OH **** MOMENT!

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[Gorilla24D]

    Have you ever had that heart jumps in the throat ,kiss your ass goodbye moment and then realize it really isn't.....a kinda combat reflex I guess I mean.....

    Just yesterday I was driving to work.I leave about 0530 for a five minute drive ,0600 start time....Still pretty dark and last time through our cities street lights they opted for a less bright energy saver...more of a glow than real nice light.Bein on route clearance made a soul very cognicent of what is on the route just sittin around, as some of you know all sorts of **** from dead animals to tires ,,etc.Had times when I ended up way closern I would have liked to an IED....That instant you realize very likely **** could hit the fan .I'm sure there are other instances in combat that give that same jolt to your senses.Well Here I is rollin down our overpass that gets us past the train yards and back to the Industrial Park.On the right side of the street is a fence and very tall bushes that block pretty much all light from the right.To the left is about six rows of the shamrock storage buildings,they come all the way out to the side walk and up to the next street that I am going to take a left on ,blocking whats up that street.From coming down the hill to the corner it's about 150 meters to the corner so I am usually cruisin a bit....Taking a look to the right I see no lights ,quick to the left no lights...so I gives a good california stop and I take off, get turned up the road ...At that moment right on the mid line about 15 meters to my 11 o'clock I see a large gunny sack with what could easily have been about 5 footballs or something....to give you a size reference...I **** my pants ....scared the **** outa me for just a split second and then back to reality...****....Your just drivin to ****in work ****head...


    That bull**** still **** with you guys too...hell it's been four ****in years.  

[BuoyJumper]

Not having been in combat I have never had a moment like that Bill.  Thank God.  Sounds like PTSD to me or what we used to call shell shock.  I remember when I was in High School I had an Algebra teacher by the name of Mr. Cosgrove.  We had an old school with wood floors built with pier and beam construction.  One day during class one of the students was asked to come to the front of the room to work a problem on the blackboard.  He started forward to the blackboard and accidentally caught his hip on a book that was hanging partially off the desk of one of the students.  The book spun sideways and off of the desk and hit flat on the hardwood floor with a loud THWACK!!!.  When that book hit the floor Mr Cosgrove did too.  Once the students saw his Achilles heel and we all know how cruel teenagers can be, his teaching days at our school were over.  A month later he resigned.  I guess you never really get over that kind of thing.      

[LTGunner]

I've had two moments like that during my CG Career:

1)   Up in the Bering Sea our cutter was responding to a sinking fishing vessel.  Crew reported they were going in the water with survival suits.  We were about two hours away; but the vessel was close to shore.  I was assigned to one of the small boats to look for & recover survivors.  We’re about three miles from the cutter and we find the capsized vessel.  About 100 yards from the boat we see a survival suit, face down in the water.  We pull up alongside the suit that appears to be occupied.  Nobody wants to check the suit.  I’m the Chief onboard so I decide to do the duty.  I grab the suit, pull it up quickly & one of the crew yelps.  I look down only to find the suit empty….

2)   As a Warrant Gunner, my crew & I were responding to a gun casualty with live rounds stuck in the loading system on a cutter offshore (CGC HARRIET LANE).   We get on board and find four rounds stuck in the gun: one on the loading tray bent in half, one impaled on the upper loading system (banana cam), and two twisted in the loader drum.  Real mess after a failure of the recoil cylinders.   The gunner’s mates with me clear three of four of the rounds; but the fourth one is stuck with powder leaking out.  The GM2 in the mount is sweating bullets and does not want to be in the gun.  I’m called to the mount and the GM2 says he’s not sure what to do.  I tell him to hit the round with a (non-sparking) hammer to get it off the cam.  He taps it and it doesn’t move.  I tell him hit it again.  He replies, “I’d feel a whole lot better if you were standing next to me”.  I reply, “Fine, let’s do it”.  I climb into the gun mount and tell him hit the round.  To my surprise he starts to yell as he hits the round.  The round pops off and makes a brass clanging sound as it hits the tray.  The round popping off didn’t scare me as much as the crazed gunner's mate howling and the hammering sound that followed.  Son of a ***** it worked……  The look of trust afterwards from the gunner's mate was priceless. 

[vftb]

Rilla, the only thing that ever set me off was, believe it or not, a bug zapper    I (we) was around three armories/ammo dumps when they got hit by the bad guys at three different times.  For some weird reason the frigging bug zapper kinda took me there 

[vftb]

For some weird reason the frigging bug zapper kinda took me there   

BTW, alcohol could have been involved 

[EX-CG-GM]

When I first came back from Iraq, for maybe the first year back, someone slamming the door on a SUV or pick up outside sounded just like a mortar round hitting some distance away.  Like what we heard all the time where I was based when one would hit over by the truck lanes.  The "Whumph" sound instead of the sharper kind of "Crack" when they were closer.

In Nam we had been providing Naval Gunfire support for a basecamp that was under heavy attack.  We had fired enough rounds that the paint of the barrel was blistered off. all the lubricant had melted from the breech block and we were having to smack the breech block with a big maul to get it fully closed.  In other words, we had a VERY hot gun.  Whipping out close to 20 rounds a minute from a 5".  All of a sudden......nothing.....a misfire.  We were copied on all the mount casualties that had occurred which included the projectiles cooking off and exploding in the barrel.  Usually involved casualties and/or fatalities inside the mount.

I was the gun captain.  So we cleared everyone from the mount but me, the Chief Gunner's Mate who had come up from his post and a GM 3.  I REALLY did not want to open that breech block.  I didn't want to do ANYTHGING that might jar that round.  But I did.  We slid the powder case out, very carefully passed it to another GM outside the mount.  He took it aft and tossed it over the side. We loaded a short round powder charge, cleared the bore by firing it, lubed everything and and went back to our mission.

Scared the snot out of me though.

[ladyrott]

Ok let me preface this by letting ya'll know that this event happened to my dad..I've never been in any kind of combat situation.

I was about 9 or 10 years old and Dad was stationed up at Dover AFB, '79/'80; it was summer. Hot and humid kind of day that Dover is known for..it was dinner time and one of those nasty as hell summer thunderstorms was headed our way. We were living in base housing and we had a playground behind our house, (we were the second unit in a 4-plex) when a bolt of lightning struck the metal sliding board. I screamed, my brother screamed, my baby sister started crying and Mom was trying to calm us down. Dad was no where to be found, Mom turned to look at the front door which was wide open. Dad had bolted out the front door..when he came back he was shaking and sweating like I had never seen. Mind you I was really young...years later I asked Dad about that and he explained that he was eating chow in Vietnam when they were attacked and the bolt of lightning reminded him of a blast that knocked him and about 6 others out for about 20 minutes.

I do know that Mom does not touch Dad to wake him up...he cold ****ed her one time for touching his shoulder while he was sleeping. We laugh about Dad running out of the house in the middle of a storm now...he says it's his "advanced"  years that has made him able to laugh at himself sometimes...lol

[vftb]

Hey Lady, great to see you; where ya been 

[Eupher]

Just for the record, at the time the following event occurred, I was officially inebriated. 

No combat-related, Oh ****! moment, but it was duty related.

We played a series of gigs in Belgium then on the way back, we stopped at a NATO/US-type Class VI store and I bought a bottle of some kind of single malt Scotch. It was berry, berry good.

Anyway, I'm riding in a carry-all type van and we get to Checkpoint Alpha, just before we get on the autobahn heading back to Berlin. I stayed in the truck while the driver went upstairs to check in with the MP's. No issue there. We proceed on through the U.S. checkpoint and motor on down to the Soviet checkpoint at Marienborn.

It's a hot summer day and the vehicle has no air conditioning. I'm pretty well toasted, as I said. I'm riding shotgun. The driver gets out with the flag orders and ID cards and heads into the Soviet shack to process in. So while the Soviet sentry slowly walks around the vehicle, looking it over (he's not allowed to touch it), I waited until he was behind me, then yelled "BANG!" as loudly as I could.

He quickly turned around, but I was too engulfed in laughter to much notice what else he did. Driver got through processing, got back in the truck, and off we went for our 110-mile trek through East Germany.

Heard nothing untoward at the Soviet checkpoint at Dreilinden and nothing at Checkpoint Bravo, so once again, we foiled the enemy.

I think somebody poured me in my bunk when we finally arrived back at the home front. 

[Gorilla24D]