Truck smash lit my faith fire

You'd think getting smashed by a fire truck on a military runway would be the end of your story. For Dennis Niziol, it was just the beginning. The young US Air Force guardsman was about to discover that sometimes you have to hit the tarmac – hard – before you start looking up.

“I don’t care where you put me, but please, can I have a different post tonight?” Dennis pleaded with Security Control, trying to hide the tremble in his voice. He wasn’t being dramatic – his assigned guard tower had a ‘reputation’. Solitary. Oppressive. And, as he later found out, the site of a suicide.

Swapping shifts, Dennis ended up pacing a rain-soaked runway when all chaos broke loose. An F111 jet was in trouble – its landing gear jammed, the pilot was coming in for a belly landing. “Jogging out into the rain, my vision was blurry… then BAM!” Dennis recalls. “Was I floating? Flying?”

Nope – just being hurled across the runway by one of the base’s largest fire trucks.

Raised onto a stretcher, torchlight in his eyes, he faded in and out of consciousness. His only concern? “Where’s my gun?” It turned up – on a stretcher right next to him. “I was later told the driver of the fire truck was evidently worried I would shoot him, and had pleaded, ‘Whatever you do, don’t give him back his gun!’”

… story continues