Bob would be furious if he saw how debauched certain segments of American society have become. Bob was a classmate and good friend of mine.
We were a small class of young men who graduated on June 3, 1967 from Brunnerdale Seminary High School—a boarding preparatory school for the C.PP.S. (Congregatio Pretiosissimi Sanguine), Latin for Congregation of the Most Precious Blood, an order of Catholic priests, brothers, nuns, etc. This minor seminary was located near Canton, Ohio. It was on a 500-acre property.
The seminary closed down ca. the early 1980s and was then transformed into a beautiful, private country club.
Immediately after graduation, Bob quit the seminary and joined the Marines. After six weeks of basic training, he was back home in Dayton, Ohio for about a week of leave time before he was to be shipped out to Viet Nam. This was during the peak years (ca. 1967-’72) of that brutal conflict.
Bob called me up and said he could borrow his dad’s car for the weekend and proposed that he pick up me and Charlie M. in Columbus, and then drive up to Canton and pick up Dave K., and then we’d “bop on over” to Donora, Pennsylvania and we could all visit Tom M.
So first, Bob picked up Paul R., who also lived in Dayton, and then we classmates all ended up in Donora, PA. Okay, fine, so what are we six Catholic seminarians (or ex- in Bob’s case) to do on a Saturday night?
Well, let’s see… we were all 18 years old—or maybe I was still 17—can’t remember the exact dates this occurred—so obviously, we should go “check out” some music bars or whatever in Pittsburgh.
Donora is about 27 miles south of Pittsburgh. It was already quite late (probably after midnight) as we got into Pittsburgh.
Tom, having just turned 18 himself, was not familiar with any music bars, and so after driving around for a while and being somewhat tired from the long day’s drive from Dayton et al., we decided to head back to Tom’s house and “crash” for the night. (Is that word still used as slang for “go to bed” or is it passé?)
Since Tom knew the way, Bob asked him to drive us back to his house. It was now about 4 a.m. So there we are in Bob’s dad’s white Plymouth Belvedere with three guys in the front seat and three in the back seat. I was in the back seat next to the passenger-side door.
We were all so “zonked” that conversation among us good buddies had faded into quietude. The weather was a pleasant, moonlit summer night with no precipitation. I nodded off as did the rest of the gang—including Tom!
Suddenly, Tom yelled, Oh, my God! Or maybe it was something much less reverent; I cannot remember. But what I do remember is that as I abruptly opened my eyes, I realized we were descending a very steep hill way too fast. This all happened it maybe two or three seconds.
I could see the highway was approaching a ninety degree turn to the left just ahead. Tom had apparently dozed off at the wheel just momentarily. He hit the brakes as hard as his foot could press. Somehow, by the grace of God, Tom was able to rip the steering wheel hard to turn left, but not enough to keep the car from careening into the guardrail at the edge of the turn.
The momentum coming out of the turn kept the car sliding and scraping along the guardrail for perhaps 20 or 30 more yards before coming to a halt. I could not get out my door. But we all piled out quickly and stood there asking each other if anyone was hurt. None of us had a scratch!
But we were all trembling from the adrenaline rush. There was smoke, but we quickly determined there was likely no threat of fire and no gasoline leak. The smoke was coming from where the front fender had engaged deeply with the guardrail and the fender had been almost embedded into the rubber of the passenger-side front tire. The fender structure was biting into the rubber tire.
At that stage the car was undrivable. Looking closer, the entire passenger side of the Belvedere was bashed in and semi-demolished. The first hint of dawn gave us enough light to be able to peer over the guardrail. It was very steep. We could not see the bottom, but Tom informed us that it was about a 2,000-foot drop.
He, still shaking, told us that if we had crashed through the guardrail, the car would have rolled over and over to the bottom, it was that steep; and we would have all been killed.
So, we did end up “crashing,” but clearly we were too shaken to sleep by the time we pried the front fender out of the front tire and drove slowly back to Tom’s house in Donora.
The most dreaded part for Bob was that he needed to call his dad and tell him the bad news early on Sunday. It turned out the car was mashed up pretty badly but, with evidently no engine damage, we were able to drive back to Ohio.
As we got to our respective homes, we all promised to write Bob in “Nam” as soon as he got there and wrote us with his mailing address. We never got a letter from Bob.
On what may have been his first operation against the insurgent Viet Cong, Bob was dropped from a plane into a combat zone. His parachute opened but he was dead by the time he hit the ground, having been ripped to shreds by enemy gunfire.
It was a closed casket at the funeral back in Dayton in August of 1967. We had 32 in our senior class graduating from B’dale in June. I think all of us were there. The 37 or so in this photograph included some other friends of Bob in the Dayton area.
Glen H. is holding the official USMC photo of Private Bob McGill. I did not own a suit or sports coat at that time, and so I am the guy in the brown sweater.
There were over 58,000 deaths of U. S. military troops during the Viet Nam “conflict.” Bob was only one of them, but he is the one I knew the best. I think of him on this Memorial Day.
God says this concerning the accountability of Mystery Babylon the Great:
Revelation 18:24 And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.
Yes, the Vietnam war was also one of the many phony wars engineered and controlled by the modern Mystery Babylonian cabal. But that system is now coming to an end. Praise be to God!
~END~
