Winds of Destruction ( PDFDrive )

The truck roared off into the distance, leaving Dad with not a soul around. He
could not easily get the severed arm into the vehicle because it was hanging
outside the door on a substantial section of skin. He leaned out with his left hand
and managed to bring the arm inside. Blood was spraying everywhere in
powerful spurts bringing Dad to the realisation that he would be dead in less than
a minute if it continued. The door panel of his American Dodge was made of
compressed hardboard. Through this panel he managed to drive the exposed
bone and press the flesh tight up against the surface to stem the blood flow. He
then drove like the wind for Heany. On arrival at the main gate, the duty provost
marshal failed to understand Dad’s frantic calls to lift the security boom. Instead
he ambled to the car, looked inside and keeled over in a faint. Dad had no option
—he smashed through the boom and drove straight to Station Sick Quarters
where he kept his hand on the horn until help arrived. Shocked and now in pain
some forty minutes after the accident, he surprised the doctor and Staff by not
only remaining conscious but for being fully articulate.
Reverting to me—the matter of what I wanted to do in life came early. Having
passed through the usual stage of wanting to become a driver of the beautiful
Garret steam engines that Tony and I loved to watch labouring up the long hill
from Salisbury station or racing fast in the opposite direction, I settled for
surgery. When I was about nine years old, the war having just ended, Dad and
Mum told me that they had booked a place for me at Edinburgh University for
1954.
When I turned eleven and Tony was nine, our secure little world fell apart. We
woke one morning to discover that Mum had left Dad. We loved our parents
dearly and simply could not understand why things could not go on as before. In
a relatively short time, in a blur of insecurity, uncertainty and confusion, Tony
and I learned that Mum and Dad were divorced and that we were going to a
boarding school in the Vumba Mountains near Umtali, as founder members of
Eagle Preparatory School. When we checked into this brand-new school we
found ourselves with another twenty youngsters ranging in age from nine to
twelve.
Frank Carey and his small Staff had come from the Dragon School in Oxford,
England, to establish Eagle School. He intended to emulate a style of teaching he
knew and believed in. Our environment was wonderful so Tony and I settled in
easily, and quickly regained lost confidence. The style of teaching was quite
different from that we had known and new subjects, including Latin, French and
trigonometry, were brought in immediately.