Fate I suppose, does not always mean a moment of epiphany or near miss. I believe it can be a culmination after a period of time. My experience working on the farm from 12 to 18 years old was significant not for near misses with fate. But rather, that time was significant for being devoid of physical trauma. Marshfield Hospital and Clinic still to this day devotes resources to agricultural trauma. This in a time where the technology and culture of safety has greatly improved since I was a kid. While my neighbors and classmates were losing fingers, toes, limbs, and even lives, my farm experience was uneventful. This stretch of safety I attribute to one man and one man only - my father. He constantly hounded both me and my uncle on the culture of farm safety.
Dad called me "Bub." "Bub, don't touch that." "Bub, look the hell out." "Bub, don't let me catch you removing that safety shield from the power-take-off." "Remember Bub, you only have one set of arms and legs."
In those days, we did not have the potential to have body parts sown back on like today's workers might if lucky. So safety had a finality about it. My Dad understood finality as he had been in Africa during World War II. A mistake there, so far from the "news headline" war, most likely resulted in death or worse.
Equipment did indeed come with shields, safety guards, and safety devices in the 1950s and '60s, but they often were removed because they were quite frankly, often in the way. You would need to have been there I suppose. But, multiple equipment from different companies and eras was often needed to be attached to each other - filling silo, bailing hay, harvesting grains, etc. often took several attached pieces of equipment. The various safety devices often collided, rattled, or made the work go harder. Dad was not one to remove a piece of safety equipment, but sometimes it would disappear. Dad would then harp ad nauseam about being careful around that compromised machinery.
There were not too many old farmers around the neighborhood that were not missing a finger or two, or worse. I worked on the ambulance in central Green County with a retired farmer who drove for us. He was missing at least four and a half digits total between both hands. Now there is poetry, an ambulance driver whose fingers had been lopped off in various farm accidents. All he said to me one day was, "Damn corn picker jumped out and grabbed my fingers; I put my fingers where they shouldn't have been..."
I have all my fingers and toes as did my Dad. His warnings served me well in my combat unit in the Army; during my landscape maintenance days (enough junky equipment to de-finger an army of men; and, more recently in Laos doing research, and then in Iraq as a journalist.
His voice was constantly hounding me over there in Iraq, "Jesus Bub, watch the hell what you are doing."
This week's Wisconsin soldier to remember is Lance Corporal Daniel R. Wyatt, 22. Lance Corporal Wyatt was killed due to enemy action in Anbar province, Iraq, on October 12, 2004. Wyatt had been in Iraq for a month as a U.S. Marine Corps Reservist. He was serving Company F, 2nd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Division, Marine Forces Reserve based in Illinois. They were activated June 1, 2004. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said Daniel was the youngest of three sons. He grew up in Racine. CNN has him listed as being from Calendonia. He signed up for the Marine Reserves after graduation. The Journal Sentinel went on to mention Wyatt wanted to be a police officer and was studying criminal justice at Milwaukee Area Technical College just before deployment to Iraq. Daniel Wyatt was the 23rd Wisconsin soldier to be killed in Iraq since the Spring of 2003.
3,773 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.
27,848 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring 2003.
78 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.
112 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.
Soldier of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; and, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
