Bøger af Eddie Nickels

The American Civil War had been raging for just a few months when Federal Colonel James A. Garfield and Confederate Brigadier General Humphrey Marshall were assigned by their respective War Departments to proceed to Southeastern Kentucky to take command of Union and Confederate troops operating in that hotly contested area. Their assignments were remarkably similar in that each had orders to promote the peace and tranquility of the inhabitants, to defend the rivers, roads, and mountain gaps which were subject to be used as invasion routes by enemy forces, and to enlist new recruits to fill their ranks. Both adversaries soon realized that it took a Herculean effort to simply provide subsistence for their commands due to the treacherous roads, the frequent flooding of the rivers and streams, and lack of availability of needed supplies and foodstuffs for their troops. When the bitterly cold winter winds blew across the peak of the 2,387 foot high Pine Mountain, General Marshall's Confederate troops engaged there in guarding Pound Gap suffered tremendously because of their lack of adequate clothing, especially winter coats. The epic struggle for control of this sparsely populated and deeply divided mountainous region and the extraordinarily contentious nature of the battle for territorial supremacy makes for fascinating reading.

In March,1966, eighteen year old Eddie Nickels was struggling to support himself and his young wife in a depressed area of Appalachia when he received his draft notice from Uncle Sam.Reporting to the Induction Center, he was surprised to find himself drafted into the Marine Corps. He was sent to the extraordinarily tough Parris Island Boot Camp where he came face to face with the intense discipline and incredibly difficult physical and mental requirements of the Marine Corps training regimen. The training was so overwhelming at times that he doubted his ability to withstand the shock of transforming from a green recruit to a combat ready Marine. His frank portrayal of his personal experiences of Marine Corps training during the Vietnam War is an outstanding narrative of the difficulties of earning the title of United States Marine.

Growing up in the coal camps and poor neighborhoods of Eastern Kentucky in the 1940's, 50's, and 60's required an extraordinarily tough disposition and a strong will to survive despite the odds. This volume details the exciting and sometimes difficult times in which a young man struggles to overcome the worrisome prediction of an early death while living in extremely poor economic conditions. As if that wasn't enough to worry himself and his parents, he develops a sudden onset of obsessive compulsive disorder at the age of 12 years, drops out of school at 16, gets married at 17, is drafted into the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War at 18, becomes a father at 20, and narrowly escapes two coal mine explosions after coming home from the military. In the telling of his very interesting and unusual story he manages to convey the complexity, the humor, the seriousness, and the good and bad times of his varied experiences.

On March 9 1976, a terrific explosion ripped through the Scotia Coal Mine in Oven Fork, Kentucky, killing 15 men. Two days later 13 men were sent inside the mine to investigate the cause of the disaster, only to experience another devastating explosion which killed 11 of those 13 men. The mine was then sealed with the 11 bodies still inside the mine until their recovery over eight months later. This is the full story of those deadly blasts that nearly destroyed the Scotia Mine.

Big Black Mountain is a ridge of the Cumberland Mountains and is the highest mountain peak in Kentucky, towering 4,145 feet in elevation. Scotia Coal Company operated four coal mine openings inside and beneath Black Mountain, one of which experienced two devastating methane gas explosions on March 9 and 11, 1976, killing 26 miners. The author, a retired Scotia coal miner, describes his experiences of helping to recover the bodies of eleven of the miners who were killed in the second explosion. The eleven miners were sealed inside the mine for over eight months before they were successfully recovered. He also recounts his participation in helping to clean up and ventilate the shattered Scotia #1 mine where the two explosions had ripped through the mine.