got tired, and the panic set in. That’s when I prayed again. I don’t know how I did it, but I pointed my toe and found a rock sticking up. I managed to get my breath. And then luckily, [local man] Mohammed saw me and picked me up in the boat. He told me I’d been bitten by a fish.’ 

The bleeding was in fact where Colin had been grazed twice by Rezgui’s bullets, but the adrenaline had blanked out the pain. Mohammed dropped him off at a nearby hotel where he thought he’d be safe. 

‘I knew the area. So I thought I’d go from the hotel to a mobile police station at the end of the road. But I jumped over a wall and there he was.’ 

Rezgui had left the beach and was inland, having entered the nearby five-star Riu Imperial Marhaba Hotel and shooting at anyone who crossed his path.

Colin lowered himself behind the wall so he wouldn’t be seen, and then he heard a commotion as another local came to his rescue. Moncef Mayel, who lived nearby, was watching everything from a nearby balcony and started throwing ceramic tiles down to distract Rezgui. Moments later, it would all be over. 

Police opened fire, and the 23-year-old attacker was shot dead. Rezgui had killed 38 tourists, 30 of them from the UK. It was the greatest British loss of life in a terror attack since the London bombings in 2005. ISIS later claimed responsibility. 

As soon as he could, Colin headed down to the beach to see if any of the bodies, now covered with beach towels, belonged to Chris – making his final prayer that he would find her alive. 

‘Then I saw her in the hotel, in her yellow bikini. We ran to each other and held each other. It was an amazing thing because we’d survived. 

‘I’m not a deeply religious guy, but I’m now a great believer in the power of prayer. I prayed that day three times, and I survived,’ he explains. 

Colin doesn’t like to talk about the attack, partly because it is traumatic but mainly because he is acutely aware that while the pair of them made it out alive, many others didn’t. 

The couple returned to the UK, where they suffered from the aftereffects. Chris would repeatedly check that the doors were closed and locked. Sometimes she struggled to leave the house, panicking in the car, and to this day, she has to know where the exits are when they go to a restaurant.

Meanwhile, Colin would unexpectedly taste salt in his mouth – perhaps as a result of the panic while treading water – and they were both jumpy around Fireworks Night. 

‘Your awareness is dialled up to 11. You think everybody around you could be a threat. You don’t feel safe. You never think something like this is going to happen to you, and when it does, you can’t help but think it’s going to happen again,’he says. 

As the impact of the trauma started to subside, Colin was eager to make sense of what he’d been through, so he decided to go to the local mosque.

‘I was a stereotypical guy who worked on construction sites. I was very ignorant when it came to other religions. When I went to the mosque, I was watching people with backpacks and thinking: “Is he going in there with that?” I didn’t cope well with it.’ 

But after meeting the Imam and his wife, Colin learned that the attack wasn’t religious, but political. 

‘I came to understand that you can take things literally in the Quran that can be completely misinterpreted. And I learned that understanding more about people’s faiths might help to stop something like this happening again.’ 

A year after the attack, Colin made the difficult decision to return to Sousse to thank Mohammed, Moncef and the hotel staff who had helped, and to find peace. 

‘Both my grandfathers, who were in World War II, played a huge part in my life. One was in Dunkirk, and the other was behind the lines in Burma. I remember both of them saying that they wished they had gone back sooner – that they could cope better afterwards. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but one of the best things I’ve ever done, because it was healing,’ he explains. 

Following the attack, Colin found a deep appreciation of life and became more in touch with himself. He had what he described as a ‘spiritual awakening’ and decided that, as he had been spared, he wanted to be the best person he could be.

When he was approached by the Institute of Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that aims to conquer extremism, and was asked to talk to people who were being radicalised, he jumped at the chance. 

‘We’re all here for a purpose, and I think mine was just to become a better person. If we all have a bit of that, there’d be a lot more peace in the world,’ he adds.

‘It was around the time when there were a lot of beheadings being put out on social media, and the Institute found that if you reached out early to some of these people that were either posting this or were the contributors to the original filming, they would think more carefully about what they would do next.

‘I would try to talk to these people over Facebook, and over time, I started making headway. There were a couple that I spoke to over quite a long period of time, and I think I made a difference. I was doing a couple of hours every night, telling people that I was a survivor and challenging their beliefs.’

Ten years since the attack, Colin has made his peace with the human world, but has a way to go with the natural world. He used to love the ocean, but after fearing he might drown at sea during the attack, he has yet to return to the waves. He holidays on the Isle of Wight, or if he goes abroad, the couple stay in villas inland. 

‘Recovering from the trauma is an ongoing process,’ he explains.

‘You learn to live with it. You can’t let it bring you down or live your life in fear. I will go out and swim like I used to. I know I’m going to make my peace with it, sooner or later.’ 

Surviving the Tunisia Beach Attack is out now on Prime Video, produced by Yeti Television.