A NARROW ESCAPE

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7018, 18 September 1929, Page 16

A NARROW ESCAPE

RUN DOWN BY A TRAIN.

Not long ago an English newspaper offered a prize for the mosit striking example of a narrow shave for one’s Me. What might well have been adjudged worthy of winning, writes a correspondent in Belgium to the Manchester Guardian, happened in front of the writer’s own house.

A Dutchman, driving alone in his moitor-car, failed to pay attention at an unguarded level crossing. The engine of a passenger train caught the car broadside on, and before the train could be stopped carried it fully 50 yards along the line, the Cir crumbling into pieces as it went. When the train stopped, from the midst of the wreck underneath the front of the engine, the owner struggled out, bruised, dishevelled, and wild, yet apparently otherwise still marvellously sound in wind and limb. As officials and passengers rushed to his assistance, in a dazed way he took from between his clenched teeth the mouthpiece of a pipe, and, looking at it ruefully, exclaimed, "Nom de Dieu! I have broken my good pipe.” Tn moments of extreme stress the human mind works very strangely.