Breaking Dancing in a Bus
I alluded to a bus accident in a previous post. Just for grins I thought I'd expand slightly. It was summer 1989, I was assigned to Zweibrucken Air Base in Germany. We had taken a 29-pax to a nearby Army range to qualify on our firearms. The passengers were about evenly split between my Civil Engineering squadron and a tactical radar squadron. Some people were carrying their M-16s, the rest of the rifles were in a panel van that was following us. We were on the Autobahn.
What follows is a best-guess: I was sitting in the front, right-hand seat against the window. I heard something "snap" and the driver suddenly lost control of the bus. I felt/heard something bounce off the under-carriage under my feet, and I thought I heard one more "ricochet" as we headed for the guard rail on the left-hand side. I'm guessing some steering component went tango uniform.
We crossed both lanes (happily no cars near us), smacked the guard rail, and then crossed them again going right. We smacked something on the right shoulder and it tossed the bus down on its right side. The bus then did a 360 degree spin, coming to a rest on the shoulder looking thusly:
Don't hold me to the mechanics I'm describing; it's a compilation of my memory and a verbal report from the two guys following us in the panel van. The last thing I remember was trying to pin the Lieutenant next to me to the seat, pretty much because I wasn't interested in wearing her M-16 as a piece of body jewelry. As we came to a stop, everyone un-assed the bus fast, either through the space where the windshield used to be, or out the back emergency door. I was last one out...I'd like to say because I was senior ranking and making sure my folks were safe....but the real reason was three people (said Lt mentioned above and the other two guys in the left-hand seat) just got done playing "whack-a-mole" with my body, as I was on the bottom of the "scrum." The Lt swore up and down during the safety investigation I was shouting orders the minute the bus stopped. I'll have to take her word for it, as all I remember was having the wind knocked completely out of me.
Several small miracles occurred:
1) No one was killed. Somehow despite the gyrations, the bus never rolled, no one was ejected, or got pinned when a couple of windows came apart on the down-side of the bus. Total of the"somewhat" serious casualties consisted of a broken shoulder, two concussions, and what they initially assumed was spinal trauma (me). The rest were minor cuts and bruises.
2) No one hit us. The above picture is fuzzy, but you can see we were clearly sticking out into on-coming traffic, on the Autobahn, at 2:30 in the bloody afternoon.
3) No one was impaled on the several M-16s bouncing around loose during our rather unorthodox forward motion.
4) Except for the broken shoulder and the concussions, everyone else went home that night, including me. Happily my back was undamaged, but I had a *very* unhappy set of ribs and torso muscles for several months.
5) We had three or four trained medics on board.
Now, several years later, I can laugh about some of it. Especially the look on the poor German EMT's face when he pulled the makeshift "backboard" out from under me our medics had placed me on: a deck of the human-sized silhouettes we'd spent the afternoon shooting at...all of which were full of bullet holes. I don't think I've ever seen a set of eyes shock that wide in my life.
Compared to that, my earlier problem is actually pretty minor....I s'pose I shouldn't complain.
What follows is a best-guess: I was sitting in the front, right-hand seat against the window. I heard something "snap" and the driver suddenly lost control of the bus. I felt/heard something bounce off the under-carriage under my feet, and I thought I heard one more "ricochet" as we headed for the guard rail on the left-hand side. I'm guessing some steering component went tango uniform.
We crossed both lanes (happily no cars near us), smacked the guard rail, and then crossed them again going right. We smacked something on the right shoulder and it tossed the bus down on its right side. The bus then did a 360 degree spin, coming to a rest on the shoulder looking thusly:
Don't hold me to the mechanics I'm describing; it's a compilation of my memory and a verbal report from the two guys following us in the panel van. The last thing I remember was trying to pin the Lieutenant next to me to the seat, pretty much because I wasn't interested in wearing her M-16 as a piece of body jewelry. As we came to a stop, everyone un-assed the bus fast, either through the space where the windshield used to be, or out the back emergency door. I was last one out...I'd like to say because I was senior ranking and making sure my folks were safe....but the real reason was three people (said Lt mentioned above and the other two guys in the left-hand seat) just got done playing "whack-a-mole" with my body, as I was on the bottom of the "scrum." The Lt swore up and down during the safety investigation I was shouting orders the minute the bus stopped. I'll have to take her word for it, as all I remember was having the wind knocked completely out of me.
Several small miracles occurred:
1) No one was killed. Somehow despite the gyrations, the bus never rolled, no one was ejected, or got pinned when a couple of windows came apart on the down-side of the bus. Total of the"somewhat" serious casualties consisted of a broken shoulder, two concussions, and what they initially assumed was spinal trauma (me). The rest were minor cuts and bruises.
2) No one hit us. The above picture is fuzzy, but you can see we were clearly sticking out into on-coming traffic, on the Autobahn, at 2:30 in the bloody afternoon.
3) No one was impaled on the several M-16s bouncing around loose during our rather unorthodox forward motion.
4) Except for the broken shoulder and the concussions, everyone else went home that night, including me. Happily my back was undamaged, but I had a *very* unhappy set of ribs and torso muscles for several months.
5) We had three or four trained medics on board.
Now, several years later, I can laugh about some of it. Especially the look on the poor German EMT's face when he pulled the makeshift "backboard" out from under me our medics had placed me on: a deck of the human-sized silhouettes we'd spent the afternoon shooting at...all of which were full of bullet holes. I don't think I've ever seen a set of eyes shock that wide in my life.
Compared to that, my earlier problem is actually pretty minor....I s'pose I shouldn't complain.