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Friday
afternoons everywhere are pretty much the same. The day's work completed,
welders lay down their torches, clerks close their drawers and students
put their books aside for the weekend, all of them entertaining ideas
of how they will use the next three nights and two days to their fullest
enjoyment. It was this feeling of anxiety that possessed several thousand
men, myself included, to leave Marine Corps Base, Camp Lejeune, North
Carolina, on a particularly cold and rainy day in mid-November of 1961.
Liberty
call had been long awaited for by my entire platoon, but Privates Schmidt,
Fusco, Lane, Teklits and myself had further to travel that night than
the others and we were most anxious to get started. Picking up our overnight
bags, which had been conveniently packed the night before, we ran from
the barracks to an area one-half mile away, where we hoped we could obtain
a ride.
As was usual, the "circle" - a parking area used as a pick-up point for
men traveling any lengthy distance - was crowded, and the five of us had
quite a task on our hands in trying to find a car with room enough for
all of us, since there were scores of men badgering the drivers to take
them instead of us. Eventually, however, we were able to find room enough
for all of us in a Volkswagen of the bus-type class. Within minutes, eight
men including the driver had filled the seats available, and one man lay
atop the luggage in the rear. We expected a twelve hour long and uncomfortable
trip. We were wrong. In fact, only three of us were destined to get where
we all wanted to go, New York.
Sleeping, sightseeing and talking are the only pastimes available to the
nighttime initiate. Within the first six hours, we had pretty well talked
ourselves out and since there is not much to see at night outside of neon
signs and truck lights, all but the driver fell asleep.
Indeed, because we were all asleep some fifty minutes after stopping in
Washington, D. C. for some much needed leg stretching and a cup of coffee,
may account for our being alive today. For, nine miles above Baltimore,
Maryland, from across a thirty-foot grass island came a car at 47 miles
an hour. So abruptly did it happen that few of us realized completely
what was going on until we bad stopped rolling over, over and over again
some twenty feet off of the highway.
At the very second of impact, with me lying atop the luggage thrown over
the rear engine compartment, the left side of the car caved in and pushed
my head, chin first, down against my chest while the momentum of my body,
suddenly traveling at near sixty miles an hour with the car moving at
perhaps ten, bent my back into a position I shall never again want to
assume. A scream so horrible issued from my throat that it had my companions,
while they were still conscious, believing I was being torn apart.
For several moments after the car stopped rolling, all of us remained
unconscious. One at a time we awakened. The silence was the most appalling
thing next to the cold we had to endure. To hear one moment a car radio,
a crash, the sound of rolling, the screams of men and then absolutely
nothing filled us all with a sense of fear none of us would soon forget.
From the front of the car, then lying on its passenger's side, a hand
could be heard scratching the metal of the dashboard. It was Fusco fighting
his way into a sitting position to shut off the ignition for fear of the
car bursting into flames. When he finally reached it, I was greatly relieved
as I was lying directly next to the gas tank and engine.
One at a time those that could climbed out, while I remained lying on
my back stretched out along the interior length of the passenger side
windows.
State troopers tore the rear door off the van and light from the bright
sealed beams of semi-trucks along with cold air swept over those of us
still within. The driver, one other passenger and myself remained. What
could be seen was not a pretty sight. Blood covered the walls and when
I lifted my head and looked toward the front of the car I saw the driver
hanging upside down by one leg from the steering column, covered with
the same red fluid that lined the walls and making what I thought to be
his last groan. To say the least, I wanted to get the hell out of that
car. Feeling my body "here and there" to see that things were in order,
then spitting a few times on the already dirty ceiling next to me to see
if I had any obvious internal bleeding, I finally crawled out the back
of the car shivering like an Alaskan sled dog without fur.
A half-hour later, all nine of us were either laid out or sitting in the
emergency room of the Army's Aberdeen Maryland Proving Ground's Medical
facility. By 0200 Saturday, we had been stitched, padded, doped up, bent
back into shape and told that six of us would have to remain until Wednesday.
Bitterly, we gave phone numbers to those who would be able to continue
on to New York, so they might notify those awaiting our arrival that we
would be unable to make it...this trip.
The six of us that were to remain in Aberdeen until Wednesday then decided
we would take a philosophical outlook on what had happened. After all,
we were lucky to be alive and none of us were seriously injured. Even
more importantly, we would have only two working days after returning
to LeJeune to endure, before we would again face Friday afternoon with
both the need and another attempt to "get away from it all." |
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about
his still having his "late sleeper" chit:
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