F- that….warm up the blowtorches!
While visiting friends at the West Point Military Academy in 1950, I was playing tag with their kids in the back yard and inadvertently ran into a shrub that contained a hornets nest.
Before I could get away to the safety of the house, those sumbitches stung me 12-15 times around the back of my neck.
I felt like I was on fire and became almost comatose.
I don’t even recall being treated at the Point’s dispensary.
That made the remainder of my family’s trip to our new station in Puerto Rico a miserable experience for me.
We went from the Academy to the post on Governor’s Island in New York Harbor, and from there on this Navy transport ship to San Juan. Of course I was seasick the entire voyage, while my neck was wrapped up over some paste the medics had slathered on me.
As soon as we disembarked from the ship a week later, I was in the Rodriquez Army Hospital at Fort Brooke for several days.
What a welcome to the tropical paradise.