Jay Owen

12 hours ago, robin craig said:

Jay my congratulations on having the intestinal fortitude to admit it was you, we are all human and we all screw up at times, I have had many occurrences caused by my own lack of judgement, ranging from a partial loss of hearing through some scars and broken bones through two failed marriages, so chin up mate, your survived!

Thanks for sharing and making this forum what it is by adding the personal recollection.

Cheers Robin, 

I was 19yrs old, still with a very young head, probably thought I was invincible and couldn’t do no wrong! How wrong I was. My co-driver came away with a few cuts and bruises, but me on the other hand came away with a few deep cuts, had a few stones imbedded in my back, arm and leg. A very nasty head injury and was cassevaced back to Woolich Mil hospital, I have searched for a photo of the truck, but no idea where it is, when I do come across it I will post it in here. 
 

Jay

1 hour ago, Richard Farrant said:

Hi Jay,

At that time I was working in a REME workshop in the UK and all the rollover and crash damaged Leyland DROPS were backloaded to us, we rebuilt them and sent them back to Bosnia, so it is a possibility that your truck was among them.

Richard

Hi Richard,

Judging by the carnage I made of this drops, I’m not too sure it could have been repaired, I would have assumed that it would have been used for spare parts, at the end of the day it was only a bit of metal, as my Staff SGT said at the time I returned to theatre, I can replace the truck but I can’t replace you!! Stuck with me that quote. 
Stay safe mate. 
 

Jay

On 9/16/2011 at 9:59 AM, extrogg said:

 

We had a few nasty accidents out there...one involved 2 good mates of mine who flipped their drops on the hairpin north of Split. They had a water bean can on the back and they went too fast into the bend...the truck rolled onto its side, skidded along the road and crashed through a wall with a 30ft drop on the other side. Both lads were casevac back to Woolwich with serious injuries. It took 2 Foden wreckers to extract the truck from the bottom of the ravine. When they were taken to hospital they left behind their helmets, gats and ammo which all went missing!!

I remember this accident very well, I was the driver!! Yes it’s true, I went too fast around the hairpin bend, to be honest, looking at the aftermath of the accident and the state of the truck, I was very lucky to be alive.