Lucky Proof

WALT: On tugboat. Captain bringing tugboat to Antwerp. Anyway, I see compass, has liquid in it. I open it up. I smell it. Oooh! Alcohol! ...and grapefruit. Lucky me! I drink it.
Luckily, grapefruit thinned it a bit before I gulped it. Strong!!! FUMES!!! Alcohol 120 proof, but I didn't know it. I didn't realize it, I'm 20 years old. I didn't know from nothing. Lucky me, otherwise I'd be blind now.
And then, I put water in it back up to the old level!

Jumping Out of a Plane

JOHN: I was a kid, 19, in the 82nd Airborne. There were a lot of areas to jump. You call them drop zones. Pilot knows the drop zones. 20 men, jump out the plane. For some reason, the pilot turned the plane, tilted it, & 3 or 4 men killed. They jumped out... the pilot flew in between them & hit them & killed them. Flew right in the middle of them... BOOM. They called it an "accident," but it was pilot error. He missed me by a couple of hundred feet.

Bite My Tongue!

WALT: Sometime, about 6 years old, run along a path & it... a barrel, you know? About a piece come off... a round steel piece came off. I go on the path, & I don't see it. It's half over ground & half under. Thin metal--- 16th of an inch thick--- over dirt. I run & I trip, & I think I put my tongue out & it closes hard--- & I bit my tongue & it bleeds. Evidently, I opened my mouth & stuck my tongue out, & when I hit the ground, it closed on my tongue! Put handkerchief into mouth, & I run uphill & I don't know how to do it. Fence--- 6 feet tall! But I jumped it! Got home, went to drugstore. Pull handkerchief out & it bleeds again. Something stopped it & I don't know after that. I don't know now. Then 6 years old... 83 now!!!