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File: 120596_aaczf_07.txt
Page: 07
Total Pages: 22

 Colonel Eberly initiated the ejection shortly after the
 impact. I remember almost all of the ejection sequence;
 we were at about 20,000 feet traveling at about 580 knots
 ground speed. I fell in the seat for a long time because
 it's designed to stabilize you before pulling a personal
 parachute out to prevent any flailing injuries. I can
 remember falling down in the seat and, since it was a
 night ejection, I had no idea whether I was right side
 up or upside down. I knew that I didn't want to go all
 the way to the ground in my seat, that I wanted to get
 a personal parachute out. I started thinking how to do
 this and before I could really get through the sequence,
 the automatic system functioned and the personal para-
 chute came out. I said a little prayer at that point and
 looked up to check the canopy and it looked good. I felt
 basically fine, and then I looked down and could see all
 the guns down on the ground and the tracer fire coming
 up. They were still shooting at airplanes that were in
 the attack. We were number three in the package so there
 were a lot of guys coming after us. I initially thought
 maybe they were shooting at me, but they couldn't have
 seen me because it was too dark. I was kind of worried
 that I was going to get hit by some of the triple A, but
 I guess the odds of that are pretty slim. As I was com-
 ing down, I could see a bright light underneath me and
 I determined after a few minutes that was probably the
 airplane because it was in the shape of the airplane.
 So I tried to steer away from that because I didn't want
 to land in the fireball, obviously. I came down, landed
 on the ground, and as I was collapsing my chute one of
 the other airplanes, I think probably from the 336th,
 came over and one of his bombs went off about a quarter
 of a mile away. So I speeded up my preparations and got
 out of the target area as quickly as possible because I
 didn't want to get caught. As I said, it was dark, so
 it was very hard to see on the ground and even though
 that area looks pretty flat out there, there's a lot of
 gullies and it's not perfectly flat to walk on. There
 are some ups and downs, so it's kind of hard to make
 progress at night. But what I tried to do was get some
 distance between myself and the wreckage...by hiding in
 gullies or behind rocks or hills. While I was doing that
 a truck came out, probably looking for the crash site.
 I tried to get further away. They didn't appear to keep
 looking for me because there were no guys coming out with
 flashlights or anything like that. I knew I wanted to
 head basically west, northwest, to get to the Syrian
 border.. that was the only border I could try for. We
 were too far from Saudi Arabia and it was either that or
 stay in the target area. They couldn't rescue us there
 so I started walking. After being on the ground for
 about two hours, I began radio operations trying to make
 contact with rescue people. Colonel Eberly was also on


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