Ok then, how many times have you actually THOUGHT you were about to die?

[GeordieSkydiver 0]

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We were in the middle of a perfectly executed ambush. It really, really sucked.

Your wrong on two points.

1. You weren't in the middle of a perfectly executed ambush, you survived.

2. It didn't suck that much, you survived.

Sounds fun nevertheless...

Lee _______________________________

In a world full of people, only some want to fly, is that not crazy?
http://www.ukskydiver.co.uk

[DexterBase 1]

yeah, okay.

[JeepDiver 0]

Oh, I almost forgot, there was that one time a girl broke my heart.

[GeordieSkydiver 0]

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Oh, I almost forgot, there was that one time a girl broke my heart.

Jeez, do they count?

We are all in trouble now....

Lee _______________________________

In a world full of people, only some want to fly, is that not crazy?
http://www.ukskydiver.co.uk

[ACMESkydiver 0]

Oh...ma...GAWD!

I can't believe you're Ok, but very glad you are.

~Jaye
Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action.

[ChangoLanzao 0]

Twice ...

1 - I think it was 1992, at the WFFC in Quincy, when Mullins aborted a take-off at the last possible moment. I was *sure* that I was about to become a cloud of Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, and Oxygen within a very short period of time.

2 - Exactly one week ago when I rolled my Geo Tracker
Clicky

So it goes.

**********************************

[jumpinfarmer 0]

I can think of a couple but, not until the situation was over.

Once I was combining corn at night and plugged the head of the combine. I tugged and pulled and got the cornstalks out and all of a sudden the head kicked back into gear. I was still standing on the head but thankfully between the rows. After that I felt sick for a few hours.

Another time (also farm related) a neighbor asked me to take a truck loaded with wheat back to his farm and put it upstairs in the barn. I was just about to shut off the engine when I heard a loud crack and down through the floor I went. If it had happened a second or two later I would have probably been crushed under the truck as it went through the floor. As it was I was just stuck in the cab, and pissed off because I didn't let him put his own damn truck away.

The most recent was just a year or so ago. I was snowmobiling with some friends and had to stop and pee. They didn't stop. I tried to catch up and hit a bump in front of a bridge at about 75mph. I cleared the bridge and landed hard. No damage done just scared the hell out of me. My buddies did however see it and asked how I got the balls to do that.

[freeflir29 0]

MANY times..........I was in the military for almost 10 years. I've had a few "OH SHITS" during skydiving and military jumping but never thought I was gonna die. Hell....I've never even opened a reserve on purpose.

[mjosparky 4]

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Being in a simulated combat situation was scary enough for me. -I think what scared me the most was that I might end up with some of the idiot women that were in my basic platoon in a live situation. I knew we'd just all f*cking die if they were allowed out into the 'real world'.

I honestly don't know what I would have done had I really been in the middle of it. All I can ever do is hope that I would have been worthy of what I was set out to do, so cheers to you, buddy. I'll buy you and Katie a next time I head out to Blue Skies.

Hey Darlin,

Will you buy this old man a beer. 77 days inside the wire at t Khe Shan, 1968.
Sparky

My idea of a fair fight is clubbing baby seals

[BoostedXT 0]

According to the DR's I was never supposed to be born. I was sharing mym mom with a absess that was to kill me on the way out.

Riding down 417 Toll Road in Florida. Car changed lanes pushed me onto the median where I hit a 2X4 and got a nasty tank slapper. Rode it out and kept the bike upright.

For long as you live and high you fly and smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry and all that you touch and all that you see is all your life will ever be.
Pedro Offers you his Protection.

[PLFKING 4]

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I do a few handstands and cartwheels to pass the time

Glad you made it through to the other side.

Went off the road once on my KZ900....came around a curve at about 70 and here's somebody's grampa pulling out of his driveway....he gets completely out into my lane, sees me, panics, and stops right there. No way I was going to get stopped, so I decided to go around....but there's a car coming the other way, so I keep going left. Hit the ditch and went flying about 50 feet into a field....did a few cartwheels myself.
Trying to break up a fight in a bar, and got drug into it instead....got cold-cocked from behind, and when I started to get back up, this dude had a .38 pointed at my head from about 10 feet away. I KNEW I was dead. Just then, a bouncer brought a glass beer stein down on the guy's nose. I was so amped that when the glass shattered, I thought the gun had fired....not too proud of the fact, but I pissed myself a little.

Somewhere around jump #90, our Cessna hiccuped right at lift-off, and our pilot aborted. The runway ended at an embankment running downhill about 100 feet into a patch of woods. While we were bouncing and yawing over the runway, and smelling the brakes cooking, I distinctly remember thinking "this is really a stupid way to die." I have high praise for our young pilot getting us stopped....once we stopped, got out, and made sure everyone was okay, I walked around to the front of the plane....there was literally 18" of runway left in front of the nosewheel.

The only time everybody but me thought I was gonna die was when I landed in the median strip of a 4-lane highway on my very first S/L jump...my instructor later told me that when I disappeared behind the trees, they all started listening for the sound of squealing brakes. I, on the other hand, was laughing like a loon the entire time. If I did that now, I'd probably s*** myself.

Don

"When in doubt I whip it out,
I got me a rock-and-roll band.
It's a free-for-all."

[cindee 0]

I thought I might die once while spelunking and one other time when an intruder pulled a gun on me during ballet class.

__________________________________________________
"If happy little bluebirds fly above the rainbow, why oh why can't I?"

[ACMESkydiver 0]

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Hey Darlin,

Will you buy this old man a beer. 77 days inside the wire at t Khe Shan, 1968.
Sparky

Are you kidding?? Of course I'd buy you a beer, sir!! (Uh, or sgt...I don't see any rank in the pic...and geesh the only people subordinate to me while I was in were the newb's I was training...)

~Jaye
Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action.

[br0k3n 0]

Twice surfing I have been held under the water for long time, to the point where I had actually resigned to the fact that I was going to drown.

I distinctly remember, to start with there was no panic, I had been in this situation before, then after a period of time I was still under the water I started to panic. The panic stage didnt seem to last long, then I just seemed to accept the fact I was going to drown, and suddenly everthing seemed quite peacefull.....

-----------------------------------------------------------
--+ There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.. --+

[tbrown 26]

In the old days (the seventies), early model hand deploys didn't have closing pins, you would simply stow a bite of your bridle line in the elastic closing loop, same as you stow your suspension lines in a rubber band on your bag. I tossed out my pilot chute and it hung up, wouldn't clear.
There was just this pilot chute on the end of its bridle whirling around in HUGE loops over my back. I didn't know how the hell I was ever going to deploy my round reserve through that mess, so I grabbed my reserve ripcord and took another look at my altimeter. Thank God the damn thing cleared just then and my main deployed quickly and uneventfully. I got one of the newfangled pins installed on my bridle before I jumped again.

The other time was my first cutaway. When I punched my ripcord, I felt the reserve pilot chute hit my foot. I swear I could feel my hair turning white then and there (round reserve again, no freebag, this was 1979). I was sure I was a dead man. But it just bounced off my foot, thank God, and a moment later I was getting line stretch. But I'm convinced to this day that I used up a year of my life in that moment and will die a year earlier, of whatever cause, as a result.

Your humble servant.....Professor Gravity !

[freeflir29 0]

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1. You weren't in the middle of a perfectly executed ambush, you survived.

Yeah.........sounds like it was a good set up but the last step in a "Perfectly Executed Ambush" is one leg shifting fire while the other assaults through the KZ to get anything that survived. Luckily........you were dealing with untrained amatuers. Glad your still here.........learn from the experience. It's an expensive lesson that many don't survive learning.

[gordy 0]

Yeah a cypres was my next move after that, as had I had one back then it well would have fired!

[DexterBase 1]

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Yeah.........sounds like it was a good set up but the last step in a "Perfectly Executed Ambush" is one leg shifting fire while the other assaults through the KZ to get anything that survived. Luckily........you were dealing with untrained amatuers. Glad your still here.........learn from the experience. It's an expensive lesson that many don't survive learning.

Actually, we took several intel guys and analysts to the ambush site about two months later (The ambush I'm describing was on April 9th, 2004)because the General we were escorting commented that it was the worst ambush he'd ever seen. Between walking the terrain to see where the enemy positions were laid in, and the location of the ambush itself, they concluded that we were likely ambushed by former republican guard troops.

They had an L shaped ambush with an IED (Improvised explosive device) at one end to halt the convoy in the kill zone. They had three RPK machine guns set up with interlocking fields of fire, RPG's and AK-47's placed and pre-loaded behind the large dirt berm to our left (so they could pop up, fire a weapon empty, drop it, and move to another position, preventing them from being seen in the same place twice.) About 400 meters outside the ambush site, they had a mortar pit set up and pre-targeted on the middle of the kill zone.

When our lead vehicle neared the IED (a single 155mm HE artillery shell) at the end of the kill zone, they blew it and our convoy stopped just like they hoped. They kicked off the ambush with the RPK's and started lobbing RPG's through the convoy.

What I'm about to say may piss some people off, but I don't mean to offend anyone.

These same troops had been used to ambushing Army convoys. We were the beginning of the Marine deployments to Iraq since OIF I ended. There had been a period of almost a year since there were Marines fighting in the country.

A majority of convoys attacked in this time were soft targets, usually a logistical supply convoy with little to no offensive capability. When these types of convoys are attacked they usually floor it and get through the kill zone while returning fire. There's no real point to staying at the ambush site unless you have enough firepower and a dismounted offensive capability to agressively respond. It could be easy for them to get accustomed to firing on a logistical Army convoy without much risk of being killed in the process. Maybe they'd luck out and disable a few vehicles in the kill zone while the rest of the convoy rolled through.

Whatever the case, they never expected the intensity we reacted with when they kicked off the ambush. Immediately our guntrucks (HMMWV's with crew served weapons) aggressively left the asphalt road surface and punched toward the machine gun positions and started supressing their fire. At the same time, our dedicated dismounted quick reaction force dismounted their vehicle and started seeking the enemy's flank. About this time they started dropping 60mm mortars on us while continuing the machine gun, RPG, and AK-47 fire. Their fire was effective, as all of our vehicles sustained multiple hits.

As we took their flank and achieved fire superiority, the spine of their ambush broke and the fire started to taper off. We exploited this weakness and destroyed their forces.

They didn't do anything wrong except pick the wrong convoy to attack. Had we been a soft convoy, they probably would have killed all of us. As it was with our swift and aggressive reactions we took 20% casualties including one fatality, my friend Chance Phelps who was killed right next to me when a round hit him in the face.

You can execute an ambush perfectly, but if the force you decide to ambush is better trained and equipped, then they may hand you your ass, like we did to them that day.

Also, there are many configurations of ambushes you can set in. We encountered a textbook L shaped ambush. The difference between us being killed and them, was the intensity the Marine Corps trains to respond with. They had the initiative until they kicked off the ambush. Once the first round left their weapons, they had committed themselves to their fate, they just didn't know it yet.

It sucked.