LOL! Ole Bally. Every time I hear (see) people like this yo yo, in my head I hear the opening chords of the song "dueling banjos." Talk about a red neck. Actually, I'll take that back. I know a lot of red necks who are decent people. He gives them a bad name.
And you're right. There was plenty of screaming at Normandy and elsewhere. I was at the WWII memorial when we had the opening ceremony a few years ago, and there was this WWII vet telling stories to a young college kid who was taping for a film he was making. One of the stories he told about was as his unit was crossing pontoon bridges set up to get them across a river as they approached Germany and they were ambushed. Arillery rounds came down, taking out the bridge and throwing people all over the place. He said some were blown off the bridge, while others jumped to escape the artillery. As he put it, they were all young kids, typically 18 to 20, and many were lying there with their guts hanging out crying out for their moms, while others screamed for help from the river.... they'd gone in to escape the artillery but couldn't swim with all the weight on their backs, and as they wrestled to escape from their packs they drowned. He said lots of them drowned that day.
I would hardly fault anyone, of any age, let alone kids like that for crying out. Gezuz! They're lives are about to be snuffed out. As I said, I've had close calls in my life, but the nature of those close calls were such I wasn't in physical pain. I wasn't shot. Nor was I in the midst of being mauled by a wild animal. I can't compare the things I experienced with these other events. In my case, I was in imminent danger of being shot, crushed by a collapsing ceiling, in another case, as a diver silted out in a cave I was lost a scared "_hitless", while in another I was experiencing virtigo as a new pilot and couldn't tell which way was up. All these experiences were scary as hell. Fortunately, I was able to remain calm and think my way out of them -- in the case of the collapsing ceiling it was simply by the grace of God the wreckage missed me (barely). But again, they were different. I still can't imagine, and hope never to experience, having a mad big cat lashing out at me.
I'm just glad the guy who was hit recovered. If he did hunt cats again, that shows he had plenty of courage. And learned a lesson too.
