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Robert A. Mills

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Blogs by Robert A. Mills

LONG WAY FROM BUCK HOUSE
6/26/2009 9:04:17 AM

More than two score years ago, back when jet travel was sophisticated, comfortable and invigorating, my wife and I were vacationing in London. After visiting Westminster Abbey, Tower Bridge, the Crown Jewels, Burlington Arcade, Windsor Castle and Hampton Court, I asked, “Whatcha wanna do now?”

“How about the ‘changing of the guard’ at Buckingham Palace?” she suggested.

The next day our concierge at the Churchill, an elegant chap who claimed he often “stood in” for David Niven, told us the best midday time to see “the changing” was 11:30 AM. “Go up the Mall from Admiralty Arch, just left of Victoria Monument on the roundabout, and position yourselves on the port side of the Main Gate. Superlative view from there!”

Being dutiful Americans, we arrived early and found a perfect venue, as instructed, outside the Main Gate, long before the usual throng of passionate natives and dowdy tourists arrived. However, by 11:15 the street was jammed and literally thousands (so it seemed) of spectators were collected around and behind us all the way along the fence and up everywhere possible on the alabaster granite of Victoria Monument.

We were suddenly aware of five young fellows and their entourage sporting varying Ghia-type Afros, and one of them, the smallest, asked if he could squeeze in front of me to better peer between the iron bars of the fence. An older boy inquired politely, “Could my brother get up close? He never seen nothin’ like this before.”

Being easily two feet taller than the young lad, I maneuvered him into a position between the fence and me, beside my wife, and he pressed his small body against the bars, almost slipping through them.

The event began was scheduled and the elite soldiers of the British Army, well burdened beneath Bearskin Caps, armed with rifles and sabers, and stomping loudly in hard leather brogues, began a performance worthy of our own changing of the guard at Arlington’s Tomb of the Unknowns.

But unfortunately I was soon distracted, and today I have little memory of the pageant unfolding before us. I became more concerned by the pushing, jostling, and unruly callousness of the madding crowd, as they pressed fiercely from behind us and began to crush us against the huge iron fence.

The little boy in front of me turned and looked up, his eyes bulging marshmallows in an angelic chocolate face, and without saying a word conveyed a fear of imminent demise that propelled me into action.

I spread my legs and braced my arms by grasping the bars firmly in both fists and barricaded the trembling lad and my wife (she was more surprised than frightened) from the thrusting onslaught of the demented throng. For several minutes, I held this position, a human bastion thwarting the inevitable pressure that might have snuffed out a young life and suffocated my diminutive wife.

Finally, it was over and the rude gang relaxed, moved back, and began to disperse. The youngster came away from the fence, looked up, smiled, and said, “Man, that was cool! Thanks, mister!” One of the older fellows said, “Yeah, thanks, man, he never coulda seen over your heads.”

Later, as we walked through St. James Park, my wife asked, “You know whose life you may have just saved?”

“Yes,” I nodded. “Yours. And some kid’s.”

“You really have no idea who that kid was, do you?”

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