The day I nearly died | BRITISH ARMY ACCIDENT

hello everyone it's me Matt yes you're actually looking at me today but as young Matt this is me back in the British Army in 2007 yes this is prior to my deployment to Afghanistan training at batis otherwise known as British Army training unit Suffield which is basically where I came to fall in love with Canada and it basically is why I'm here today but unfortunately I was very very close to actually not surviving this exercise this training exercise in baddest in Canada if you don't know what ballast is it's basically a training area the largest training at British Army has the ability to work in here in Alberta Canada Western Canada which allows battlegroup sized strength of British Armed Forces to practice on the open prairie blowing stuff up against OPFOR against other you know situations that get presented upon you it's normally about two weeks of live firing it's changed a lot since then I know they call Prairie storms or prairie thunders or whatever the hell they call them now when I did my you know med man as they were called medicine man exercises they lasted for about six to seven weeks sometimes a little longer and it was phased into a few different phases you started off with your you know ranges normal ranges live firing ranges than you do sort of a plank firing range and then you do what's called a tears exercise or basically a system where you play laser tag with one another it's it's pretty good fun but it's also one of those challenging exercises you'll do in the British Army a lot of fun very warding and I just absolutely loved every second of it but as I said I nearly didn't survive it I'm gonna tell you a story today which you know there's a lot of stories I could tell you about my life nearly nearly ending a lot of people think he have matter she must have had some gnarly situations Afghanistan yes I certainly did but this one was actually one of the more scary situations that I've ever been in in my life you know I've have hid IDs been engaged by the Taliban in Afghanistan I haven't actually walked IEDs of course but my vehicle has been struck by them we have been engaged before by Taliban been in contact in firefights etc but none of that really was as scary as the situation I'm about to tell you so the store starts in as I said 2007 we were getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan in 2008 in Helmand province with the British Army in an armoured repair company at the time I was part of seven armored company of the two Battalion Remy or royal electrical mechanical engineer so I was basically servicing and supporting armored vehicles on the front whether it be infantry challenger to see BRT anything with tracks or even with wheels at that time at the time that I was attached to a armoured repair crew of three men in what's called a warrior five one two it's an armoured repair vehicle it's not the recovery vehicle the five one three is the repair vehicle which has the winch and the blade on the back which allows you to do a little bit more than the five one to varying is but what you're looking at right now is basically the five on two variant it's a powerpack repair vehicle for the most part and lifts its own power pack out its own engine and other vehicles engines and basically do all means and methods of repair in the field so as a very late and very long evening that we just got into one evening sort of towards the end of the exercise we're all extremely tired in my crew had my commander and my driver who were in the vehicle and I was in the back as a third man which is basically all the lowest of the low here in the back just supporting the rest of the crew but we were really good crew we had a good time but we were exhausted we're very tired it was a very hot week that week and extremely hot on the prairies in summer which is when we trained and we got tasked roughly at 2:00 3:00 in the morning to go and pick up a repair vehicle that also broken down and to try and change its power pack that it failed somewhere in the middle of nowhere we were given some coordinates good reference and got sent out on our merry way now when we're on exercises like med man or whatever they called nowadays for the most part you're in a tactical sense which basically means there are enemy positions around people are looking for you and you have to play as if you're in a real time war scenario when I was in the vehicle at the time we were told that the crew were to drive the vehicle in what's called tactical lighting which is basically saying don't put any lights on you weren't allowed to drive anywhere with lights on other than what called a convoy light which is a small little bulb at the back of the vehicle allowing someone behind you to see well because no one's behind us we had no lights on at all sadly we also had no night vision so we were relying upon the twilight of the moon to allow us to see what was going on head of us as you can see this is also a disaster for you know what's about to happen so what was going on at the time is we were driving across the Prairie looking for this vehicle heading on a grid coordinates my driver of course quite exhausted my commander exhausted I'm in the back of the five one two now if you've ever been inside of a five one two you'll understand what I'm talking about but it's very enclosed extremely cramped especially as a repair crew everything in the back is basically filled with tools equipment spares parts whatever else you need to operate your vehicle including your own personal military equipment whether it be a you know your webbing your rifles or your extra ammunition etc etc so very compacted in the back and you know I was exhausted and there's a third man you do have the privilege of being able to have it little snooze in the back of the vehicle when nothing is going on and you probably wonder how the hell'd you fall asleep matt smith's when you're trudging across open terrain and prairies and bouncing around all over the place and trust me when you're in an armed and crew for long enough you kind of just fall asleep anywhere anyway so we were traveling all across the open prairie and i was in the bath just kind of chilling out and fast asleep for the most part kind of in and out of sleep I had my headset on because you have to have it on of course being a bad crewman at the time not following standard offering procedures I did not wear my safety harness which is basically a four point connecting harness on the rear seats of the vehicle that allow you to kind of secure yourself in in case you have any accidents at the time because I wanted to sleep a little bit better I didn't wear it bad move silly move in fact I was wearing my headset driving along and all of a sudden I just felt the inertia of everything starting to move really awkwardly I had my headset on and could hear my commander shouting the F word over and over and over again my driver doing the exact same thing and at the exact same moment is that happening I felt the entire vehicle start to turn into what was basically like being in space of zero gravity I was all over the place I had no idea what was going on basically being thrown around in the back of the vehicle like a tumble dryer it was an absolutely terrifying experience I've been in some gnarly situations you know even outside of the military some scary life-and-death situations but this one really took me off guard the reason for that is that I was completely unprepared and had no idea what was going on I could just feel the butterflies in my stomach everything drawing out of my chest and just all the equipment that was in the back of a vehicle landing and smashing in my face all over the place rolling away what was happening is basically we were about to flip upside down what you're looking at right now is our vehicle in the position that it landed in once we had basically rolled over upside down yes the vehicle had actually gone over a very small embankment I say small but when you look at the grand scheme of things a rather large embankment and basically we had tried traversing across a track which on the map doesn't show you the embankment it just shows you a road and that's very standard of Albert especially it was Suffield because there's just not enough you know features for you to need to narrow narrow what's there it was just a track you just cross it and hopefully you haven't gotten banked once on the other side this one unfortunately had some very gnarly embankments my driver at the time was driving fairly quickly and by the time he had noticed that this embankment was in front of him the front three road wheels of the warrior had already gone over the lip of the ledge of this embankment and therefore there was absolutely no way to recover this vehicle from flopping over on its front the reason for that is when you get a 30 to 35 tonne vehicle and its inertial weight dragging it over the rest of that embankment there's no way you can stop it he put his brakes on inherently you know trying to stop the vehicle but it did not work the tracks locked it slid down the embankment the nose dug into the floor and flipped us up all the way onto its back me in the back absolutely terrified had no idea this was happening of course the commander and the driver had pretty good understanding of what was happening because it was happening right in front of them my commander sticking his head and torso out of the Coppola could see what was going on the driver was what was called half hatch which allows the driver to actually still see out without button-down or hatch closed and locked in place but provides him with enough overhead protection to prevent situations that I'm talking about from actually killing him when the vehicle did go over the embankment and land on its top the entire weight of the vehicle was resting upon a small metallic pin holding that driver's hatch open that was it if that pin had failed my driver would have for sure have been killed there have been no way of him to recover from that 35 tons of pressure would have crushed that hatch straight down on his skull compressed him into his driver's seat and killed him no word of a doubt luckily the driver's hatch did what it was supposed to do my commander was actually also very lucky he was actually quite aware of what was about to happen to and was smart enough to get into the Coppola press his hands up inwards and upwards towards the top of the hatch and hold himself out basically holding on for dear life and just going for the ride me in the back though had no understanding of what was going on I didn't get to see anything outside it was just a steel box that I was inside of and all I could hear on the net was screaming of F F F F F F F F F F F and rolling onto our back now when I came to in the back of the vehicle everything was still running the fuel pumps the engine was kind of chugging somewhat I heard the command to tell him my drive to shut the engine off pulled the you know I guess the shutdown procedure vehicle shut down the commander climbed through kicked me in the back of head said we need to get out of here and of course rightly so we did there's a lot of diesel inside of that vehicle and although diesel is extremely difficult set fire to when in confined it can space is confined hidden spaces and confined spaces like that it can be quite easy to set into a more combustible mist especially when the vehicle is upside down which is not the way it's supposed to be saying that diesel was pouring out everywhere from the eight hundred litres of storage fuel that is inside the compartment of the vehicle when the commander booted me to get out me and him were both trying to remove the rear door and open it so we could exit but because the vehicle was upside down the weight on the hinges would not allow the door to open it was definitely an inherent design for the vehicle normally vehicles aren't supposed to operate upside-down this one though was giving us real problems it took me and Mike and probably several double dropkicks together at the same time to pop open the drivers of the rear hatch once we got out of the vehicle itself we came to the start of realization that we were still alive but then instantly realized that our private is still inside the vehicle my commander ran out to the front to see if he could assist and I went straight through the back to see if I could get him from inside crawling through back over the top of the fuel tanks and through the compartments of the vehicle the fuel pumps still running and the electronics still on all the master switch still on it was pretty freakin scary I honestly thought at any moment we could potentially go up in flames crawling through I did eventually get to the driver's compartment now again his drivers see is operated in the emergency system by pressing a small lever the rear of the seat pressing and falling down and allowing me to drag him out the back this is in a normal situation where as the vehicle would be upright but once again it is upside down the lever would not work using the special depressed plunge that you're given to try and pull the drivers out the seat would not collapse my driver panicking fuel pouring into his driver's compartment he was starting to get a little nervous and so as I the commander had absolutely no way and he'll trying to get the drive out of the half hatch compartment from the front of the vehicle because of the way the vehicle was sad he just couldn't fit through the gap it was up to me and the driver to make the driver's hatch and sorry the driver's seat actually be collapsed itself it took probably five or six attempts for us to actually bust open the catch and allow the seat to depress and fall all the way down to the bottom to allow me to drag the driver out eventually we did drag the driver out and he was find other than me and him completely coated in diesel looking back from outside of the vehicle we were astonished we were able to survive such a very dangerous and severe crash now baddest or Suffield in general is extremely dangerous environment working as a training routine there are so many hazards if it's not the train it's the weather if it's not the weather it's the weapon systems if it's not the weapon systems it's the animals of lifestyle they're scary stuff it's it's definitely a training environment that tests you on every level and this accident really kind of brought into retrospect like wow we to be more smart about how we're doing this kind of training from that moment on we actually had our company commander at the time say none of his crews anywhere were going to be driving without lights on it was just too dangerous this actually brought into an SOP during the exercise too that if it was a tactical situation that no one was to be driving on their own at night in the prairies because at the time and we had the accident we had no form of communication other than our radios on the net Suffield or baddest is such an amazing training area it's huge but unfortunately due to that size and sparse land you don't have communication with anyone from miles and miles and miles and the only way you communicate with them normally is Val your radios we didn't have any kind of Sat phones or mobile phones that works at the time either and we couldn't get ahold of the rangecontrol so we're basically somewhat isolated there for a good couple of hours luckily my friends from my own company were coming back from another recovery job in their phone and 6x6 vehicle which is the vehicle that you're seeing actually recover the vehicle that we crashed in thank goodness to my good friend Nick Evans and the rest of his crew for actually finding us they were able to pull us out of the of the crash there and get us back on the road within you know a week when we actually pulled the vehicle back in and we were able to repair it and get it going again but I just thought I'd share this kind of story with you because I got a lot of questions sister hey Matt like were there any scary moments in the army and this was probably the most scary not for the fact that I was going to die it was the fact that I was terrified for my driver my driver was really having a tough time when it was happening it was kind of in a bit of a panic I was panicking I honestly thought we were gonna go up in flames at any minute I know diesel is extremely difficult to turn into a combustible you know flammable situation but you know at the time your brain doesn't think logically right you just think oh my god I'm getting literally like you walk into a shower or sit in a bath of diesel that's what I was basically dealing with and trying to pull my driver out of there and you know I also didn't know how long that pin the metallic pin holding driver's hatch was gonna stay for I mean it's just a small little pin if that steel pin sheared or broke due to the amount of weight that being pressed upon it from that vehicle my driver would have been squished in front of my face which was terrifying so luckily for us we all survived made it out I'm really happy that it wasn't anything major and that we were able to get through it but I just might share it with you because it kind of just gives you a little bit of an understanding of you know even in training things can be really really serious you gotta be paying attention be diligent be vigilant as to what you're doing challenge the norms you know people telling you oh yeah just drive out into the middle of prairie with no lights on 3:00 in the morning when you're all absolutely exhausted and go repair a vehicle it's just a recipe for absolute disaster so I'm not saying you know go to CEO and say do on me I'm not doing it but you just sometimes need to figure out what you're doing is is it logical is it safe within the bounds of common sense and within your own safety if it's not you know feel free to ask questions you know don't say I ain't doing that buddy but ask questions you know because in this situation we could have asked the question is look we haven't slept for literally almost two days we're exhausted we're driving into the middle of nowhere we haven't got a designated point actually head to is trying to follow the GPS and coordinates and the map it's pitch black it's barely any moonlight and we're traversing across stream which is always gonna be difficult especially in Suffield we should have been able to put our headlights on to see where we were going it would have definitely prevented this accident and you know in theory all three of us could have quite easily been killed in that scenario my drive to Minsk wished my command being squished and me and the bath being smashed over the head with an artist of a toolbox which weighs probably about half the weight of me you know probably you know 40 pounds of just kidding but it is heavy okay and that could've kill me you know and it nearly did because I add rather hard to headache for the rest of the day couple of bumps and bruises didn't get anything serious no one was really injured and we kind of laughed about it afterwards but just something to think about for those of you are training out there or or maybe have your own stories that you want to share with me in the comment section below you're more than welcome to so yes that was the day I nearly died in Canada and honestly after that exercise I fell in love with the country I moved over here anyway so maybe it was a good thing stock realization that my life nearly ending here allowed me to start a new one I don't know having an epiphany right now anyway thank you everyone for joining me I hope you enjoyed my little story today if you want to hear more of these funny stories feel free to leave me a comment section comment so I can have a little read and see if you want me to do some more feel free to also leave me a like and if you want to support my channel please go check out my patreon account I would really appreciate that and thank you to everyone who has been donate donating and supporting towards that account I hope you have a wonderful day stay safe everyone bye bye

Channel: Matsimus

Views: 144,004

Rating: 4.9441032 out of 5

Keywords: matsimus, british army, canadian army, army, soldier, BATUS, british, british army training unit suffield, suffield, canada, canadian, nearly died, near death, accident, crash, dangerous, warrior 512, tank crash, tanks, tank, british tank, die, death, dying

Id: UQFwR34WDJI

Length: 18min 11sec (1091 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 18 2020