Wow…really? You didn’t think to hit up a soup kitchen or even to steal a loaf of bread or something?
May 1992. Number of males from 16 to 66 are gathered close to my house. It was reported earlier in the day over the local radio that Serbian Special Forces will be rounding up non-Serbian males for informal talks in one of the detention camps that will later become infamous and frequently mentioned on CNN. My older brother was already taken away - he was targeted as not only a member of Bosniaks party but also being an medical doctor. My 2nd brother lived in his house couple of blocks away and I had no idea where he was. I was outside there with my dad. He was scared, never saw him as scared. I also never saw a tank milling down our street but those were the strange days. Large army truck was right behind with couple of our neighbors already sitting in the back. Ugly looking and smelly soldier started counting us. Suddenly, one of our neighbors came out the side street and started loudly to cheer soldiers. He said something like “welcome boys, I was waiting for you all this time, remember me, I’m yours!” They looked at him suspiciously and then recognized him as a non-Serb who was married to a Serbian woman. Smelly soldier stepped in front of him and started cursing him and everyone else. Then he pushed him toward the truck and ordered him to climb up. The neighbor was instantly shocked, he probably did not expect this. His eyes were running wild with fear. He decided to run. Soldiers reacted as they were expecting this to happen and their AK 47’s blasted in unison. Before my neighbor even fell on the ground his younger brother, who was standing with us all this time, tried to run in the other direction but again, just like his brother, he underestimated the readiness of these men to shoot and kill. It was all over in one minute. Next thing I remember was the big bump on the road and me almost falling out of the truck.
I hit an elk on the highway at 65 mph and the vehicle was deflected diagonally across the highway narrowly missing oncoming traffic. The vehicle rolled three times and then tumbled down into a ravine where it stopped, laying on its roof, which was now squashed in about two feet. I was hanging upside down by my seat belt with the roof squashing my head and upper body. Two guys who witnessed the crash came running down the ravine and you could hear the tremor in their voices as the prepared to look at a dead guy. But I was fine. Wear those seat belts, folks.
I worked on the oil patch for five years. You are always close to death working in that field, but I remember a couple instances in particular. Once, a perforating gun fell out of the derrick and went right through the rig floor about two feet beside me. Imagine a 15-foot-long, 500-pound law dart falling from 40 feet. Another time, the entire well bore was pressurized to a couple thousand psi with water and then the driller accidentally open the blind rams. A pillar of water 100 feet high instantly shot past the top of the rig. We were right beside it and I can only imagine the consequences if we had had our arms or heads in the way.
When I was 8 years old, in Germany, I used to ride my bike to visit my American soldier Dad who was stationed at Gerszewski Barracks in Karlsruhe/Knielingen where we lived.
You prior service guys might find its history interesting, so here’s a link: Buy Rare Premium Betta Fish for Sale from Thailand
One afternoon, as I was riding down that very steep hill I rode up in the morning, the chain on my bicycle broke… No brakes.
(Does anyone have that satirical song about, “He was going down the hill at 90 miles an hour when the chain on his bicycle broke…”? I think it was patterned after The Wreck Of The Old '97)
I was heading toward a very dangerous intersection at the bottom, and I knew that if I kept riding, I’d be a dead little boy.
So knowing nothing about the laws of friction, I decided to steer my bike’s tires against the … what…? I can’t think of the word, but it was a cement ridge about 3 inches high which was at the edge of the road, not a sidewalk - no one could have walked on the other side of it- no shoulder to speak of -… and try to slow myself down enough to stop .
I did stop and tumbled head over heels across the handlebars into a rosebush with thorns.
I walked the bike home and let my Mama treat the cuts.
(Apparently I had a lot of head injuries in my early days…:))
And that’s my closest brush with death.
Quasi
PS: Hoping our New Zealand friends are okay!!!
Extraordinary story. Any chance you’ll finish this?
During a ride at a carnival, about a month ago. It’s one of those benches you sit on that go in circles against a wall like a clock dial, at great speed. It was too late when I realized I was not big enough to be held within it by the safety bars. I was screaming and crying the whole time while clutching to the bars with all my strength, nearly falling out at a great speed and height. Thankfully all I got was just major bruises, scratches and a nearly crushed finger. I felt like killing the ride operators.
Previous similar threads:
When I was ten, my family was on holiday at the Adriatic coast of Italy. One day, when I was playing in the shallow water, I spotted some kids of my age playing with a rubber boat which they had turned upside down. I don’t remember why, but I decided to tease them a bit and secretly dove beneath the boat to surface in the small air-filled space underneath the turned boat, where I was able to breath. Just in this moment, the boys began to climb the boat so that I was threatened to be tucked between the boat and the ground in the shallow water. I was sure they hadn’t noticed me, so with the last breath of air I let out a horrible scream to save me from drowning. They heard it, jumped off the boat, and I could resurface.
This was the first and last time in my life I felt real mortal fear, and I will never forget this feeling.
High school golf team “practice” (none of us was Tiger Woods).
I’m standing behind my buddy as he tees off, and shanks his drive into a rock. The ball bounces back and hits me just on the top of my sternum. Quarter of an inch higher and I’m convinced it would have crushed my windpipe.
Joe
Back when I was a newspaper reporter, part of my beat was to cover city fires if they looked like they were about to amount to anything newsworthy. On one occasion, a school burning itself down in northern Hamilton County, Indiana, certainly qualified. Since I knew every cop and fireman in the county back then, I hoofed it to the firehouse in time to hitch a ride with the second-shift gang, which had been called in early. IIRC, the fire ended up something like a 3 or 4-alarm call before all was said and done.
For those who’ve never been to one, fire scenes are controlled but utter chaos in the making. There’s lots of people in funny-looking clothing running around, yelling, shouting, firehoses every which way, flashing lights all over the place, firetruck engines roaring, noisy equipment, cops, looky-loos. You add in excessive heat or cold conditions, and it’s a wonder anybody knows what they’re supposed to be doing, but they do, god bless training.
Oh - did I mention water everywhere. Lots and lots of water.
So, yours truly, intrepid girl reporter, was doing her thing, staying out of the way of the firemen, taking notes, taking pictures, when all of a sudden I heard a whole lot of screaming. Next thing I knew I was snatched up off my feet in the arm of a firefighter, dangling a good foot off the ground.
The water-covered ground.
For whatever reason, the power to the school hadn’t been properly shut off - I don’t recall now the why and wherefor behind it now. A main power line into the building burned loose and landed in the same water I was standing in.
As it turned out, no one was injured, thankfully, but had that fireman not seen it coming, I’d not be posting the tale today. As any electrician will tell you, it’s not the volts that’ll do you in - it’s the amps. In my career I saw two instances of people electrocuted to death and it never got any prettier.
The fireman had enough presence of mind to realize I wasn’t wearing rubber boots like he was, and fortunately for me I’d been standing close enough to the running board of one of the firetrucks. He had the forethought - and strength - to one-arm me off the ground in a dead lift. I had bruises in the shape of his right hand on my stomach for days afterward.
I didn’t mind at all. God bless adrenaline. 
Only three for me.
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I was born blue and not breathing.
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My brother shot a rifle at me years ago. I felt the bullet pass next to my left ear.
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I once tried to take a rifle round apart when I was, I guess, about 14 years old. I dug out a chunk of the bullet with a safety pin where the bullet touches the shell. After that I was digging around inside, trying to remove the bullet from the shell when the safety pin scraped against the primer, causing it to discharge. I was staring at the top of the bullet when it discharged so the only thing I can think is that the part I dug out caused the bullet to fire off to the side, missing me. I came out of it with a deep cut in my thumb where the shell blew open and nothing more. I found and kept the bullet and the shell (still has my blood on it) to remind me not to do stupid things anymore. So far, so good.
Twice. Both when I was 10 or 11 years old.
First time: My job when getting out of school was to clean the house, start dinner and watch my younger sister who was around 5 or 6. I was supposed to make sure she didn’t go outside to play until her homework was done. Let’s just say my sister didn’t like me. At all. (STILL doesn’t :D) Anyway, she wanted to go outside and I told her no… Let’s just say my sister doesn’t like being told no. At all. (STILL doesn’t :D)
She, in her temper, went into the kitchen, got herself the big butcher knife and starting threatening me! She was really getting into her tantrum when she reared back with it as I ran into the bathroom at the same time. That knife drove itself into the door jamb right at my eye level! I locked myself in and didn’t come out until my mom came home.
The second time I went with some family friends in their motorhome to a horse show in Ohio. I was laying in the back bunk on one side, my friend was laying on the other bunk directly across from me. We were just talking and I was getting very sleepy. I remember stopping for gas, and falling asleep. My next earthly memory was waking up on the side of the road, my friend’s sister on top of me, slapping my face and yelling my name.
It seems there was a leak in the exhaust pipe that was directly under the bunk I was laying on.
The kicker? My mom was totally pissed at me after both incidents! :smack:
First two stories told before:
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My mother was sterile. Serious. Promise. As certified by the best ObGyn in several provinces. Yup. So when she went to him having missed three periods, he claimed it was a tumor and needed to be scrapped; the tools for it needed to be sterilized, though, so she’d have to come back the next day. The nurse mentioned that, what with being a married woman, protocol called for a pregnancy test first of all, shouldn’t they run one? No no, it was impossible; she could not be pregnant, he was sure of that. It’s Dr J’s niece, sir. Dr J’s niece? Well, by marriage, she’s married to one of his nephews. Oh… well, ok, let’s run that test.
My parents went straight from the doctor’s office to his parent’s house, where Uncle J was among the relatives awaiting the news. When he heard them, he assaulted the phone, called the ObGyn and, well, according to Abuelita (who was very much a lady) “he called him a lot of words a lady would never know; the nicest thing he said was ‘you murderous butcher’”.
We joke that, since this particular tumor has legs, it’s a cancer
(the name cancer comes from being “crab-shaped”: i.e., a lump with legs) -
Of course, that same doctor refused to believe the date of conception calculated by my mother: Uncle J had sent her to “rest back at Mom’s” for three months, during which my parents only saw each other once - and she was throwing up before they met again and yes, I’m definitely Dad’s based on family resemblance (I don’t look like him, but I do look like his mother). “Women can never count!”, he’d say. So, when contractions started on the date Mom had calculated (hey, I’ve always been punctual) and since the waters hadn’t broken, he stuffed us full of drugs until the contractions stopped. A couple of weeks later (and I suspect there may have been uncular intervention, or perhaps the nurse merely invoked Uncle J’s name again) the doctor changed his calculations… got Mom admitted… pumped her full of stimulants… but apparently my reaction was “so? first it’s don’t come out, now it’s come out, what will it be? make up your mind and have your people call my people!”() They finally gave up after more than a week, sent her back, and she was on the phone with one of my uncles when her waters broke (no contractions though).
I was born 3 weeks later than I should have, the waters were “black” (rotting), at one point I needed an adrenaline injection through the uterine wall (Mom says if that ain’t a horse needle she doesn’t know what would deserve the name), the umbilical cord was wrapped around my neck and I was white and light-eyed (anoxia). Oh, and at some point the most expensive ObGyn in several provinces (I mean, “best” my ass) used forceps and used them wrong, leading to a still-noticeable depression in my skull.
The midwife later told my mother “given the odds she’s already beaten, I’m convinced God has some sort of plan for your daughter. There’s something she’s been born for.”
() This may also be related to being Dad’s daughter: we’re among the people in his side of the family who have unusual reactions to stimulants. For example, he took “study aids” (read: amphetamines) once and promptly fell asleep - his friend gave up trying to wake him up and went back to cramming after about half an hour. -
I had a summer job in a town some 10 miles from mine; my car was purchased from a different great-uncle’s estate: it was over 20 years old and had spent the last 5 or 6 parked on the same spot on the street, so it spent more time at the mechanic than under my guiding hand. The entrance to the factory was a sharp curve over big, sometimes sharp pebbles and between two concrete pillars. One day as I took it, a tyre exploded - how much was speedy calculation and how much was instinct, I don’t know, but I can tell you it was all terror: there was no way in Hell I’d be able to stop before the car hit the pillar, so instead of trying to brake, I stepped on the clutch (disconnects the motor from the wheels) and steered as hard as I could.
When the car finished its CRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRCHCHCHCH! against the pillar, I looked down over my left side. Nothing broken? Arm’s not broken? Leg’s not broken? Not broken?
I’d been able to steer enough that the whole thing ended in a huge scare, the Maintenance manager telling me that I’d actually done the best possible thing and the other guys to shut the hell up with the jokes, and a bill bigger than my monthly pay… but no, nothing broken.
Since you post as a pirate, scurvy seems like a cool way to go.
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Misdiagnosed Appendicitis at around 9 years old - apprently I had a high threshold for pain. On the Monday, I was brought to a clinic, the Doc attempted the abdominal push test - it hurt, but I didn’ flinch enough, I guess. Got some Pepto and was sent hme. That Friday… I remember being on the floor of the neighbour’s Nova, writhing in pain on the way to the city hospital (we were on large, relatively remote CF Base). The doc there did the same test, this time I screamed sufficiently, asked how long I had been in this pain, and was told around a week. I was in surgery within 5 minutes. Apparently the appendix pieces were all over the inside of my abdomen.
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On a parade square, we were new to the C7 (similar to M16). Had been using FNC1 (the Canadian version FAL rifle). We were doing a wheel, I was on the outside, in clickers. Did a halt into a present arms right at the end of the wheel and my feet shot out from under me. The rifle flew up and came down with the barrel end right into my larynx. The guy giving orders turned white. He had forgotten the fix bayonet before the wheel. The physics may have made it a little different, but that rifle end coudl’ve been a brand new, razor sharp bayonet embedded in my throat. Since the FNC1s we had been using were 20-30 years old, and were used for parade purposes only, the basyonets were old and purposefully rounded. The new C7’s bayonet had sharpeners in the scabbards.
Probably the closest was when we were on our way to a very fancy restaurant (l’Auberge Chex Francois, for DC-area folks) for our 10th wedding anniversary.
Roads damp from rain earlier in the evening. Winding, hilly, two-lane country road. Left-hand curve on an uphill bit. Note that on such a bit, the traffic coming the other direction is going into a right-hand, downhill curve.
Combine that with slightly slick roads, and the car coming the other direction stands a better-than-average chance of crossing the center line.
There’s a fair chance we kept them from plummeting off the edge of the road into the woods well below.
All of us were buckled in. The passenger in the other car told us he had NOT been… until a couple minutes earlier when something suggested “hey, bad stretch, better buckle up”.
All of us walked away. And I defy anyone to say that any drugs give a better high than the one you get when you look at the crumpled remains of two cars and realize you’re ALIVE.
Well, everything afterwards was further from death. Not terribly far but still.
Geez, I’ve got nothin’ on you guys. I’ve overturned a car and fought back against a would-be rapist who had a small knife, but in neither instance did I feel close to death. (And although both sound scary, the chance of death was fairly small, although the chance of injury was high.)
The only time I remember feeling like I could die was once when I was flying. I don’t remember how old I was, but I think I was probably between the ages of 8 and 11. We flew to and from our grandparents house in Florida for Easter every year, so I was used to flying and enjoyed it, but this was the first time I’d experienced really, really bad turbulence. It was bad enough that I considered the possibility that the plane might go down, and my life flashed before my eyes, just like they say it does. (It was the only time that’s happened to me, and since I was young, it was a short show.) Eventually, the plane leveled out and everything was fine. I’ve never been scared of turbulence since.
Mine was unusual because it was an extended period of time.
We got two brand new armored humvees and bargained with the local Signal UNit to fix our vehicle radios because the insurgents could and did listen for our broadcasts on those little hand held radios. This was a month into the tour. Thirty days. We lost our first guy seven days after our boots hit Baghdad.
One day in April, the US issued a warrant for Muqtada al-Sadr, the son of the Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, the moderate economist who was assassinated by Saddam Hussein. Muqtada al-Sadr kills, murders, and orders the rape of women so as to have a pool of female suicide bombers. The next day after the US issued the warrant was…interesting. Right away, some Delta guys in town in civvies got ambushed. They limped back home in a shot up vehicle and some of them never returned to service. That night, the town blew up.
The day after that the town was eerily deserted but we hadn’t been there long enough to know what that meant. No cops on the street, no people. Coalition forces were guarding the bridge across the river instead of the local PD. We crossed over because we had a half-planned meeting that never happened. Instead, one of the friendly Iraqis came running to the gate, yelling something about how 'You have to leave, you have, they’re coming." Except as it turned out they were already there.
The force watching the bridge was ambushed by an overwhelming circular attack and had to be ordered by their President to pull back to base. With that the insurgents came sweeping across the bridge and surrounded us. The whole town basically turned out and pounded the shit out of us for the next day and night and part of the early morning.
It was unbelievably eerie and extended. My body knew I was going to die and I kept shivering. It was over a hundred degrees by nine Am. The insurgents outnumbered us by…I don’t know. DOD estimated we were surrounded by jhundreds of them, all of them armed with mortars, RPGS, and seemingly unlimited ammo. When you do missions like we did, there’s a limit to how much you can carry. And the thing is it was utterly surreal. Sometimes the fire was so bad we’d be flat on the ground, mortars pounding us closer and closer as they came inside through the parking lot and took out the security posts, only dozens of meters from any one of us. Sometimes it was quiet and peaceful, no firing at all. We kept caliling up to Baghdad for more ammo, or support, or evac, but it was so bad that they couldn’t risk a chopper----the lessons of Mogadishu, apparently. Gradually, we got driven back from building to building to until we made our final stand in the one building on the site that had a wall around it. I was on that wall till a mortar landed maybe fifty or sixty feet in front of me and knocked me off my feet and to the ground.
We had local friends negotiating with us over the radios. Their idea of negotiating was to say, “If you’re not off the site by dawn, we’ll exterminate every one there.” And Baghdad kept saying, “Can you change your tone? It’s upsetting Bremer.” For long periods of time we’d get driven from the vehicles, until at about one AM we got all the lights turned off and moved them.
We had a foreign diplomat there who didn’t want to give up the fight that he wasn’t actually, you know, fighting. We’d call up to the flagpole to see if we could get help, and his assistants would call back and veto it. We finally got air cover after several hours, and the fire was so heavy they’d periodically get pulled off, leaving us exposed on all sides.
We were under such heavy fire that ammo became a real concern. I went through two mags in five minutes during a really bad period, and toward morning, the officers started to sound really panicky when they talked to Baghdad. If we ran out of ammo, then what? Capture. This was days after the contractors in Fallujah were killed.
I’ve never been able to express how odd it felt. I had bullets buzz past me close enough to sound almost like bumblebees or make an odd swishing noise. Me and the other guys would sit in the quiet moments and look at the base across the river and just marvel at how close it was, and how impossible.
Then the insurgents made a deal. They said the QRF could come get us. It was a trap. They lured them out and attacked them and we had to watch it happen. That was when I think everybody kind of despaired, because any possibility of rescue put other soldiers at risk.
Finally, a Marine general got on the radio after having gotten fed up with the governor. “Can you repeat everything to him exactly as I say it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ask him what his intention is in remaining a presence on the site. Do you copy?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“And ask him what he wants US forces to do with his remains.”
With that, gunships came blazing in from the west, loaded with just about everything you can imagine, and we pulled out at dawn, while the city slept. Halfway home–the long way—the governor pulled his fancy rented SUV in front of the convoy—with more than half the soldeirs on it totally out of ammo----and had a hissy fit. The choppers dropped down lower than the electric wires on the poles and raked over us before somebody threatned to tie the guy up and throw him in the trunk.
Soon after fighter jets took over the air cover and got us home, and none of the guys were embarrassed about admitting that it was so bad they thought it was over more than once that night. And the next day, we got up and rolled out again, and there were puddles of blood and shell casings on the street.
I still don’t know how to describe it, that numb feeling of that battle. My shrink told me I had every symptom of panic disorder except for one: “Fear of death.”
Yeah, I got that tee shirt.
Motorcycle + broken cam chain + 70MPH + locked up back tire + 50 ft chasm on the right + rock ledge on the left + 95 degree asphalt + going downhill
I was 19 and wearing shorts and a tee shirt and immediately realized that I didn’t own enough skin to lay the bike down.
As the back tire fishtailed I panicked and the 12 year old in me hit both hand brakes on my bicycle which translated into the front brake and clutch on the motorcycle. Luckily I didn’t handstand the front tire of the bike but the clutch freed up the back tire and I was able to slowly brake the bike to the bottom of the hill.