Army veteran John Hitchcock says you never know what's going to happen in war.
The 90-year-old World War II combat veteran who served with the 163rd Combat Regiment of the 41st Division was stationed in New Guinea, where steady rainfall pounded the swampy lands of the malarial jungle. His unit endured tropical diseases, short rations and constant enemy fire as they faced the main Japanese force.
It was there that the Yakima resident's life became a series of near misses, some comical, others tragic.
The series began with a simple call of nature, where Hitchcock slipped into a catcher's position to relieve himself, holding onto a sapling, when fire erupted.
He says he could feel the zoom of a bullet as it whipped past his shoulder and struck a sapling next to the one he was holding.
He wouldn't say whether the event sped up nature's call, but called it a "near miss."
Either way, it seemed to touch off the cascading events he describes with the same phrase.
Not long afterward, he was ordered to go from headquarters in northeast New Guinea into the damp jungles to tell men there to move forward. He was headed back to headquarters when a grenade dropped at his feet. Instead of lying on the ground as he was trained to do, he ran past it and nearly into the line of enemy fire.
Short of being shot, he turned his attention back to the men he'd ordered to move forward and asked if there was a better way back to headquarters.
They pointed to a trail. He followed it and stumbled on an isolated platoon, where he found himself literally under the gun, with roughly 30 American rifles pointed at him.
"It's a good thing you didn't make any false moves, Lieutenant," Hitchcock remembers the commanding officer telling him with a laugh. "That was another near miss."
But it wasn't until after getting back to headquarters that he learned that a mortar had struck there minutes after he left, killing a company commander and another first lieutenant. If he hadn't left, it could have been him.
"That was another near miss," he exclaims.
Months later, he was sleeping in a tent along a riverbank when he was suddenly awakened by a frantic fellow soldier.
As he gathered his senses, he saw a shoe float past his cot, which was nearly submerged in water from a sudden flood.
"By the time I got out of my tent, I was up to my chest in water," he recalls. "That was another near miss because I could have been swept away by the flood."
But it wasn't until after coming home from the war that he discovered probably the most interesting near miss of all. His grandmother was friends with the master of the Queen Elizabeth, the ship that carried him overseas.
She was living on Vashon Island, Wash., when she met a youngster who later went on to become the master of the Queen. He was learning to captain large cruise ships. Hitchcock's grandmother, a caring woman, would feed the young men while they were in training, and befriended the Queen's captain.
Hitchcock didn't know this until after returning from the war, when he found the book about the Queen's master at his mother's house.
He couldn't help but remember a chewing-out he received from a two-star general while aboard the Queen for letting his men toss out their supper. The food was far from good, he recalls.
"English food is somewhat different than what Mother cooked on the farm, let me tell ya," he recalls. "Soldiers were just dumping their food. I didn't blame them."
Evidently, his grandmother had corresponded with the ship's master for years until her death in 1937.
"If I had known that, I would have introduced myself and would have outranked the two-star general that gave me a chewing," he says with a laugh. "I could have become the head guest at the captain's table."
* Phil Ferolito can be reached at 577-7749 or pferolito@yakimaherald.com.
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