Brutal Mercy (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

On the afternoon of March 7th, 1946, a 10-year-old boy named Sipo led a team of eight oxen across an open grassy field in the Highveld region of South Africa.

The wind was really starting to pick up, and the clouds were gathering, so Sipo knew a storm was on the way, and so what he was doing was hurrying to finish plowing this field before it hit.

He was walking ahead of his oxen, steering them with a rope that was tied to a lead pair, and then behind the lead pair came three more pairs of oxen, and then beyond that was a chain going back to this really heavy plow.

So basically all the oxen were working in tandem, pulling this heavy plow.

And so as Sipo is leading his oxen team and plowing this field, he's looking around.

He's, he's watching for signs the storm's gonna hit, you know.

And then at some point he actually hears off in the distance some thunder rumbling, and then he noticed raindrops hitting the ground.

So he tugged at the rope, you know, trying to get them to speed up, but the oxen were just slow.

They just kept walking at their normal slow pace.

Now, at first, Sipo's thinking, "Okay, we can get through this.

We'll, we'll plow the field.

It'll be slow and steady, but it looks like the storm's gonna hold." But really quickly, once the rain began, it just picked up really fast.

Like, the drops began falling faster and faster.

The thunder got more and more pronounced, and so Sipo began to wonder if maybe he ought to just abandon this and just go home and, you know, come back for this later.

However, before Sipo could do anything, there was this blinding flash, and then something hit him and literally threw him into the air, and then he slammed down onto the dirt really hard, and for a few seconds everything just went black.

And then slowly things began to come back into focus, and Sipo found that he was lying flat on his back in the wet dirt.

And as he lay there gasping, it dawned on him he'd just been struck by lightning.

Sipo, who was now starting to panic, tried to sit up to, to check himself for injuries, but his arms and legs wouldn't move.

It was like he was paralyzed.

And then to his horror, he heard the sound of his oxen's hooves getting closer to him, and Sipo realized that where he'd ultimately fallen after being struck was right in their path, and if he didn't move, they were going to trample him.

Sipo's, like, trying and trying to will h- but nothing happened.

Then the sound of those oxen's hooves are getting closer and closer, so finally he just shut his eyes and accepted his fate and waited to be crushed by his own oxen.

But then when the oxen literally came right up to him, despite walking effectively right over him, he didn't feel anything.

And so Sipo, whose eyes were closed, you know, he's bracing for impact here.

He's hearing the, the oxen pass over him.