Lest We Forget . . .
ADB's contribution to Anzac Day
By Terry Shulze
Silver Spur 34 and 14
© 1998

March 1977. Lucerne valley. The California desert.

I looked up and down the starting line and estimated the number of racers at about 300. Out in the distance the smoke bomb was alight and a thick ribbon of black smoke stood out against the desert's blue sky. A hurried tension filled the air. The sound of engines, of chaos. The start of a desert race. people yelling. Two men climbed up in the back of the banner truck and immediately the mood changed. Everyone's attention was directed to the truck.

The two men unfurled the sponsoring club's banner, and suspended it between two poles. Each man grabbed a pole and in unison raised the banner over their heads. They would hold the banner up there in the desert breeze. Then they would drop it, signaling the start

Everyone shut off their engines. The banner had to be up for at least one minute after the last engine shut off.

I set myself up, ready at the kickstarter. Eyes blinking, watching the banner. It is very quiet.

It was time. I felt my eyes dilate. My respiration became deep and slow. The adrenaline tainted my breath. The banner dropped.

First kick the engine screams to life. I come out strong in second, then third gear, shifting my weight over the back wheel. Fourth gear.

And then it happened. The impossible.

In three years of racing nobody ever beat me out of the hole and took a trail in front of me. Never.

We almost collided. He had two-thirds of a bike length on me and I had to shut off. Damn!

Fifth gear. I ran up on his fender. Almost a metre away and I can't see the trail in front of him. Too close. Too dangerous.

I drop back a bit, but the dust is terrible. Up on his fender again. I drop back again, but again I run up on his fender. I’ve got to get around this jerk!

I drop back to get a run on him for the pass. I took notice before the race that the wind is slightly from the right. A right side pass. I nail it, run up on him and jump off the trail.

And there it is.

Larry Fitzenreuter had his road crossing. Whitey Martino had his sand wash. Mitch Payton had his downhill. Mitch Mayes had his rock. I had just arrived at Terry Shulze's ditch doing 140kmh.

I don't even have time to change the throttle setting. I barely have time to realize I'm a goner, the bike impacts with a sound I've never heard it make before.

Moments of time: I'm up in the air, head down, feet up. It's strangely quiet, I slam into the earth on my head and shoulder. I'm in the air again, parallel to the earth. I hit hard and start to tumble, tumble, tumble, until I come to a stop. I am alive.

I lay there, with the wind knocked out of me. I can't breathe. Been here before - I'll have to wait until just before I pass out before the muscles will relax enough to allow me to breathe. A scorpion scurries past my face. I take note that this is the first scorpion I have seen in the California desert.

I hear a bike coming. Someone must have seen me crash. They must be coming to help me.

He zooms past, and in a flash of apprehension I remember the rest of the bomb run.

Another bike zooms past. Then another. And another, then hundreds of bikes as the ground shakes with dust and noise.

Someone stops to see if I'm alright. My left arm is bent under my body. I raise the thumb on my hand, noticing that at least the thumb works. It signals I'm OK. He takes off.

All the bikes are gone. I'm lying in the desert sun, still not breathing. Starting to pass out, the muscles finally relax and I gasp for air. I continue to lay there In the same position I came to rest in for another couple of minutes, just breathing. I start moving bits and pieces to see what is broken. Nothing is.

I stand up slowly and look back at the start line, about two kilometres away.

Hell, that jerk and I had about ten seconds on the rest of the field, and maybe he wasn't as slow as I thought. I walk back to where I think my bike is. I notice someone else has crashed here before, and whoever he was he left a broken visor just like mine. It is mine!

I can't find the bike. I turn around and notice it lying about 50 metres past the point where I came to rest. I walk over to it. Everything on the bike is bent.

I take stock of my body. The cloth has been sandblasted from the right shoulder of my jersey. My body armor is torn. My unbreakable goggles are shattered. Curiously I notice that I do not have a scratch on me, not even a bruise. No injuries. Nothing.

A question begins to form in the back of my conscience that starts as a small bubble does at the bottom of a glass and gets bigger and bigger as it rises to the surface - what am I doing this for?

I used to do this stuff for fun. Its not fun anymore. Its serious. I run, weight train, follow a proper diet and ride twice a week whether I want to or not.

For what? A plastic trophy. No sir, that's not it.

I know what it is. I like the buzz. The adrenaline rush. The high. Just like in Vietnam. I'm not riding motorcycles. I'm playing war.

I'm playing war when there isn't even a war on. When I ride I have no fear for my safety. I only think of what must be done and I'm willing to risk my life to do it. Bullshit. I didn't survive two tours of Vietnam just to come back and throw it all away during some amateur sporting event.

The desert is still, but I can sense the sound of laughter in the air. Like a big joke has been played on me. I think back and begin to hear the old voices from long forgotten friends.

Seven of us started together. Two were cut from flight training but the last five toured to ‘Nam.

Jerry Johnson was killed by mortars. Then Lorren Engstrom was dismembered in a crash (I even remember his serial number - RA 18845130). I got shot. Ted Prichard broke his arm in a crash and Dave Davidson got home with just dysentery.

I broke my back on my second tour. I wonder if the other fellows returned for a second tour, and who survived?

So many other friends.

Bert with his face blown off (he survived, but he looked worse than any Hollywood horror make-up artist could dream up). If it wasn't for his sense of humor, he thought he would go mad.

And Hesse, who had his head crushed by that can of ammo when the aircraft rolled. He didn't survive. I wonder who was luckier, Bert or Hesse.

Memories of burning aircraft, friends trapped inside.

Lucky, his real name forgotten, burned in that mid-air collision.. Cookie and crew, burnt to dust. Webster, screaming as the flames cooked him. I had to inventory his personal belongings, including a half-written letter to his mother. There was hardly enough left of his torso to justify putting it in a body bag.

My room-mate Dave Asheilman - gut shot. It took him four months to die in the hospital.

The black soldier on the stretcher next to me. He was so ripped up, the only thing he finally managed to gargle through his blood to the priest was, "don't tell my parents.”

Memories. Faces. So many faces of the dead and dying. Broken and torn bodies. A cacophony of sounds. Pungent smells and unforgettable stenches.

I looked out over the clean desert terrain and thought about it. Why was I risking so much over something that was supposed to be a pastime? Something I did when I wanted to go out and play?

I thought I felt someone looking at me and spun around. But there was no-one.

I could feel a presence. A presence of old friends. Members of a special fraternity where the dues for admittance couldn't be measured in dollars. If they had been standing there in the flesh I knew they would have called me a fool.

What are you, doing Shulze, playing war when it doesn't matter anymore?

I remember the old Indian chief after the battle of Wounded Knee. What was it he said?

"I’ll never go to war again, forever." I should have taken his advice.

I drew a line in the desert sand. If you step over that line you will never race again. Yeah, you can ride, you can even enter races, but only for fun. Never to race again.

You step over that line and you can't turn back. From then on it will be for fun only.

I stepped over the line.