I remember how clear the day was, how beautiful, no clouds, just golden hills all around. We were bivouacked on Mauna Kea, one of two volcanic mountains on the Big Island of Hawaii. The Battalion was offering rides down to the coast to those of us with leave slips. Two Army buses, school buses painted olive drab, were waiting in the parking area, one going north to Hilo, the other southeast to Kona. Both were scheduled to depart at noon.

I was sitting on the bus to Hilo, when word came down that our bus would be delayed for about an hour. On a sudden impulse, I jumped up, grabbed my bag, and ran over to the Kona bus, getting a seat to myself in the middle on the driver’s side. In the Army, you didn’t take chances with something as important as leave; if your bus was delayed, it could get canceled and you could get stuck on guard duty. Within a few minutes, the Kona bus started up, the driver pulled the door shut, and we were off, heading over barren, slightly downhill mountainside terrain of the Parker Ranch, on a ninety minute run to the Kona coast, escorted by an Army jeep with a driver and sergeant wearing short sleeved khaki uniforms.

We were riding for about thirty minutes as the road was getting a bit steeper, with more frequent curves, winding slowly down the mountain road. We went around a couple of curves, and I could see beyond the road guards to lowland pastures below. On our right side, there was only the wall of the mountain.  I was sitting there, looking out the window and daydreaming, but was at some point aware that the bus was picking up speed considerably, and something seemed to be not quite right. As our speed increased, the soldiers in the bus began joking about the driver’s driving skills. Some were making loud bravado comments that we going to set a record to Kona. As we went faster and faster, maybe 70 miles per hour now, widely careening around curves and taking up both sides of the road, the laughter turned to concern and a couple of voices shouted “slow it down” and “stop the bus.” I could see out the right hand window that the bus was quickly overtaking the escort jeep, which was veering out of the way, the driver and sergeant having perplexed looks.

At this point, the driver yelled above the noise that the brakes were out, and we could hear him slamming the brake pedal repeatedly to the floorboard with no resistance. The transmission in the rear of the bus started making a loud thumping noise, and the driver was unable at this speed to downshift. You could hear him repeatedly trying to grind the gear shift into third gear with no luck. The bus became deadly silent. The driver yelled, “get under the seats” as we went sliding around a curve, this time almost, but not quite, tilting on two wheels, still somehow holding to the road.

Everyone, as instructed, stated climbing under the bench seats. But a few remained sitting. Some were yelling at the driver with various instructions. I hesitated in my seat a bit, watching the Parker Ranch stretch by to the side and below, and turned inward, alone in my own thoughts, aware of myself and blotting out the surrounding chaos. I was thinking that the driver must do something, probably crash the bus into the right side of the road, into the wall.  Maybe he could scrape the bus on the right side against the mountainside, using friction to slow down. It seemed the best chance– even to crash and roll on the highway rather than careen off a curve over a cliff. I was hoping he would crash now, that my mental telepathy would reach him.  By now, our speed was such that tires were constantly squealing. The driver was no longer trying to brake or downshift, he was focused on making it around curves. The bad thing, I could see from my window, was that the zig zagging mountain road ahead became even more treacherous, and the curves sharper and steeper, as the highway winded down the mountain. We were no longer on a moderate grade. There were few straightaway stretches before the next curve.

It was at this point, looking out the window when others were under their seats, and seeing my face reflected in the window, that I had sudden, strong, and knowing fear of my own mortality. What you hear is true. My life began speeding past my eyes, like a tape on fast forward, stopping three or four times to focus on a few moments. It was more or less chronological. I remember seeing myself as a grade schooler somewhere in Kansas, sitting at the table with my mom standing over the stove in the kitchen. For the first time, I could bring up a clear image of my face and hers when I was young. Then, the tape sped ahead without stopping through high school and showing my grandmother in Des Moines. For a microsecond it showed me studying in my dorm room at college. It could have been any routine day, any of the four years there. The images were all just average moments in my life, not special events. While the dorm room scene was in front of me, the thought came clearly to me, why had I labored and stayed up all night studying for exams, when it would all lead to nothing. I had wasted my time. It seemed rather silly all of a sudden as I saw myself again in the glass. What were the college efforts and dreams all for? It didn’t make sense. I had another thought at the same time, why did I make the mistake of getting off the Hilo bus at the last minute. If only I had stayed on that bus, I could still go on living for a lot more years. Now, because of that one simple mistake, I would die. If only I could somehow manage to go back to the point where I was sitting on the Hilo bus. Is that  somehow possible, I strangely wondered?

My thoughts of death were interrupted by my quick movement to get under the bus seat. It was a strange feeling, being down there under the bench. I couldn’t see anything, just hear the tires humming over the pavement and feeling the swaying movements of the bus. I remember focusing on the chipped gray paint spot on the bench leg I was gripping. Now, I realized, I was in real danger and the next two minutes would decide my life or death. I said the Christian Science mantra, the Scientific Statement of Being, that man is spiritual, not material, and that he is connected to God at all times. The driver would be guided to make the right decisions by divine science and divine truth, or God, which are in him and which go before our bus. A second later, we were off the road and bumping down a steep hillside, with all of us being jerked violently forward and backward as the bus hit mounds and depressions on the landscape, and with some seats breaking loose and some people screaming. I remember the bus hitting with the front fender, then hitting with the back fender, as if we were bucking, but we were not flipping over. I felt I now had a chance of surviving. Somehow, the driver, it appeared, had not lost control of the wheel as we ran headlong down the mountainside. Any slight turn of the wheels at that speed on a downhill run, I sensed, would still be disastrous, causing the bus to flip over and roll. What finally transpired was a ninety mile per hour run down a forty degree slope, down the hillside, never flipping or rolling, but just bucking and hitting the front and back bumpers in repeated succession during the ride down. As we finally rolled to a stop and pulled ourselves out from under the benches and debris, we noticed that the front and back windows were missing and the side windows were shattered, and that benches were strewn around inside. Most of the passengers had some minor injuries, dislocated shoulders and cuts and bruises, and two were hurt so seriously, one with broken clavicle and one with a broken back, that we had to make stretchers and lay them carefully on the grass outside while we called in a medical evacuation helicopter. It seemed that the only ones who were not hurt were the ones, like me, in the middle of the bus where the benches had remained intact. As evening approached, we were still bandaging the injured and evacuating a few by helicopter. We didn’t get back to the tents atop Mauna Kea till late that night.

The bus was towed off, a total wreck with the lower part of the front and back smashed inward, and some of the undercarriage exposed. The driver, who was cut and in tears, and shaking after getting the bus stopped, was awarded the Soldiers Medal, the highest medal possible for those displaying life saving bravery in a non-combat situation. He got it not only for his driving skill, keeping the bus upright while speeding down a fairly steep slope at high speed, but because he had the courage and sense to realize that the curves became sharper and the precipices more steep the further we went. He made the quick and tough decision to deliberately drive the racing bus off the highway on a short straightaway section, swinging left off the highway and down a sharp hillside at 90 miles per hour, flying off the road on four wheels and landing hard but flat on the down slope. As it turned out, he picked the last possible safe spot to take us off the mountain road. Beyond that point, there was nothing but sheer cliffs off the left side for ten miles. Delaying would have meant a short, wild ride on two wheels, with the bus eventually flying off a cliff.

Strangely enough, I never thought much about the incident or of the driver for the rest of my tour in Hawaii, back at Schofield Barracks on the main island of Oahu. I figured I had survived, and forgot about it. I had, perhaps, been meant to survive. Then, on my very last day in Oahu, a year later, an hour or two before going to the airport to fly home for good, I caught a surprising glimpse of the bus driver walking alone down the street by the Post Exchange. The PX was near the motor pool where the drivers worked. But, still, what a coincidence, seeing him again for the first time since the accident just as I was leaving Hawaii, going on with my life. It was as though I was being given a farewell reminder of what might have been. I might have never been here at the PX, standing in the sun, saying farewell, going on with the rest of my life.  It might have all ended a year ago.  Go ahead, I was being told, but don’t be smug.  We are mortal and chance plays a role.