The late Cliff Michelmore, a fine broadcaster, known for his cheerful demeanour, said it all in one poignant minute: "Never in my life have I ever seen anything like this; I hope that I shall never, ever see anything like it again."
Now, fifty years on, it is with reluctance that I even comment about that dreadful day in Aberfan, for I know that the parents of the children who died that day have, rightly, pointed out that they remember their lost children every day, not just on the anniversaries of the disaster.
Members of the generation before mine often talk of remembering where they were when they heard that President Kennedy had been assassinated. I was too young to remember that; Aberfan was my 'Kennedy moment'. I was of similar age to most of the 116 children who died. Just as I and children the world over identified with the children in Enid Blyton's adventures, so too, for the first time, I identified with children in tragedy: the tragedy that overtook the pupils at Pantglas Junior School.
I do not wish to make any claim that my grief was any different to that felt by millions of others, but Aberfan has stayed in my mind all these years. As a classic, stiff upper lip, product of an English public school, I am not given to shows of emotion, but the very thought of the Aberfan disaster still brings tears to my eyes and has done so for as long as I can recall.
At school in leafy, posh, Llandaff, a few miles downstream from Aberfan, my world was a very different one from those children further up the Taff Valley. The main connection, for me, was the River Taff itself - filthy black from coal dust and other pollution from up the valley. The first time I travelled, in a car, up the valleys, I was shocked by the grim terraces, mines and coal slag heaps. It was just a few miles away, but it was like a foreign country to me.
The more I have learnt about those famous coal-mining communities, the more I have been impressed by their sense of community - that combination of coal mine, chapel, male voice choir, rugby, miners' institute, social club, trades union and, of course, the narrow constraints of the valleys themselves, created communities more tightly knit than perhaps any other in the United Kingdom.
These were communities that knew tragedy and hardship all too well, as those glorious, but mournful Welsh hymns convey so poignantly. The Aberfan disaster seemed to me then, as it does now, like tragedy heaped upon tragedy - simply too awful for words.
The dignity with which the people of Aberfan have coped with the legacy of that disaster is a tribute to the strength of their community. I doubt if any less close knit community would have handled its loss so well.
Looking at the walls of the beautiful memorial garden that now stands at Pantglas School, I see immediately that they are made of the same river-washed, rounded stones as the walls of our house in Llandaff. After the Aberfan disaster I was fortunate enough to return, of course, to normal schoolboy life; in the playground I would join the other boys playing Daleks, saying 'exterminate, exterminate' in our best impressions of Dalek-speak. Years later, I learnt that Terry Nation, creator of the Daleks, had, like me, been born in Llandaff. I have no doubt that the 116 little children who died in Aberfan on 21st October 1966 would have been playing the same games in the days before the disaster.
The dignity of the people of Aberfan is in contrast to the shameful behaviour of Lord Robens and the National Coal Board. Their theft - there is no other adequate word for it - of hundreds of thousands of pounds from the fund set up for the victims' families, is a reminder that it is not only the private sector that produces pond life such as Sir Philip and Lady Green, the public sector is every bit as capable of behaving disgracefully.
My heart goes out to the people of Aberfan, today - and every day.
