... Once when we went into headquarters, L/Cpl Roberts with headquarters platoon, a part of a Retriever Crew, had been caught sleeping on guard. He got sent out into the field with us as his punishment. I always wondered, if that was punishment what did they call what we were doing? We were going to support some grunts at a new location. Some how we got lost and while looking for a way out, the blade Tank got stuck in a creek bed. When we went to hook up our tank to the Blade Tank, Roberts got in between the tanks. I was standing on the left front fender of our tank as we moved in to hook up. Nate Woods our gunner, had jumped into the drivers position. I should have been driving. Woods and I both yelled at Roberts that the brakes on C34 were bad. He did not move, and at that moment the linkage from the brake petal to the transmission snapped, and Roberts ran to get away, but tripped and fell on the back of the other tank. We crushed him between the Tanks. Woods put it in reverse and backed off the other tank. Roberts was a mess. I jumped down and rushed to his aid as he screamed. Woods backed the tank onto level ground and came to help. The infantry with us set up a small perimeter and we administered Morphine. Roberts talked to us about his wife and kids giving Woods their address and asking him to write her and tell her how much he loved them. He then looked at his right hand which was 95% severed, it was the hand he raised to protect himself as we ran over him. He began to cry. His entire torso was crushed between the hull of our Tank and the engine deck of the blade tank. His chest was crushed, his guts were ripped out and exposed, his sex organs were gone, and the muscle and flesh that made up his legs had been torn away. He went into shock and that was the last we heard from him. I held a poncho to protect him from the sun and shooed away the flies. Medivac choppers showed up and kept circling nearby not able to see us. We fired flares and had radio contact but they kept missing us. Forty-five minutes to an hour passed before we finally loaded him and another marine (Walker who was also run over, not as severely) on the chopper. We were stunned by the event. The CO showed up the next day and shed a few tears of his own, since he was the one that had ordered Roberts out in the field. Roberts was married and had a daughter or two.