"IT'S DREADFUL"

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 31, 6 February 1943, Page 4

"IT'S DREADFUL"

DIVER ON DROWNING FIGHT FOR LIFE IN RIVER (0.C.) SYDNEY, February 2. "While I was drowning and fighting for my life I thought, 'They say drowning is a pleasant death, but, hell, they're mad; it's dreadful!'" Diver Andrew J. Dubos, 31, who was revived after being apparently drowned in the Hawkesbury River on Friday, said this in Hornsby Hospital. Diver Dubos was working on bridge construction basing a coffer dam about 60ft below the surface when the glass in front of his diving helmet came out after being struck by a 4ft length of hardwood.

Describing the accident, he said, "I felt the clout and touched the timber. I could not see. The river is dirty and it is dark down there. Within a few seconds the water started to gush in. I thought the airline had gone, and I closed the intake valve. This should have made me buoyant, but the water still poured in at a terrific bat. Then I knew what had happened and gave two distress signals. "When I began to suffocate I thought, 'This is it; it's curtains this time.' I felt certain I was going to die. I struggled and fought like hell. I thought, 'What a rotten death it is to drown.'

"I thought of a million things rapidly, and then they tapered down to three thoughts—my wife, our unborn baby, my mother. These thoughts kept repeating themselves in my mind. Then finally, I thought of my boyhood days on the Parramatta River when I first wanted to be a diver. Suddenly it seemed 'someone hit me in the middle of the back with a sledge-hammer and I went down. It got queer, and I remember thinking, 'This is it, you must die now.'"

When Dubos was hauled to the surface his attendant ripped off his diving suit with a jack-knife so that artificial resuscitation could be applied without delay. That night Dubos drank two gallons of water; he was so thirsty because of all the salt water he had swallowed, the river being tidal. Next day he was already cracking jokes about his terrifying experience, and said he was going to dive for the glass from his helmet because he wanted to find out just what happened.