I’m a huge advocate of always having a plan B every time you do something that might get you killed. Anything you do with your life at stake needs to have a Plan B. When I go rock climbing I double my anchors, when people go skydiving they have a back-up shoot, and when I carry anything for self defense I have a plan B.
I almost learned this the hard way in An Nasiriyah, Iraq March 2003. An Nasiriyah was the city Jessica Lynch was captured at. I was there days before she was. We were moving north towards Baghdad and everything had gone easy for the first 2 days of the war. The Army was moving west and the Marines were moving north at a pace no one anticipated. We hit our first snag in An Nasiriyah.
The first unit in fought all night to hold the road through the town at a heavy price. At daybreak it was decided my company would push through and continue towards Baghdad. No plan B, just drive straight through. I was in the back of a truck (a 7 ton) about a dozen vehicles back from the leader. As we drove north we couldn’t even tell what was going on around us. I could see Marines running up and down the streets firing their weapons into buildings next to the road, but I couldn’t see any enemy. Tracers were flying both directions, but I still couldn’t see an enemy.
Our convoy came to a screeching halt and the vehicles stacked up. It was lucky there wasn’t an accident inside the convoy. My vehicle was stuck in the middle of a major intersection with nowhere to go. We couldn’t even pull alongside the vehicle in front of us to get out of the intersection. I seriously thought of telling the driver to push the vehicle in front of us up so we could get out of the intersection.
There I sat thinking “this can’t get worst.” It got worst when I caught my first glimpse of the enemy and they were headed our way. My entire squad where sitting ducks and there was nothing we could do about it.
We were saved by an AAV (Amphibious Assault Vehicle) that I never saw. It rolled over the curb, through some rubble into the intersection putting it’s armor between the enemy and us. The big M2 machine gun on top sounded cutting down the enemy and then through the wall they tried to use as cover. We cheered like we had just won the Super Bowl! A minute later the convoy started to move on and the rest is history.
All of this came rushing back to me when an AAV passed me on the freeway going the other way. This experience keeps me finding my own Plan B. Do you have a Plan B for all those things in your life that could get you killed? You should!
Stay Safe,
Ben