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Hello Hello to all Hivians, Silver Bloggers and anyone else reading this.

This week's The Silver Bloggers Chronicles - Prompt 19 is ....

A Day to Remember

Choose any day and tell us about it, what happened and why, for you, it is a day to remember.

Some I remember

Before we get into the main day which is the whole point of this chronicle. I am not going to talk about the ...

Day I met Queen Elizabeth and sang for her
Day I got ~~detained~~ halted outside Oran airport in Algeria where a bomb went off to kill the President.
Days I graduated
Days I got married
Days I played for Scottish schools at rugby
Days around the world with work and ventured forth etc

It is not even going to be one of the sweetest days in my life Helicopter Sunday which I wrote about in Silver Bloggers 18.

No it means us travelling across the water to deepest West Central Africa and the wonderful country of Gabon.

I should really write much more on the exploits in Gabon but for now this is an event that happened my second rotation there.

I arrived in Gabon when I was 24 on a Thursday. We only worked six and a half days a week so finished on a Saturday morning.

We went down to the swampy beach, which meant taking the jeep through a swamp to get to the beach,

Well it was rainy season and the fucking swampy was nigh on impassable, but I wanted to go.

So I went in the wee 4x4 Lada jeep and three others infront in a Toyota pickup.

Long story short, our jeep got stuck in the swamp...

I was volunteered to get into the water and attach a rope to the jeep to get towed out.

Well all find and dandy but it meant I had was under the water and when I appeared the lads were in the back of the Toyota truck standing up with machetes in hand smiling nervously at me.

I climb in through the Jeep window (Dukes of Hazard) style and the driver says to me. Yeah a cayman crocodile swam over your head.

Well fuck me says I, a bit shocked!

Onto the beach we went and Eddie Wildlife was born lol!

We used to work three months on country and then have one month off as R&R.

My first was getting to know everyone and where to go etc. Whether it was the Shell camp or down in the local villages, or up in some of the jungle villages which were out of bounds. Ha trying a Scotsman he is not allowed to go somewhere!

Anyway that is the bye, one Saturday we decided to goto swamp beach.

It was dry season and so the swamp was only a foot or so of water, an easy drive through.

So much so that a Shell secretary took her wee Suziki jeep and collie dog.

We had done oour fishing and had the obligatory barbecued red snapper and yellowfin tuna which were out of this world, washed down with a few regabs which was the local beer.

Fish never tastes so good as fresh caught and then barbecued on a pristine white tourist free beach.

All of a sudden we could hear barking and crashing. The next thing we all turned around to see the wee dog come fucking haring out of the jungle and passed the car followed by a bloody great big tusked elephant who was charging.

The jeep was in its way, well fuck me but didn't the elephant just trample on it like it was a bloody cockroach.

The dog and owner were now in the sea shitting themselves. I was just standing gobsmacked at the sight of this elephant looking at us one foot atop a crushed jeep!

He got bored and gave a bellow and plodded off.

One day I shall never forget!

The images were from some work I was doing recently marking up AI videos. It reminded me of that day in Gabon.

Unfortunately we had no smartphones like today and there were no photos of the elephant in action!