What's The Closest You Have Come to Buying The Farm?

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The only new 2nd Lt. I've read about who knew what to do was a story from V.N. He had been heloed to an out post in the boonies because the bunker had been hit and the officers wounded. Shortly after arriving, a full attack occurred. He was now the only officer and called the three sergeants together and told them to run the show and he would back them whatever they did. The Lt. participated by running ammo and grenades down the trenches to resupply. When the post survived, the brass wanted to award medals to the Lt. He refused unless the sergeants were awarded medals, since they were responsible for their survival.
 
Came close at a zeroing in day at the rifle range. SLR's were being used and zeroed at 100 metres. Our turn came in the butts. The usual mound
of gravel with the targets on pipe frames which we pushed up a slide thing.

Bang bang went on three times per target and then the shooters and armourer would come up to see the triangulation.
During the second firing there was a loud metallic sound and the next bloke along said some bad words as a bullet hit
the pipe framing and came straight down. It hit his belt buckle on the way through and wasn't far off shortening his future
parenting prospects.

The rest of us started laughing until someone told me to look behind. The back of the butts were lined with hardwood sleepers
and the whole thing was years old. Some of the front areas were washed away so the gravel wasn't as thick as it should be.
When I turned I stopped laughing because there was a 7.62mm round just sticking through a gap in the sleepers in line with
the back of my neck. If we had been using the M60's it could have been one of those days.....
 
Had a similar experience when running the butts detail one day. The rear walls of the butts "shelter" were brick and concrete, with the targets on rising metal rails in front, and a sand bank behind the targets.
I was standing listening to the "crack" of the 7.62mm rounds just over my head, watching the strikes on the Figure 11 targets, when I felt a thump under my left knee, on the inner side of the leg.
When I looked down, there was a deformed 7.62mm round, spinning round and round on the concrete floor. It had hit one of the metal target frames, ricocheted back onto the rear wall, and then ricocheted on to my knee ( which still throbs to this day).
Still got that round at home somewhere.
 
In Stephen Ambrose's book "Citizen Soldiers" he describes a Lt's first combat encounter.

US troops were about to enter a village and the commander, a Major, told a new Lt to go check out the house on the edge of town. He expected the Lt to kick in the front door, toss in a grenade, and go in shooting. Instead, the Lt walked up on the porch and knocked on the door. A German Sgt came out, yawning and pulling on his suspenders. The two men had a short conversation. Then the Sgt started yelling. A two man German machine gun team on the other side of the road from the house stood up from their hidden position. The German Sgt with the American Lt behind walked into the village yelling, and German troops began coming out of the buildings, still holding their weapons. The US and German troops mixed together, looking at each other curiously. This enraged the German Sgt. He had his troops line up, dress right dress, and lay down their weapons. Then he formally surrendered his unit.

If the Lt had done it the way his Major wished there would have been a big firefight with many casualties. I guess the incident was the Lt's "day he almost bought the farm." Still, I wonder what the conversation on the porch said. Possibilities:

"Just thought you'd like to know were are invading."

"I wonder if you could help me. I need a space to park 100 Sherman tanks."

"Thought you might like to get out before the B-17's get here."
 
As a student pilot I flew through a dust devil (little cyclonic twisters found in the desert, I learned how to fly at the Edwards AFB Aeroclub). It flipped me over twice and filled the airplane up with dirt. When I landed I had "racoon eyes" as I was wearing sunglasses and had dirt all over me! I'm lucky I didn't kill myself!!
 
We used to chase the dust devils around on our dirt bikes out around the backside of Big Bear (San Bernardino mountains), typically, they weren't too big.

Well, one day I got into one that was a bit bigger than I realized. It snatched me and my KDX175 up off the ground and flung me and the dirt bike about 30-40 feet (me in one direction, the bike in the other).
Knocked the wind out of me, bruised my ego (friends were watching) and broke some of the plastic goodies on the Kawasaki.
 
On the Ides of March, 1962 I was riding shotgun in an M1938A1 jeep, going from Babenhausen to Ashaffenburg. In a shady place through the woods we hit black ice and spun around, hitting the edge of the road sideways, The jeep flipped over on top of us both. The driver was hurt far more seriously than I. Had it not been for a big radio and the spare tire sticking up like a roll bar we both would not have survived. A couple of GIs and a half dozen Germans stopped and lifted the jeep off of us. Not fun!
 

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My brother was driving a VW Bug in Columbia SC in 1976, on his way to work. A tornado hit and spun him around 180 degrees. He looked out at a scene of absolute horror. There were bodies all over the street. Then he noticed that they were all elegantly dressed. The tornado had hit a nearby formal dress shop and scattered the mannequins all over the road.

By the way, if you pee on a mine is it anything like pissing on a spark plug?
 
Let me pay tribute to one of the German civilians who was driving by and stopped to help us. The driver, Joe Pinto, was seriously hurt- he wound up lying on his back with the jeep cowl lying on his face. When the Jeep was lifted off of us, he was bleeding back into his throat. A man told us to turn him up on his side so only one lung would fill with blood, not both lungs. We did that and Joe survived after being driven back to our Kaserne where doctors performed an emergency tracheotomy and then he was air-lifted by helicopter to the 97th General Hospital in Frankfurt. I've often wondered if that German learned what he told us back in the war. His help was instrumental in saving the life of Joe Pinto. I wish I knew his name.
 
I've had a couple of brushes - I was on the Southbound 14th Street Bridge when Air Florida Flight 93 crashed into the Northbound span and crashed into the icey Potomac below our feet. We heard the approaching plane and crash, but didn't know what had happened until we got home.

But the closest was a total heart failure while driving through an intersection ten years ago. I must have known something was wrong - they found me unconcious with my heart stopped and the car in park. While the EMTs brought me back physically, I believe I was sent back for a purpose I haven't yet recognized. I can only hope that next time I'll have lived up to that purpose.

Cheers,



Dana
 
My friend Andy Wisneiwski was a Polish Army POW for most of WWII and had many opportunities to buy the farm. But the one he recalls most vividly was when USAAF P-38's strafed their POW camp. He escaped getting hit by running from side to side of a big concrete three sided channel that they used to collect garbage. 30 years later if he saw a picture of a P-38 he would automatically say, "SOB."

After his second escape from the POW camp he linked up with US Army forces and accompanied them into Germany. The Jeep he was in ran over a land mine, killing the driver and severely injuring him - but he did not recall that one, just the day before it occurred and then waking up in a US Army hospital in France 3 weeks later.

I used to say things like, 'Imagine if we had F-15's in WWII." He would reply, "I can imagine it. You would have hit me!"

Aside from that, on the date of running over that land mine, at 10 year intervals, he would be involved in a major traffic accident that was in no way his fault, such as an 18 wheeler suddenly changing lanes and running over the front of his car. That is Twilight Zone stuff!
 
"Hello. I'm from the US Army. We have a lot of 2LTs, so there's no point in shooting me. It'll just make my commander mad, so you won't be able to enjoy the well-fed life of a PoW of the Americans."
 
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