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On Training, by Jorge Vigara (Old Student, sent in in 2009)

During yesterday's class the teacher spoke a while about training for critical situations so as to be able to solve them in case they happen. When I was in my third year at high school (3rd of BUP), I happened to be the class' second representative (subdelegado). We had had several fire and emergency drills every year and all of them had showed perfect results.

One day the class representative was not there (he was in a nearby park drinking beer, of course) and we were attending (though not paying much attention to) a lesson on Biology. I was sitting next to the window and from the corner of my left eye I saw something flying towards us. That "something" hit the school roof right above our classroom with a big clash. Next we heard the loud noise of a plane engine that sounded as close as the shrieks of my fellow students. This noise ended in an explosion. It was 1989 and ETA was acting most cruelly in those days, so our first thought was it was a bomb.

Before we could get up, the Biology teacher (the woman we expected instructions from) had fled like a rabbitt and my fellow students started to pick up their things and coats as if nothing were happening. I realized I was in charge and told everybody to leave their belongings and get out orderly but fast, which they did.

We met outside the school premises and then we saw black smoke coming from the sport court. Passers-by informed us that a helicopter had had some trouble flying over the zone, had almost crashed against a market and had finally attempted an emergency landing in our sports yard, obviously without success. Three soldiers died that day but the pilot probably saved many more lives — he could have crashed on a market or on a school at noon! The rotor — the small propeller on the back of the heli — was what had almost hit my classroom.

Wow, and adventure. And yet what I best remember of that day is the coward escape of our Biology teacher.