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File: 120596_aaczf_07.txtColonel 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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