There were nightmares for many years.
But not lately.
My brain seems to have reconciled the event.
It had all turned out fine in the end, after all.
How I pulled the tiller bars, gently,
to steer my racing armoured personnel carrier
to keep up with the convoy,
on a curve in the road to the left,
pulling the left tiller bar,
hearing the loud bang and
watching the tiller bar come all the way back into my chest,
the steering completely lost.
And how in such a brief moment,
not even time for a single breath,
we were flying off the road,
me screaming to the crew commander to get down
in the hatch before we rolled,
crushing him under the vehicle.
But somehow the APC stayed upright,
wobbled a bit to do so,
raced down a small hill,
slammed into the opposite bank of a creek,
full stop,
tearing the radio equipment from the interior wall,
throwing a track,
and tossing loosely-tied equipment
from the top of the carrier into the field ahead.
We hit so hard,
we found a fuel can in the field,
fifty yards from the ravine.
But the crew commander and I walked away from the crash
with only minor cuts and bruises.
We were lucky.
Very lucky.
But it wasn’t the crash that gave me the nightmares.
It was that a bit earlier in that left curve on the road,
where the engine blew up and the steering was lost,
there were about forty little children
with their little backpacks,
waiting for the school bus.
Had the engine blown even ten seconds earlier,
It wouldn’t have been the ravine we hit.