Four Boys & Two Dogs

On California's Monterey Peninsula, the meadows of golden poppies and blue lupine beckoned. It was Easter Sunday, and in the spirit of the day Jerry Edgmon, n, and his kid brother David, 9, left the tent where they lived with their migrant family, and started to pick some flowers for their mother. With their mongrel dog, Rocky, frisking beside them, the boys wandered across some dunes and crossed under a sagging, rusted barbed-wire fence.

A sign near the fence said:"Danger, unauthorized personnel keep out--entrance to heavy artillery impact area." But Jerry and David paid no attention to it.

Beyond the fence, David and Jerry came upon an odd object, picked it up, dropped it; there was a shattering explosion. The boys were hurled to the ground, their bodies riddled with fragments from the bazooka shell they had found. Rocky the dog was dead. In the hospital it was nip & tuck, but the boys pulled through eventually, though Jerry lost three toes, and both David's legs were amputated above the knee. That was in 1949.

Last week in a San Francisco court, the Government was ordered to pay the boys $185,000--the largest judgment ever found against the Government for negligence of an employee (i.e., the commanding general at Fort Ord).

During the trial, the Edgmons' lawyer produced a surprise witness--Richard Reams, by trade a maker of artificial limbs. In 1943, Reams, then 11, his brother Jimmie, 13, and their mongrel pup had also crawled through the fence at Fort Ord. Like the Edgmon boys, they, too, came across an unexploded shell. Unfortunately for the Reams brothers, nobody heard the explosion, and searchers didn't find them until the next day--also Easter Sunday. Jimmie Reams was dead, and Dick lost both legs, but for the Reams family there was no redress. The law under which the Edgmon boys collected their damages was not passed until 1946. The Army actually billed Dick Reams's mother for hospital expenses which she was unable to pay. Soldiers at the hospital to which Dick was taken finally collected enough money to satisfy the debt.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.