Afghan Crash

Afghanistan. The stretch of desert between Kabul and Kandahar.



  Monday October 21st 1974



By October, the weather in Afghanistan was noticeably cooler. As I'd disposed of most of my warm western clothes in Yugoslavia when we'd set off alone to India, I felt rather cold in my cotton pyjamas. I went off to a market in Kabul and bought some second hand jeans from a Mongolian 'barrer boy!' I'm wearing the jeans in the photo of me at The Place With No Name.

That very place was where I chose to stay as I liked it the first time we stayed there on the outward journey. It felt kind of strange being there without you and Mark and yet you also seemed like a distant memory. Time seemed to stretch out there and a week seemed to pack in the experience usually reserved for a month!

A group of us had picked up The Magic Bus in New Delhi to take the long haul back to Europe, with England being the final destination. As far as I remember there was no one from The Bus in this cohort. I loaded my blue rucksack into the bus and put my sitar-case on a shelf by the back window where it formed a barrier to rear-views along with the other half-dozen sitars placed there by aspiring Ravi's! The driver was a strapping Geordie called George. We had a full bus and when we arrived in Kabul we all set off to the guest-houses of our choice with the people we had bonded with. I went with Alan Tuttle, Robert Benton (perhaps he was on The Bus) and a few others, including an American who thought I looked like a character from a Fellini film.

I was as sick as a dog! I spent most of my time in bed, (You can see part of the window of the room we were in to my right in the photo) interrupted only by regular visits to the cesspool of a toilet where liquid gushed from my north and south and Khyber pass simultaneously, not to mention from the roof too!



I lay in bed, all day, for a couple of days while my mates ladded it up in town. Ahmed, our concierge, played Cat Stevens' Tea for the Tillerman.....constantly.....perpetually.....interminably!

I was worried that I wouldn't be well enough to travel when George summoned us back to the coach. However, the night before we travelled I was well and went into town for some dinner.



I walked down a dimly lit high street and noticed a shaft of golden light from a hippie cafe over the road. I walked through the trellis archway into the beautiful courtyard of  'Gandalph's Garden' ( I hadn't recalled the name of the place until now), walked down the path and into the restaurant. I was immediately struck by a framed cartoon on the wall that invited patrons to remove their shoes by depicting a shoe containing a leg crudely and bloodily cut off below the knee.



I sat on the floor among a group of beautiful flower children, ordered a rice salad that came highly recommended and waiting patiently for it's arrival stretched out on the floor to listen to James Marshall Hendrix.



My rice salad arrived in my hands as I passed the joint to my neighbour. Though consumed with the intensity of the flavour, I nonetheless heard my neighbour telling his neighbour that his leg was giving him some pain. He said he'd always had problems with his left foot, had broken it a few times and tonight it really hurt. I didn't think too much about it and enjoyed my last evening in Kabul, in this San Fransiscan-style Hippidelic deli delighting in delicious delectables and dallying in dynamite drugs of dubious legality!



The next morning we all piled into the coach again. I was sitting about two-thirds back on the left hand-side by the window. George the driver was seated on the right. It was a British coach. Dave the Aussie who'd been complaining about his foot at Gandalph's sat in the front seat on the left.

Someone, jokingly, said that this was known as 'the dead man's seat'!



We were about to make the 300 mile, or so, journey from Kabul, through the desert, to Kandahar, which would be our next stop-over. After we'd been travelling for a few minutes, an American guy on the other side of the bus asked me how far I was travelling. "All the way", I said, "What about you?"  "Oh, I'm only going to Kandahar on this bus. I wouldn't risk going any further.

I did a long journey once and the bus crashed and I swore I'd never do a long one again!" He thought I was crazy going all the way from India to England on one bus!



Afghan Crash. Part 2



The night was drawing in. The mountains in the distance looked spooky in the fading light and the temperature was rapidly dropping. I'd been drinking Benilyn cough mixture like it was lemonade, which made me a bit drunk, and smoking Afghan black. I was very mellow and laid back in my seat contemplating the forthcoming impact of the culture shock of my return home

in a few weeks. I felt changed in a way I couldn't quite grasp and wondered how I was going to apply myself to life in England.



Someone in the seat in front of me handed me a little pot of something and told me to smear some onto the middle of my forehead where the third eye is supposed to be. This was my introduction to Tiger Balm. I rubbed it into my forehead and lay back in my seat to sleep, perchance to dream.



The monotony of the drone of the coach engine, as it drove down the endless desert road in the velvet black of the night, colluded with the dope and Benilyn to lull me into a comfortable stupor. The tiger balm bore into my brain. Behind my closed eyes my third eye opened to a wondrous landscape that churned out psychedelic phantasmagoria from it's fertile valleys.



My body rocked in a gentle rhythm and my head bounced lightly against the back of the seat. The voices of the hippies became comforting lullabies. Snatches of conversation weaved in and out of my half-sleep...."Yeah, and this weird guy I met...called himself...er...Humility, I think..."  A baby

gurgled near the front of the bus as it sucked on it's mother's breast and I became the baby suckling her full tit, then a goat, then a rabid dog-man fucking her wildly and savagely and screaming and CRASH!!!!!!



In a single, extended split-second several things seemed to happen at once. A sense of tremendous impact as my head shot forward against the seat in front and whipped back upright again. Behind my closed eyes a golden spray seemed to fly down the aisle of the coach like an infernal sandstorm spraying my face with fine, burning dust. An immense sound of smashing glass combined with a sickening groan of ripping steel. Then, stillness and silence. I sat in the silence, stunned. I had no idea what had just happened. I looked around and everyone seemed to be just sitting motionless.



I peered down the aisle and realised the windscreen had gone. I moved slightly in my seat and felt something sharp. All around me were nuggets of broken glass.



The baby cried, breaking the deathly silence. At that moment I realised we'd crashed. Suddenly a voiced called out in terrible anguish, "My foot! Oh God, my foot!" I recognized the voice of Dave the Aussie and wondered what had happened to him. Then the silence turned to murmuring which increased in volume 'till people were rushing up and down the aisle shouting and crying.

I stood up and walked to the front of the coach. I was utterly relieved to see George the driver completely unhurt apart from some minor cuts. Dave the Aussie was quieter now. He was still sitting in his seat which was completely open to the cold, dark night. From where I stood I couldn't see any damage to Dave. People were generally checking on everyone else's welfare and apart from some minor scratches, whiplash and shock, all seemed well.



There was no way we could leave the coach from the front so we started to file out through the emergency exit window at the back. I climbed out and jumped to the ground and walked round to the other side to check the damage. The entire left-side of the coach, down to the luggage compartments, had been ripped off. The tangled side-panel lay on the road about 50 yards back.

I walked up to where Dave was sitting to see what had happened and was horrified by what I saw. His left foot was hanging off by a thread at his ankle. He was completely unaware of the damage and was concerned that his shoe had been pulled off. I looked around and saw it lying in the road. I handed it to him.



We had all gathered round at the front of the coach and were asking each other what had happened. There was no sign of another vehicle. George told us that a military vehicle, carrying a tank on a trailer had passed by very close to the coach. Although the lorry had been visible, the trailer carrying the tank jutted out some distance from the side of the vehicle and was completely unlit, so George just couldn't see it in the enveloping desert darkness. We'd been travelling at least 50 mph and the Afghan vehicle was driving at quite a speed and far too close to the centre of the road. We were damned lucky it wasn't a head-on!



The immediate emergency was Dave's condition. We had to get him help, to get him to a hospital. Someone, it may have been me, flagged down a passing truck. We were about midway between Kabul and Kandahar, so there was another 150 or so miles to go. The coach was virtually a write-off and would have to head back to Kabul if at all possible. An older guy, in his 40's or early 50's, the father of the baby, started to take charge. "Someone is going to have to get this guy to a hospital in Kandahar! Any volunteers?" I knew I wanted to volunteer but was really scared that no one else would, so I hesitated. "I'll go!" It was Alan Tuttle. "I'll go too!" I quickly added.



We picked Dave up and lay him down in the back of the truck we had flagged. It was one of those garish Afghani trucks that look like fairground transport. In the back were a cow and a couple of goats. There was no roof and back apart from a panel to stop things falling out, so it was going to be a cold ride!

I wasn't wearing a coat so I scrambled back to the coach to get one. Unfortunately, my jacket wasn't much thicker than a shirt so it wasn't going to be much help. At this point I had no idea just how cold it would get.



The older guy gave us some tips on using a tourniquet and Alan and I climbed into the truck. Sitting opposite each other, our backs resting against the sides of the truck. Dave lay on the floor alongside the back flap of the truck. George said, after we'd got Dave into the hospital we should make our way back to Kabul and re-join the group.

I couldn't quite believe what was happening. Suddenly, the Hippie Trail became too real!





Afghan Crash -Part 3



The truck set off and we all wished each other 'Good luck!" As the truck gathered speed the wind-chill factor brought the already cold air down much further. It was freezing and with, at least, a two-hour journey ahead of us I was a little worried! Ironically, the most comfortable one was Dave as he was in shock. Still, as uncomfortable as I was, my problems paled in comparison to his!



We drove on into the night, the seven of us (the driver, we three and the cow and two goats), the wind cutting through my thin clothes. Alan broke into song and cried out George Harrison's 'Hear Me Lord' from his 'All Things Must Pass' album. I had to remind my self that this too would pass as I wondered what I'd let my self in for! I didn't realise that I, too, was in a state of shock and I felt very vulnerable and exposed and fearful and yet heroic, with a determination to get help for Dave.



Alan's singing was like a Negro spiritual crying out in the cold, dark wilderness. His singing was being drowned out by the sound of the engine and the rushing wind. I joined him and sang through chattering teeth.



Alan was a likeable chap. I think he was a few years older than I. He was an American student, very intelligent, articulate, gentle and quietly spoken. I felt him to be entirely trustworthy as a person. In later years I was reminded of him by the character of BJ in the TV series of  M.A.S.H. In fact, that series often brought back to me, the feel of the overland trail. Something about a group of disparate (and desperate!) people thrown together by circumstances in less than civilized (by our standards) conditions. Not that I'm really comparing our trip with being out in the Korean war but his culturedness, aloofness to difficult conditions, his ability to make himself comfortable and at home in an alien environment. I found this to be a reassuring quality. Kinda sane and down to earth. While I was the opposite! Charles, eventually, turned out to be a good bloke, as it happens!



After a while Dave asked me what I thought of the condition of his foot. I moved the blanket away from it and shone a torch, which we had, onto his foot. I'd never seen an injury that bad before. His foot was almost completely severed at the ankle and his tibia was snapped and penetrated the skin of his shin. "It doesn't look good!" I gently and honestly told him.



Suddenly the truck pulled over to the side of the road and the driver got out and walked over to a little adobe hut that stood next to the road. There was a flickering light inside and I could see a police vehicle parked nearby. The driver seemed to be taking his time in there and I didn't fee that Dave's foot had much time. As cold as the temperature was, though, I did feel this was better for his condition than the heat of the day would be.



I jumped out the truck and walked over to the hut to see what was going on. There were a couple of policemen and our driver (who was wearing typical Afghani desert dress) in the hut and one of the policemen was on a radio.



There were all sorts of checks being made on us for some reason. The driver was being prevented from carrying us any further and the police wanted us off the truck. We were in the middle of nowhere and Dave's foot was about to drop off! I pleaded with the police to let us continue our journey. They kept shaking their heads and saying, "Not possible!" or something like that. I was getting very frustrated that we just couldn't get through to them. Then, without thinking, I grabbed the arm of one of them and shouted "come outside, I want to show you something!" I practically dragged him over to the truck, pulled down the back panel, uncovered Dave's leg and shone the torch onto his foot. The Policeman shrank back and immediately gave us permission to drive on.



If memory serves, I later found out that the police were aware of the crash and had been in communication with George the driver. I have no idea why they'd been blocking us though.



We set off, once again, into the wilderness. I was getting so cold by now that I grabbed one of the goats and pulled it onto me to keep warm!

We drove on and on and eventually we stopped singing and went quiet. Each one of us, in our own world. I ached for us to arrive in Kandahar, get warmed up and get Dave fixed up.



After what seemed an eternity we arrived at a dimly lit building and were told this was Kandhar Hospital. At long, bloody last! We thanked the driver and got out. I ran in to tell the staff we were here and some people came with a stretcher to fetch Dave.

We went with Dave to a room where they examined his leg. I went to another room and had a ciggie.

The hospital was utterly depressing and totally basic. It was like Bedlam. The stone floors were soiled with pools of diarrhoea and the people that wandered the grey corridors seemed more mentally ill than physically.



Eventually, Alan and I had to leave Dave there for the night and find some accommodation for us. We promised Dave that we'd be back first thing in the morning and we went in to the suburbs of Kandahar to find a bed for the night. We found a pretty guest-house and hired a room each.



As I settled down in my comfortable bed (it had real linen sheets!) the impact of the crash replayed itself in my mind. The impact. The terrible sound! The glass; like a mass of stars, flying through the length of the coach. Dave's cries! All seemed to replay, throughout the night; even, in

sleep.



The next day, after a lovely breakfast, we returned to the hospital. Dave seemed a bit more comfortable. The doctor gave me a prescription and sent me into town to get it filled. It was for morphine and anti-biotics. They didn't seem to have this stored at the hospital, which amazed me!



The pharmacist filled the prescription and then asked me to pay for it. It was very expensive and I expected to be reimbursed back at the hospital. To my shock, I was wrong! The doctor said that patients were responsible for paying for their medicine. Dave had no money with him. It was on George's bus. I was a little worried, as I didn't have much money myself.

The doctor told me, in private, that we had to make a decision. They didn't have the skills or equipment to save his leg in their hospital and if he were to stay, they would have to amputate his foot. However, if we took him back to a hospital in Kabul there may be a chance to save his foot. The risk was, though, that because the journey would take 4 or 5 hours and the weather was going to be very hot, if they couldn't save his leg then they would probably have to amputate more of it than they would if they did it now! What a decision! Dave wasn't in sound mind so he couldn't decide.



We decided to take him back to Kabul. They couldn't afford to give us an ambulance so a cab was called. It was a station wagon and we lay Dave down in the back. I was told I would have to cover the costs and I wondered how I was going to be paid back. I imagine Alan said he'd cover part of it but I was feeling quite stressed about the money situation. I was also a little worried about my Afghan visa, which was about to expire. I had been told that if you try to leave the country after your visa had expired they wouldn't let you leave!

So, off we went, back to Kabul, all of us feeling anxious and tired, on what was, now, an extremely hot day!





Afghan Crash-Part 4



As we set off into the desert I was once again a little anxious as to who was going to pay me back for the cost of this cab, which wasn't going to be cheap even by Afghan standards!



The heat on this day was considerable and travelling through the desert in the back of this claustrophobic station-wagon with the sickly sweet stench of Dave's blood and the buzzing insect life that were attracted to his festering wound was very unpleasant!

Dave's complexion was the colour of a cheap Mexican TV soap. He didn't look at all well! Occasionally I'd have to hold a bottle for him so that he could pee. His urine was brown! We stopped off once or twice to buy some Coke.



After some hours we stopped off somewhere. I can't remember where. It was a town, perhaps the outskirts of Kabul, it was certainly nearby, but the upshot was that the cab-driver was leaving and was to be replaced by another driver. Before he went he asked me to pay for the journey so far. I parted with a significant amount of Afghanis and off he went. After a while, another driver showed up and we asked him to take us pronto to a hospital in Kabul.



When we arrived in Kabul the sun was going down. We arrived at the gates of a hospital that was guarded by soldiers. I got out to ask the soldier to open the gates and he suddenly and aggressively pointed his weapon at me. I was shitting my self! I really thought he was going to shoot me! I was very tired and stressed from all this and it all seemed a bit unreal and my skin was wearing a bit thin. Then he laughed and let us in.



Once in, we waited for an age and the cab driver waited with us. Then we were told he couldn't stay because they didn't have something or other and they told us to go to the other side of town to another hospital. We packed Dave into the car and set off. When we arrived, we got the same story and were told to go to the American Hospital. I was feeling pretty pissed off!



At last we got him into the American Hospital and he was wheeled off by a couple of laughing porters and Alan and I went into an office, followed by the cab driver, to talk to the chief surgeon.

There was a lot of chattering in Urdu or something between the driver and the surgeon. Eventually, the surgeon told me that the driver was expecting me to pay him for the journey from Kandahar to Kabul. "What!!?". I asked. I'd already paid most of it but the driver seemed completely unaware of this. I refused to pay more than for the last few miles and even that was cleaning me out after all the other expenses I'd had with the prescriptions etc. The driver went off and returned a while later with the police. The doctor told me that if I didn't pay I would be arrested. I couldn't believe that this was happening!



All I'd been trying to do was to help someone save his leg! I made an emotional speech and broke down in tears.

The doctor said something to the police and then they left with the driver. He assured me that it would all be OK and I wouldn't have to pay or go to Jail! I was very relieved!

I wandered off to see Dave. He was in a room with someone who wouldn't stop wailing and I asked if he could be moved somewhere quieter and they agreed.

Then the doctor told us that they had no morphine or anti-biotics and they would give us a prescription and we were to go into town and find a pharmacist. It was 2 a.m and we were expected to get a prescription filled!



Well, we went into a deserted Kabul, found a pharmacy, hammered on the door and a sleepy pharmacist did the business. This time, at the hospital's expense!

We slept the night in the hospital. I started off on the floor but eventually sneaked into a ward and climbed into an empty bed.

The next day we were to search for our fellow coach passengers, whom we hoped had arrived safely back in town. Plus, my visa had run dry!



Afghan Crash-Part 5



When I awoke in the hospital bed the next morning, I was greeted by the surprised faces of the patients in the ward, as I, this fully clothed Hippie climbed out of bed!

I went and looked in on Dave who seemed comfortable for the time being. They planned on flying him back to Delhi for an operation to save his foot.

I then tried to find Alan. I was told he'd left the hospital earlier so I headed off  into the streets of Kabul to try and find my travelling companions.



The streets were fairly deserted, as it was early in the morning. Through the glare of the rising sun I saw Alan walking toward me carrying the blanket that had kept Dave warm on our night trip through the desert. " I've got the smell of his blood on me so I'm off to get a shower", he told me. He also told me where the others were staying and we went to join them. On the way we saw George the driver, slowly driving the coach, with its missing side, through the street.

I had  two things on my mind. How will I get out of the country without a visa and even if I get that sorted out, how will I travel? I was very tired and couldn't bare the thought of travelling under my own steam, especially without the support of Karl and Mark, who, though distant memories by now, I still thought of as friends. Perhaps I had imprinted something on the both of you (especially you, as I felt we had much more in common), as you were the ones with whom I made it to India.



Back at the hotel, all the others wanted to hear all that Alan and I had been through. We were treated as heroes! The women asked us if we needed anything (I resisted the temptation to be lewd!) and the guys were all very supportive. The next morning they told me that I cried and shouted in my sleep - that I was muttering stuff related to the crash.



That same morning I went to the visa office with a whole bunch of others to start our negotiations. Not surprisingly they were completely inflexible! We couldn't renew our visas and we couldn't leave the country, as we didn't have a visa. We were in Joseph Heller country! It was time to visit the British Embassy!



The embassy was a palatial building reminiscent of the White House and set in beautiful surroundings. Well-cut lawns and topiary, etc. A complete contrast to the rest of Kabul! A real slice of Great Britain! Very reassuring!  I described it in a letter home (which I'll transcribe at a later date) as "an oasis of sanity in a wilderness of madness". I was feeling insecure and very homesick for the comforts and familiarity of England.



Getting into the Embassy proved more difficult than I imagined. In fact the whole thing, including obtaining visas for myself and a few other Brits, demanded all my powers of negotiation and persuasion! I cannot recall or understand why this was so difficult. It required more than one visit to the Embassy and the interim wait was terribly suspensful.



Well, of course we managed it and we returned to the hotel, triumphant! Someone told me that my Sitar had been wrecked in the crash. I said something along the lines of  "Well, all things must pass!" and was immediately exalted by the others to the status of Guru!! This mantle was to be compounded by subsequent Religious/Spiritual experiences I was to have on the continued journey home and for several years after that - but that's another story!



George told us that another bus had arrived in Kabul and was due to leave in a day or two. It was only half-full so there would be plenty of room for us. He told us where the hotel was that the other group were staying and I went off to secure my place. When I got to the hotel I was completely gob-smacked to see that the bus parked in the front of the hotel was The Bus! Well, not THE The Bus but a new The Bus. Don was really chuffed to see me! He had been back to Amsterdam, bought a new bus and fitted it out and took a group to India and was now on the way back. Coincidentally, some of his passengers were on the same outgoing journey that we were on! It felt like a lifetime ago that I had seen them. I really felt years older! Far less naïve! Mind you, that was nothing compared to how I was to feel in a week or so when I was to start taking 'speed' and all the knowledge of the universe seemed to pour into my brain!



Don's new The Bus looked very similar to the old one. He'd painted it the same colours and with the 'The Bus' logo on the side. Inside, he'd removed a lot of seats and there was a large chilling out area with plenty of oriental carpets to chill out on!

So it felt like I'd come full circle, in a way, as I boarded The Bus and headed off for the three week, or so, trip home.



There were more adventures to come. Someone would smash into us (minor though), we'd have a blow-out at high speed (luckily, no injuries), the Hotel Gungor in Istanbul (where we had stayed and where I stayed again) had a fire, and I got increasingly into 'speed' and began to feel that I was learning the secrets of Life! I became very close to a woman called Annie, though we never had sex as I was just too damned shy; was almost seduced by another woman from Oz but shyness put the dampers on that too! Interestingly, by the time I arrived back in England the shyness was much reduced and I'd developed a kind of charisma which boosted my confidence with women tremendously and turned me into a bit of a satyr! So I became a, somewhat, horny guru!



It was also great to witness a woman, on the bus, experience snow for the first time in her life. The look of child-like wonder on her face was beautiful to behold!



                                                           

It was on the 21st of October 1974, that the coach crashed in the Afghan desert - we were later to hear that the driver went on to have several more crashes along that same stretch of road, killing five people in the bargain! We also heard that Dave had been operated on in Delhi and they had amputated his leg just below the knee.





On the 14th November, one day before my 21st birthday, I arrived back home.

I was awoken the next morning by my mother bringing me a glass of hot Ribena and a birthday greeting. Her smile was reassuring and the adventure was only just beginning....



End