Tell him to be careful.
More people are hurt or killed in the military by being careless than for any other reason. Always stay keenly alert to what is happening around you.
I lost a fellow sailor to carelessness. Driving, he swerved to avoid hitting someone in the street, hit the curb, and because he wasn’t wearing a seat belt was thrown out the windshield over the hood of the car and killed when his car rolled over him. He was driving about 25 mph.
Knew a Marine who was attacked by a very large tire she was rolling too fast. It became unbalanced and she was trapped under it. One of her feet was crushed. Today she is a nurse and doing fine but her injured foot still bothers her and perhaps always will.
Tell him to stay vigilant, stay careful, follow safety regs and he’ll come home OK. I and many others have in the past.
I’ll second your thoughts on safety. I spent 20+ years in the Air Force and I remember countless cases of accidents (and lives lost) because someone got careless. A few that come to mind:
— Early in my enlisted days, a wing commander at my base was killed while being checked out in an O-2. He persuaded the IP to let him attempt a single-engine emergency takeoff from an assault field, at night. As you might imagine, that scenario was not encouraged in that particular aircraft. The Colonel plowed the aircraft into a treeline and both died. The IP was finishing a “career broadening tour” in O-2s and getting ready to return to F-15s at the time of the crash.
— An airman at a northern tier base died when his head became trapped in a hangar door as it “folded” open. How he managed that, I’ll never know.
— A missile tech dropped an untethered wrench down a Titan II silo, puncturing the missile’s fuel tank and filling it with highly toxic and combustible gases. A few hours later, a spark ignited the fumes, blowing the blast door off the top of the missile, and tossing it’s 10-megaton warhead more than 200 yards. As you might have guessed, techs working on a fueled Titan II were supposed to tie all tools to their body, to prevent that sort of accident. BTW, another airman, standing near the missile silo when it exploded, was killed by the blast.
— An O-6 from Shaw AFB, SC, was picked to ferry a new F-16 to a base in Europe. Landing in Spain, he forgot to deloy the landing gear. Lots of damage to the aircraft as he skidded down the runway. But he still made Lt Gen before he retired.
— Another F-16 jock (a general’s son) was performing some unauthorized maneuvers with his wingman. They collided in mid-air, and the wingman (unable to eject) died. The general’s boy was quietly removed from flight status and allowed to resign from the service.
But my favorite “safety first” tale comes from a friend who began his career as an Army medic. Part of a medevac crew in Germany in the late 70s, they were scrambled to an infantry unit’s bivouac area. Seems that one private didn’t like the area where he was sleeping and decided to move to a more comfortable spot. He found one in an open area, and climbed back into his sleeping bag.
Unfortunately, his new “spot” was the middle of a tank trail. Shortly after 5 am, an M-60 came rumbling along and flattened the private. My friend and his fellow medics had the unenviable task of loading what was left on the chopper.
Safety regs sometimes seem arcane and burdensome, but they’re written for a reason.