Too busy to Barf,,

 Too busy to barf (Vomit) is a generic title..Quite often in the frantic world of news garthering in which I was involved on numerous occasions I have had to suppress the urgent need to get rid of my last meal...not because of food poisoning but because I had just witnessed something that simply made me sick.

The first one to spring to mind was in Sidon..I believe it was in the Lebanon..I was hurrying to catch up with the IDF which was making its way to Beirut to conduct some business..and we had driven along the coast from Tel Aviv in Israel.  It was a slow journey and we had been on the road for some hours..Eventually we stopped and pulled over in front of a huge pile of building debris..sat in the shade of the vehicle and attacked our hotel wrapped beef sandwiches..

We didnt get far into the sandwiches, they smelled OFF.....we put it down to being in a hot truck for several hours in hot sunshine..we were very hungry and attempted to eat as much as possible...we had a long drive ahead of us..None of the crew made it through more than half a sandwch...As is the case in some countries a film crew attracts attention from the kids..lotsa them..They are naturally curious and ask a lot of questions..one of them asked why we werent eating the packed lunches which we had thrown into the rubble heap.. We said they smelled bad and must have gone off...they smelled rotten.

This made the kids fall about laughing...and we found out why. 

The rubble heap we were sitting near was until a few days ago a residential block of flats..In the skirmishes the went on between the two armies the block had collapesd. The occupants had all made it down to the supposed safety of the underground garage...all 120 of them...the apartment block had been hit and it had collapsed...the sheltering occupants were still in the garage...No attempt at rescue had taken place..The smell of rotting corpes is difficult to get out of ones brain..We quckly moved on.

Too busy to barf...I have a number of these stories..I wiil post them occasionally.