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survival

    Oakwood, Ga.  Harold Roebuck had plenty of time to die.

   Nobody knew where he was. Nobody knew when to expect him home. The only question was what would kill him -- the food poisoning, the dehydration, the shattered bones, the wild dogs or the exposure.

   But an indomitable will kept Roebuck alive through three days and two nights of agony last fall when, overcome by violent illness, he fell 15 feet from his deer hunter's stand, breaking his right shoulder and driving the ball of his right thigh bone completely through the hip socket.

   "I figured they'd find me," he said. "But I'd be dead when they did."

   The 56-year-old cabinetmaker's ordeal began Oct. 28, when he went hunting at a Banks County spot where he had a large wooden stand built in a tree overlooking a lake several years ago.

   He got to the stand, a quarter of a mile off the road, before dawn. "I really started not to get in the stand because I was feeling sick," he recalled in an interview at his home, where he is still recovering from the accident.

   "I'd felt sick just about all night," said Roebuck, a husky man with blond hair and beard. "But I got up in there and thought if I'd just stay there a while I'd get to feeling better. I had my pack hung up and my gun was in a rack in the stand.

   "I got deathly sic and vomited and more or less, I guess, just passed out and fell out of the stand. I don't know how long I lay on the ground. When I came to, I looked up in the tree and there was my pack and my gun still up there.

   "When I tried to get up ... I realized my hip was either broken or out of place. My shoulder was movable, but I could hear the bones crushing around in the back.

   "I only had on a long-sleeved insulated sweater and a short-sleeved shirt. In my pack I had food, I had a wool sweaters, all kid of juices, Cokes, milk. Had a thermal blanket. Everything I needed to survive was in my pack and I just couldn't get to it," Roebuck said.

   "About that time I realized I hadn't told anyone where I was going. I had told Christa [his wife] I was going hunting in Banks County but she didn't really know where the location was. I really hadn't told anybody when I'd be back.

   "I realized nobody was going to find me," Roebuck said, his eyes focused on a point somewhere beyond his living room wall.

'Prayed just about all night'

    He continued to vomit, all day Saturday and long into the night. Doctors later determined he had food poisoning. "I didn't see how a person could get that sick," he said.

   "There was some wild dogs came through" before dusk, he recalled.  "I heard 'em behind me. I looked and could only see one of them, a black dog. They started growling, but I hollered at 'em and heard 'em run off."

   Temperatures fell into the 40s that night, but on Sunday morning "the sun was out real pretty," Roebuck said. "I just sort of laid in the sun. I had prayed just about all night -- made peace with God, really. I heard some shots and hollered for help, but nobody ever heard me. I was getting badly dehydrated and I knew that my kidneys would shut down any time." He began remembering details of his Army survival training more than 20 years ago.

   "I finally twisted around up on that log and looked down and the lake was down below me about 100 yards away. I though Monday morning, if I make it through the night, I was going to get to the water. I kind of mapped me out a route."

   Sunday night was not so cold, and before dawn Roebuck began dragging himself alongside a fallen pine when he was eventually going to have to cross to get to the lake.

   "I was kind of like a tank with a broken track -- just going in a big circle. When I got down there I realized I had got off line about 5 feet. I knew I couldn't make another 5-foot mistake.

   "I was pulling myself along. Sometimes I'd go 3 inches, sometimes about a foot. When I got to the crossing point of the tree I knew I'd never make it to the lake without food. I pulled the bark down and ate a few grubs and a few earthworms, picked the beggar lice off my legs and ate them.

   "You'd be surprised how much strength I got from those grubs. I just sucked them down, didn't chew them or anything.

   "I felt something under my leg and a dad-blamed caterpillar had one of my red worms, toting it off. I didn't have enough strength to get it back," Roebuck said chuckling.

Search for water

    When Roebuck failed to show up at this cabinet shop Monday morning, his wife knew something was badly wrong. She began contacting friends and relatives who might have an idea where his Banks County stand was. The search began Monday afternoon, when Roebuck was perhaps halfway to the lake.

   "I was so dehydrated I'd stop and find a leaf with a drop of water on it and touch it to my lips," he said. "When I shut my eyes that's all I could see, was water. Pictures of water, glasses of water with ice in it and condensation running down the sides and a little umbrella stuck in it."

   Creeping along, Roebuck found an old Pepsi can "about a third full of old rainwater. once I got that can in my hands, my hands were shaking, I wanted water so bad. It was so good."

   He managed to store the can in a pocket of his camouflage pants and finally reached the edge of the lake. "I was kind of on my side and put that can over in the lake and filled it up with water. I was shaking. I drank 10 cans full before I could stop, that cold water was gonna take the heat right out of my body.

   "Long about dark I heard drops of rain hitting the lake and I knew I wouldn't make it through the night if it rained on me. I pulled what leaves I could under my head to make me a pillow.

   "About 8:30 I heard people hollering. I didn't believe it at first, then I heard voices again and I answered." Four men -- two of them relatives and two of them employees of his cabinet shop -- ran to the sound of his voice.

   Doug O'Neil, one of the Banks County paramedics summoned to the scene, said Roebuck was "in better shape than you would have expected." He was strapped to a board, placed in a carrying basket and carried out through a mile and half of rough terrain.

Planning to hunt again

   Four months after the ordeal, Roebuck is still in a wheelchair, but he expects to graduate to crutches in a week or two.

   The bookcases in the living room of his comfortable home near Lake Lanier are jammed with pictures of his wife, his two daughters and five grandchildren. "I thought about those kids a lot out there, how much I was going to miss them," he said.

   "One thing I'll always do after this is when I go hunting, I'll make sure people know where I'm at, when I'll be home. Oh yeah, I'll go again." -- Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jan. 28, 1996

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