Staring blankly at the pile of rubble that once housed the Sari Club, Peter Chworowsky shook his head and hugged his fellow rugby players.
Teammate Kelvin Bezuidenhout sobbed as a group of Balinese threw rose petals on the site of Saturday's bomb blast. Behind the charred remains of a nearby pub, someone sang Amazing Grace.
This memorial Tuesday marked the end of a chapter for the Taipei Baboons, a tight-knit expatriate rugby club based in Taiwan. It was a chance to say goodbye to the four teammates and a female fan they lost, and reflect on how the terrorist attack changed their lives.
"I feel mostly sadness for the guys that didn't get out," said Chworowsky, a 43-year-old American businessman from Lakeville, Wisconsin who was left partially deaf from the blast. "But I'm also sad for the terrorists. I'm trying to figure out why they would do that, how their minds would get so screwed up that they would bomb a nightclub."
More than 180 people were killed and 300 wounded in the car-bomb attack on the popular nightclub. Indonesian officials suspect the al-Qaeda terrorist network carried out the bombing.
Rugby teams -- in town for a weekend tournament -- appear to be among the hardest hit. Chwor-owsky said many players spent the weekend at the Sari Club, and at least three teams he has talked to lost a combined total of up to 15 players.
Among them was the Hong Kong Football Club, which confirmed Tuesday that it lost two players and that five other players and two female fans remain missing.
Twenty members of the Taipei team arrived in Bali Thursday and Friday and hung out at the Sari Club and nearby Paddy's.
They played three games Saturday, had dinner and headed for the Sari Club around 10pm. Packed with mostly young Australian and European tourists, it seemed like a typical night out -- until the crowd heard a loud bang around 11:30pm.
Most turned around to see an orange glow coming from Paddy's, where a first bomb exploded. Seconds later, a second, more powerful explosion tore into the Sari Club. It knocked many patrons unconscious, caused the roof to collapse and sparked a fire that consumed the bar within minutes.
The stunned players found themselves covered in concrete or pieces of the roof. They smelled smoke and heard the crackling of the fast-moving fire.
"It was pitch black and you could see the glow of the fire illuminating the room," said Scott Murphy, a 29-year-old Australian from Brisbane whose brother, Max, also survived. "I just started grabbing people and pulling them to their feet."
Nearby, Chworowsky found himself on his back, being trampled on. He got up and saw the main entrance blocked by thick smoke and flames. Bodies were everywhere and screams filled the air.
"I remember thinking `this is what war is like,'" he said.
Chworowsky scrambled out through a hole in a wall. He soon realized that at least five of the 12 players at the club had not come out.
"When I was standing on the street, I was thinking anyone who did not get out was probably gone," he said.
The teammates later searched for the missing, but found only one injured player at a hospital.
The Taipei team's lost members -- James Hardman, 28, of Sydney; Daniel Braden, 28, of Brighton, England; Godfrey Fitz, 39, and Craig Harty, 35, both of South Africa; and Eve Kuo, 24, of Taiwan -- will leave a gaping hole in the club that players described as their extended family.
Fitz was the smooth-talking teacher, who had been a soccer star in South Africa. Braden was the wacky dresser with the dry sense of humor. Hardman was the surfer who couldn't stop talking about Australia. And Harty was a family man who had just recovered from the death of his brother and illness of his mother.
"You couldn't have asked for better mates than these guys," Boyden said.
The surviving club members said they have all decided one thing -- that the club will eventually take to the field again.
"This is what we loved to do with these guys," Max Murphy said. "That's what they would have wanted."
The team plans to hold a private memorial service on Yangmingshan this Sunday.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS