Jim's Memories - 2

 

A few weeks ago, Lionel and Terry came round for a beer and inevitably, the conversation turned to caving, which spread to the CRO and daft events with them. I recalled a busy night of rescues led by Jim Eyre, during winter floods. Jim needed to call out a third team of rescuers and we duly arrived at Clapham station and were told that we would be rescuing some students from a flooded cave (I’m afraid I can’t remember which one!) I’ll never forget Jim  looking around at his third team, consisting of me, Dick the Potter, and Chester. “I don’t know,”   he said, “one eye, one arm and one leg!”

 

The student who had raised the alarm said, “You must be joking!”   “We’ll soon pull your lads out,” we assured him, and true to our word, we went over to the flooded cave and dragged the bedraggled rats up the very wet final pitch and had them out in no time. I warned Jim  that he’d never be able to print the tale of “One Arm, One Leg and One Eye” in any of his books because nobody would believe him!

 

                                                                                                                         Jim Newton

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