Before my grandpa Dabel passed away, my mom interviewed him (and my grandma) and asked them questions about their lives. While I was still pregnant I began to read my Grandpa Dabel's story. He died when I was 14 years old, so I knew him, but never as an adult. He was a simple man from Wyoming of a German father. He played the saw with a violin bow and painted the buildings of his town. I've loved getting to know him through his own words and the stories of his life. Some of the most crazy stories come from his time at Pearl Harbor. So I thought that I would share one of those here. You wont regret reading this!
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"At this one particular time I felt like something was really going to happen. I was sitting there with my earphones on, with the ceiling about 5 feet above my head. I was cramped up in kind of a small area . . . [from there] in the corners you would see guys in there you know. So I felt like something was going to happen and I went out there and talked to these guys a minute. They were talking about keeping their minds off the war. You can’t blame them and they were talking about things that happened to them when they’d go downtown on liberty. I said I don’t think I’ll talk to these guys, they weren’t talking very nice stuff, so I felt like I should move away so I moved away another 6 or 8 or 10 feet to a little narrow opening to some bunk beds in there laying on the wall. It was kind of a narrow room. There were bunk beds in there for people that stayed there, and there was about 4 or 5 in there on top of each other. Then at the end of the deck there was a steel hatch down below that was sealed in from the people below it.
"Just as I went and turned and left these fellows there and went in that room there, I laid on this bed with my earphones on and I still had my cord, then a Japanese suicide plane hit us and through the air vents that I was under. You were suppose to get smoke coming through so bad that it would burn you and scorch you, but the vents in my room stopped and I didn’t get any scratches from it at all, but when I come off of the bed with my earphones on I was trapped in there because there was a fire on this little opening. . .
"For about a minute there I had planned that I wasn’t going to come out of it alive, I planned on dying really, so frantically I went down to the other end of the room there hoping I could get through the hatch there and realized I couldn’t do that so I let that go. Then all of a sudden something just told me to start using my head a little bit. You can get out of there. I said, why not, so I just decided I was going through where that fire was and pushed all that back and got through. It didn’t hurt me.
"The first thing I saw was that these fellows I had been talking to, 6 or 8 of them, were all scorched. Their faces were burned and some of their skin was pretty bad. They looked terrible. Some of them could be taken care of with medical treatment.
"Then I looked in the little corner where I had been sitting before talking to the guys, and there was a little space above my head there, opened up about 4" opening in a cross shape.
"I never realized what went through there, but the next day after we got out of there they told the fellows upstairs the explosion on the ship caused all that steel to bulge until when it breaks loose a person can go through a little hole within a matter of seconds like that. It opens up and then it closes again. We were told that.
"When I got back to my battle station after this happened, they were all running around in there trying to find their masks. The water was in there, we didn’t know if it was ocean water or not. I didn’t even know if I was going to come out alive then. They were all hunting for their masks and I could never find my mask because another guy had it on. The first man I saw was a fellow sitting right where my battle station was. It is terrible to have say this but it really happened, he was cut right in two. His body was cut right in two. He had the parts there left, but he was cut in two and he had enough sense to ask me if I could help him. What could I do? I couldn’t do nothing. I just sit and watched him, so I went over to where these other fellows were where these guys weren’t hurt too much. This is where the dentist was sent to his battle station. I ran into him and he was looking pretty bad. We were told to stay there, we weren’t going to be flooded out and we didn’t need our masks anymore.
"Another hour later they cut us out through a hatch door up in front. They let us through when it was secured. We went up in there and there was some guys all over up in there with cuts and bruises all over. Some of them had cuts in their sides and holes all over. They were sitting there laughing it off, even if they were in serious condition, the best they could. I went in there and saw all that, and another half an hour later or something like that they let us go up through the hatch that we come on through in the first place, out. I can remember going on top side. It was dark up there. Ooh it was dark. I’ll tell ya. I was really happy to be in fresh air and to see the sky even if it was black."
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There are several stories he tells about times he should have died, like this one. Isn't this story insane? I'm so glad my Grandpa didn't want to talk about dirty things. I know God protected him. If He didn't then my mom wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be here. My little June bug wouldn't be here.
I'm thankful God protected him. And I'm thankful for all those who fight for freedom, many who were not saved. War is such a terrible thing to even think about. But I know that every person who desires will have rest after this life.
Happy Veteran's Day! (yesterday...)
2 comments:
I am grateful to see you honoring my father's through posting one of his stories. He was a good, simple man who I am proud to say was among those willing to defend our freedoms. Thanks dad!
That's a really interesting story! Thanks for sharing.
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