Book sample

We had been on the road for a little more than thirty minutes since leaving the hotel, when we were to witness a nasty accident. A Russian fuel tanker had overtaken our vehicle a few minutes earlier and we followed about 200 yards behind. As we approached a very wide bend in the road, we were aware of another tanker approaching from the opposite direction. For no obvious reason the one we were following drifted across the road and straight into the path of the vehicle coming towards him! Neither sounded their horn to alert the other of their presence and no last minute evasive action was taken to avoid a collision. They seemed quite oblivious of each other, and as they collided the front of both vehicles rose up like a pyramid, before dropping back to the ground. I rushed from the Land Rover to see if I could help. The driver of the approaching tanker climbed down from his cab apparently unhurt. The other driver, whose tanker was then leaking fuel, stayed put in his cab. It looked an unhealthy place for us to hang around and my first inclination was to get the hell out of it, but I knew I couldn't do that until I had checked on the driver. I shouted back to my friends to reverse the Land Rover and stay well back in case of an explosion, then climbed up to open the cab door of the tanker. The driver was injured and couldn’t move as his leg was broken.

It was a tense situation and we had to get him out as quickly as possible. There was no time to stand on ceremony, or apply all the medical techniques that should be afforded to an injured person. His cab being high off the ground had made it more difficult to extricate him, but I dragged him up from his seat and unceremoniously bundled him out into the arms of John, who had run up to assist, and with the help of the other driver managed to get him down. His leg was broken halfway down from the knee and was just hanging. I supported its weight with one hand, to prevent the bone breaking through the skin and sticking out, as we manhandled him over to where our vehicle stood. We laid him lengthways across our trailer. He was in great pain but that was only to be expected with all the rough handling he had received. Fortunately, we were able to give him some morphine tablets and I printed a large ‘M’ on his forehead. We turned the Land Rover round and left the tanker to carry on leaking.

We had passed a small building five miles back, with a red cross displayed outside, so we took both the drivers there to be looked after. When we unloaded the injured man, the look in his eyes told us how grateful he was. He clasped his hands together as if in prayer and bowed his head. As I was feeling quite poorly at the time, it was hard to understand how I found the inner strength in my body that enabled me to pull the injured driver out from his cab. Whatever it was, I felt a little better when he was out.