I’m convinced that a common reason military veterans “never talked about it” is because most people simply don’t care to hear their accounts. I do, though, so this question:

During your military or LE experiences have you ever been the victim of so-called “friendly fire;” i.e., being injured or nearly injured by fire of any type from your own or allied forces? If so, I’d be interested in whatever details you care to provide.

The question mentions “fire” experiences, but if you nearly got run over by a tank, that’s worth sharing as well, but I’m mostly interested in being shot at, bombed, hit by artillery, etc.

One of my war stories: In Vietnam while helping evacuate a casualty up a steep slope covered in vegetation and old barbed wire, a young soldier came running up carrying an M2 (select fire) Carbine. Just as he reached our location he dropped the weapon and for whatever reason it fired a burst of shots as it fell over. I was standing within a foot or so of a captain and the burst from the carbine that was a few feet away was fired between us as it tipped over. The captain received a slight graze wound to one arm, but I was untouched.*

A few months later a 500 pound bomb fell from a Skyraider that was flying over the compound where I was. The impact was probably 25 yards away, but as I’m still here to recount the incident the bomb wasn’t armed.*

Much later a fellow CID agent told how that when he was a military policeman another MP unintentionally shot him in the knee with his issued 1911. My friend never completely recovered from the wound and for the rest of his career had to struggle with the running portion of our regular PT tests.

What have been your experiences? (I know there has been some discussion of this topic before, but not, to my knowledge, as a specific question.)

* I’ve probably mentioned both incidents here before, but I cite them as examples of the sort of thing I’m interested in.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: sigfreund,

I was involved in a near miss mid-air in a UH-60 over Schweinfurt in the early '90s.

We were flying a 7 ship mission, under goggles, blacked out. One of the other helicopters suffered a mechanical and had to do an emergency landing in a field. We, as the command ship, circled down to check on them, and then climbed back out to catch up with the mission.

I was sitting in the center jump seat between the pilot and copilot. We were doing about 160 kts. to catch up with a formation flying at 120 kts. Unfortunately, the "slime lights" which are on the airframe, and visible under goggles, but not to the naked eye, got washed out by the city lights below.

We avoided collision when the CW4 flying saw ground lights winking out as they were occluded by the other aircraft up ahead. He pulled the -60 straight up, fell over to the right, and formed up at the end of the string.

The LTC in command asked "How close, Chief?" and the CW4 replied "About 2 rotor disks." We were flying at 4,000'.

It got real quiet in the airplane after that.

That is my "The Army Almost Killed Me" story.

I cringed reading that, and yes, it’s within the realm of what I’m interested in even though I really just realized that. As I’ve often said, military and law enforcement experience can be dangerous for many reasons.

One of the vehicles in my plt took a sabot round from a USMC M-60. No one was hurt as the crew was eating chow on the ramp. The round entered under under the turret ripped the turbo off the motor. The rod shattered and part of it lodged in the bow. To add insult to injury the tank started to machine gun the crew as they ran for cover. Fucking reservist! There is nothing on the battle files that even remotely looks like an AAV.

I was in Baghdad in early ‘05 we were in a compound ( took over a shooting mall and it’s parking lot as a base of operations in a neighborhood during the first Iraq open election)
Next to the mall was a highway, and on the other side an Iraq unit quartering in a soccer field. The Iraqi troops got jumpy when a car rolled down the highway ( during the election vehicle traffic was prohibited) well, they lit up the car, and the rounds directed at the car landed right in the mall parking lot where were were set up. The perception was someone in the car shot at us so we opened up on the car. I suspect our rounds impacted the Iraqi area as well. Thankfully no one except the vehicle occupants ( from what we can figure were misdirected down the road by Iraqi police) were injured.

Closest I ever been was last week of boot camp, walk to close to a stall and you might catch a round.

Guys didn’t realize all their newly acquired dog tags sounded like a Gatling gun in that bathroom.

Not me, but when I was a flight instructor flying A4s in Mississippi in the early 90s one of our Skyhawks came back from a low level navigation flight with a bullet hole in the starboard wing.

Not me, BUT...

A VERY Good Friend of mine, along with ten other US Marines, was killed by friendly fire on January 29, 1991 when their LAV was destroyed by an Anti-Tank Missile during the early hours of the first sustained ground fighting in Desert Storm.

RIP Sergeant Garrett Mongrella, KIA in the Battle of Khafji, Desert Storm. You left us too soon Marine....Godspeed My Good Friend!

We almost shot it out with CID one time while searching for a local national who apparently stabbed a contractor in Iraq. They would have had us due to their proper use of weapon lights. A few awkward chuckles later we were fine but it taught me the value of weaponlights. Also the stabbing was far more likely two drunk idiots who made up a story to not get in trouble for being drunk and playing with knives. Thanks guys.

Separate but same year, we ran across an EOD or engineer team (it's been a minute)blowing a building for whatever reason. I'm sure it made sense at the time. There were local nationals inside working and some were unaccounted for when they got them out. They held it for my buddy, who decided to be the one good person and not completely irresponsible POS in the area, myself shamefully included, who coordinated with them to go in and make another sweep for anyone who missed the call to evac. I was standing next to their LT when they blew it early. My friend, by pure angel power, randomly decided to go out the back as he was already super nervous. It was a shorter distance and he found some dudes towards the back so they popped out and made it a few steps when they blew it. He came flying around the building pissed which likely saved that LT. I'm not sure what I would have done in reflecting on it but I'm glad everyone was ok and it all randomly worked out as it sometimes does.

There was another thing, but it was against a foreign diplomat, so I'll leave it. Nobody got hurt I'd tell it in person but I wont put it on the internet. Its funny now but I cant imagine what they thought of our sister platoon.

Lots of almost shots with dudes who didnt use IR beacons and liked to sneak around rooftops. I learned thats actually really important.

Lots of friendlys driving local Passats in civvies who knew they were friendly and we didnt so they got rammed. This was before VBIEDs. I know of a British guy who died similarly to a gunner while trying to ride a convoy into a checkpoint.

LE side thankfully its been mostly good except range training but thats a whole other thing.

I was on bridge watch onboard USS Stark when she took two Exocets from a "friendly" Iraqi. Rationally, I know we were screwed the moment the pilot fired the first missile, but emotionally I still feel guilt that I couldn't do a single thing at that point to prevent the fiasco. I had less than 10 seconds between when I saw the missile's flame (it appeared to be a stationary corona) and impact.

Iraq and Iran... a pox on both their houses.

I don’t know your parameters for Friendly Fire but… Had an officer torch off a round w/ his AR on the square range into the ground between a couple of us. Written up and I think he got a day off unpaid.

Now Tasers on the other hand.. I don’t know how many times those damn things have come real close. I even got the “zap” while handcuffing a bad guy.

Pepper Spray…. Took a few squirts of that too….

quote:

Originally posted by 357fuzz:
Now Tasers on the other hand.. I don’t know how many times those damn things have come real close. I even got the “zap” while handcuffing a bad guy.

Pepper Spray…. Took a few squirts of that too….

Dude! I hadnt even thought of that stuff. I know several people with noncompliant laundry baskets and one of my coaches tazed my other coach while they were rolling with a guy.

We also had a kid get his asp rotated in a chair somehow and the tip semi deployed while sitting and it went under the safety flap of his OC in a class. He hopped up and spun around in a panic trying to get at it and basically turned into a sprinkler of sadness. It cleared the rather small building.

quote:

Originally posted by 357fuzz:
I don’t know your parameters for Friendly Fire but…

No firm definition, but what I had in mind were incidents that could have caused death or serious injury. An unintended firearms discharge among other LEOs in circumstances other than firing in a safe direction at a shooting range would certainly qualify.

Most FF incidents are due to human incompetence or negligence of some sort, but as in the second incident I mentioned above, they can be due to something like a mechanical failure accident.

One of the most common types of friendly fire in World War II was Allied aircraft dropping bombs on their own forces. In those days the inherent accuracy of high level bombing was so poor that the actual fault for the incidents was more the men who ordered the missions than the ones flying the aircraft and dropping the bombs.

And although I’d be interested in any first hand accounts, the incidents in which a member of an allied force, or even one’s own force deliberately attacked other members of that force are not what I have in mind.

OC and TASERs, though? Unpleasant without a doubt, but LEOs wouldn’t have to experience deliberate exposures to them in training if they were what I was thinking of here.

The only one I can think of that would possibly fall under this was when I was at Al Jaber Air Base in March of 2003, OIF had just kicked off with the whole "Shock and Awe" campaign which was 85% aircraft from our base plus Navy aircraft carriers launching aircraft plus shooting stuff*

*Stuff was things like Tomahawk missiles which we were told later one overflew Iraq and went right back into Kuwait and was headed right our way but thankfully was shot down by a Patriot.

My good HS friend was in the Navy in 1992 on the USS Detroit when one of the ships in his group (USS Saratoga) on NATO exercises accidentally launched TWO live Sea Sparrow missiles right at a Turkish ship in the exercise and sank it. Holy crap.

During Desert Storm there was an F-18 coming out of Iraq fast, low, dark, and radio silent.

The aircraft was assigned to the USS Midway and I was on the USS Ranger (we didn't have any aircraft up).

Since the "missile" was headed straight fr us, we went to General Quarters. 30 seconds later, the F-18 popped up and the Ranger got a positive ID as a friendly.

Next morning debrief, the aircraft was just a few seconds away from being fired upon by us and our support destroyer.

Lets see... As a cop:
Stroked with baton numerous times.
Pepper sprayed. Fairly often!
Punched by fellow officer while fighting an arrestee.
Other cop crashed into my patrol car during chase.
A fellow officer once managed to handcuff one of my hands during a struggle.
Bitten by police pooch.
All in a days work!

Like Yoop,

I’ve been sprayed many times while arresting suspects, when another officer felt like giving someone the Jesus juice.

Caught a few strokes from an ASP.

Got zapped by the taser wires when cuffing someone and the officer felt the need to hit it again.

Caught some fists or elbows

More than once at firearms day, this one particular female officer pointed her loaded gun at me and others on the firing line-we were just lucky she didn’t pop one off. Same one who put a round between the sgts feet .

This message has been edited. Last edited by: MikeinNC,

quote:

Originally posted by MikeinNC:
Like Yoop,

I’ve been sprayed many times while arresting suspects, when another officer felt like giving someone the Jesus juice.

Got zapped by the taser wires when cuffing someone and the officer felt the need to hit it again.

Yep. Pretty sure those are guaranteed for anyone in LE for any decent length of time.

We were on a field exercise at FT. Hunter Liggett around 90-91. My squad leader grabbed me to come along and fix or tow back a down HMMWV. We drove around for a while, couldn't find them. We stopped and the squad leader was on the radio trying to figure out where they were at. I decided to go climb a nearby hill with large boulders, see if I could find any critters, rattle snakes, tarantulas, lizards or scorpions. I get about half way up and I hear an M60 go off, sounds close. It goes off again and the trees about five feet from me start to fall apart, I realize it's live fire and they are just above me on a slightly higher hill. I drop and wait for a reload while getting covered in tree debris. They stopped firing, I start yelling until I get a response that they know I'm there. That LT was pissed, he came down to where we were at and chewed my squad leader a new ass. I'm just an innocent E4


They swore they had all roads closed and blocked around their live fire exercise, not sure how we got through. If I remember correctly all NCO's were briefed on the live fire time and location.

Not me, but my USMC stepbrother. He was in the first GW in some type of armored vehicle, which was one of two or more(it has been a long time since I heard his story so I can’t remember details now).

An A-10 made a pass at them, and it took out at least one of the othe vehicles. It came around again to make another pass at them, but the pilot either realized his mistake or was called off at the last second.

He made it out alive in that FF attack, but his close buddies didn’t. Really sad how the fog of war takes out our best.