'Death spoke to me and it was the most beautiful voice I've ever heard.'

By Emma Alberici.

“I’m getting angrier and angrier,” Gill Hicks says with a quick smile.

It’s been 10 years since the Australian doctor lost her legs in a terrorist attack in central London, so rage is understandable.

On the morning of July 7, 2005, running late for work, she jumped on the Tube at Kings Cross station, on the Piccadilly line.

Germaine Lindsay, a 19-year-old suicide bomber, boarded the same carriage and was standing just metres from her.

After the train pulled out of the station, Lindsay detonated the bomb in his backpack, killing 26 people around him.

Both Dr Hicks’ legs were mangled.

"Death came to speak to me and it was female and it was this most beautiful voice that I've ever heard," she said.

"This voice said to me 'Gill look down, look at where your legs were. Do you want to live like that?'

"And I looked down... I was thinking actually death is a very beautiful place to be."

But Dr Hicks did not die. Instead she used her scarf to tourniquet her legs and save her own life.

"Something just came over me, a very calm presence. I felt no pain," she said.

"I thought right, I need to tourniquet the tops of my legs, I need to lower my heart rate, I need to lower my breathing, I need to be very calm.

"If someone had said to me the day before that this were to happen, I would have said no, I wouldn't be able to cope with that."

Three other suicide bombers detonated devices on Tube trains and on a double-decker bus that morning, killing 52 people in the worst terrorist attacks on British soil.

Dr Hicks said her most enduring memory of the morning is of the people who pulled her out of the Underground near Russell Square.

"The rescuers holding my hand, touching my face, making me feel that I was absolutely safe and my real first understanding of humanity and unconditional love," she recalls.

It is that realisation of humanity that tempers the growing anger inside her, and she uses it as a weapon against the extremists she is trying to de-radicalise.

Fighting extremism through humanity

Through her organisation MAD For Peace, Dr Hicks works with community groups in the UK and Australia as a self-described ambassador for peace.

These groups put her in touch with people who have become radicalised.

Dr Hicks said the story of her rescue often struck a chord with hardened extremists.

"Look at the brilliance of humanity. Look at all the people who risked their lives to come and save me," she said.

"To them it didn't matter if I had a faith, or no faith at all, whether I was male or female, whether I was rich or poor, what colour my skin was. And that's what I talk about."

Dr Hicks is adamant that what happened to her should not happen to anyone else.

"It's not okay to not have legs. Especially now I'm the mother of a two-and-a-half-year-old, I miss being able to run around with her, I miss all those things in my life," she said.

"To think of the senselessness of this act, that's what really sits at my core, that this was a senseless act. It had nothing attached to it other than a ridiculous latching on to a destructive ideology."

She believes society needs to focus on why people are compelled to follow such ideologies, whether it be white supremacy or Islamic extremism.

"What is the allure? What is seducing people? And it's not just our youngsters, it's educated professionals who are somehow being seduced," she said.

She points to the case of 29-year-old Australian doctor, Tareq Kamleh, who is now working for Islamic State in Syria.

"We're continuously baffled. One has to scratch your head to say how does that happen?" she asked.

Those questions and more bubble up as part of what Dr Hicks describes as her "rising anger".

"It's a positive anger... this rising anger that says what are we doing? How much more can we be doing? How am I making a difference?" she said.

To mark 10 years since the London bombings, Dr Hicks has set herself 10 physical challenges, like tap dancing, abseiling and bungy jumping, to raise money for charities.

She is in London for the anniversary and says she will spend it with the people she loves - her rescuers, fellow survivors and her family.

This post originally appeared on the ABC and was republished here with full permission. 

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